Objective measurements of phono cartridges

[Frank Dernie]

My turntable is a Michell Gyro SE with the inverted spring suspension.

I've never been sure I got the bounce right, but it looks awesome.

One of the problems is that there are 6 degrees of freedom to isolate, not just vertical. It is pretty well impossible to isolate the rotationdegrees of freedom with springs surrounding the outside of the platter, which is why the ground breaking design of Edgar Villchur had springs much closer together and therefore under the sub-chassis, as many of his followers copied.
My TT has 3 reasonably wide apart springs and its rotational isolation is not perfect. The Gyro and Oracle won't be either.

 

[Purité Audio]

I use a lab active air suspension table, and compressor made by a Uk company Spiers and Robertson, they make isolation devices for labs, really tricky to know how much difference ( if any ) it makes as a/bing is difficult!
Keith

 

[watchnerd]

Even today, objective measurements for cartridges, TTs, arms are simply inadequate, but vinyl afficianados don't seem to care.

vinylengine.com is a bright spot -- at least they have calculators for compliance / weight / resonance, as well as multiple alignment calculators.

 

[watchnerd]

One of the problems is that there are 6 degrees of freedom to isolate, not just vertical. It is pretty well impossible to isolate the rotationdegrees of freedom with springs surrounding the outside of the platter, which is why the ground breaking design of Edgar Villchur had springs much closer together and therefore under the sub-chassis, as many of his followers copied.
My TT has 3 reasonably wide apart springs and its rotational isolation is not perfect. The Gyro and Oracle won't be either.

Here is the mental difference (for me):

Once upon a time, I can see why people invested huge money to try to resolve the mechanical issues of LP playback -- they had nothing better to work with.

But if I want those issues to go away, I just listen to digital.

Provided the issues aren't horrific, this fact has actually made me more tolerant of vinyl's foibles.

 

[Analog Scott]

I had the same problems with an also beautiful Oracle Delphi II. And, the bounce became a problem from footfalls, unless I wall mounted it, as I previously described. I did like the screw on record clamp, which made an audible difference as far as airborne acoustic pickup by the LP disc itself was concerned. But, no doubt, there were still isolation issues short of perfection.

Another thing I always saw as a major problem in my vinyl days, when everyone was into selecting cartridges subjectively by ear. You could not audition different cartridges yourself in the same TT/arm to see if you audibly preferred one over another. No dealer I knew of would lend you a cartridge for home audition, and few multi-arm TTs existed. You just had to look at very limited measurements, specs, reviews and word of mouth, hoping you were buying the right thing with no return privilege. Too much guesswork. Too much reliance on anecdotal beliefs. Even today, objective measurements for cartridges, TTs, arms are simply inadequate, but vinyl afficianados don't seem to care.

Now it's easy with digital rips.

 

[watchnerd]

Now it's easy with digital rips.

I don't know about you, but I find digital rips of vinyl to sound more like..something not quite a CD...than they do like vinyl.

I suspect it's because the room interaction with the stylus as playback happens isn't happening.

 

[Analog Scott]

I don't know about you, but I find digital rips of vinyl to sound more like..something not quite a CD...than they do like vinyl.

I suspect it's because the room interaction with the stylus as playback happens isn't happening.

That has not been my experience with hi res rips. I found them to be indistinguishable. I suppose if one wants the feedback from the speakers one can do rips with the speakers on.

 

[watchnerd]

That has not been my experience with hi res rips. I found them to be indistinguishable. I suppose if one wants the feedback from the speakers one can do rips with the speakers on.

I'm speaking of rips made by others.

Definitely don't sound the same as listening to the same LPs on my turntable (not surprising given different carts, TTs, plus room / speaker feedback, inconsistencies in LP manufacture, number of times the LP has been played, etc.).

 

[watchnerd]

A great quote:

"The biggest distorter is the LP itself. I've made thousands of LP masters. I used to make 17 a day, with two lathes going simultaneously, and I'm glad to see the LP go. As far as I'm concerned, good riddance. It was a constant battle to try to make that music sound the way it should. It was never any good. And if people don't like what they hear in digital, they should blame the engineer who did it. Blame the mastering house. Blame the mixing engineer. That's why some digital recordings sound terrible, and I'm not denying that they do, but don't blame the medium."

"Audio" magazine, Van Gelder, Rudy; Rozzi, James (1995). "Rudy Van Gelder Interview (Edited Version)".

 

[Analog Scott]

A great quote:

"The biggest distorter is the LP itself. I've made thousands of LP masters. I used to make 17 a day, with two lathes going simultaneously, and I'm glad to see the LP go. As far as I'm concerned, good riddance. It was a constant battle to try to make that music sound the way it should. It was never any good. And if people don't like what they hear in digital, they should blame the engineer who did it. Blame the mastering house. Blame the mixing engineer. That's why some digital recordings sound terrible, and I'm not denying that they do, but don't blame the medium."

"Audio" magazine, Van Gelder, Rudy; Rozzi, James (1995). "Rudy Van Gelder Interview (Edited Version)".

It is kind of ironic though that his worst work was in remastering his recordings to CD. And I don't blame the medium. I blame him. Great recording engineer. Mediocre behind the lathe and just plain awful at mastering is own recordings to CD. How does that even happen? Anyway....

 

[TBone]

Unless part of the turntable's special sound is due to acoustic feedback specific to the listening room, in which case its live resonance effects can't be exported.

Nah; those truly experienced with higher-end vinyl have long realized that the advantages of vinyl have little to do with "special" induced resonances; and far more to do with properly recreating the original mastering put to vinyl, notably, the farrrrrrrr less compressed original recordings as compared to the vast majority of >compressed digital remasters.

That has not been my experience with hi res rips. I found them to be indistinguishable. I suppose if one wants the feedback from the speakers one can do rips with the speakers on.

Exactly, even if one goes to great lengths with TT isolation ... a simple rip with headphones averts any such feedback issues.

 

[Analog Scott]

Nah; those truly experienced with higher-end vinyl have long realized that the advantages of vinyl have little to do with "special" induced resonances; and far more to do with properly recreating the original mastering put to vinyl, notably, thee farrrrrrrr less compressed original recordings as compared to the vast majority of >compressed digital remasters.

I used to think this until I had the opportunity to do some blind comparisons between the Rockport Sirius III TT against the Clear Audio Master Reference and the Forsell Air Reference all with the same cartridge. The results were quite surprising and forced me to reconsider much of what I believed at the time about accuracy and how it corolates with percieved sound quality. BUT...I don't really want to go through the same debate again. Suffice to say that the TT that was engineered for maximum transparency did not fare so well against the TT that was designed by ear through trial and error.

I think it is worth noting that there is no such thing as a TT that eliminates all resonances and achieves perfect isolation from all internal and external vibrations. But I would bet that the Rockport comes as close as any design in doing so. I'd be willing to bet the Rockport is an audibly transparent TT. I'd also be willing to bet that the Forsell is not. Also there is no getting around that pickup arm design always involves some sort of compromise. There is no such thing as a perfectly transparent pickup arm. There comes a point where a designer has to make choices in pickarm design that involve some sort of subjective preferences.

 

[TBone]

Another thing I always saw as a major problem in my vinyl days, when everyone was into selecting cartridges subjectively by ear. You could not audition different cartridges yourself in the same TT/arm to see if you audibly preferred one over another. No dealer I knew of would lend you a cartridge for home audition, and few multi-arm TTs existed. You just had to look at very limited measurements, specs, reviews and word of mouth, hoping you were buying the right thing with no return privilege. Too much guesswork. Too much reliance on anecdotal beliefs. Even today, objective measurements for cartridges, TTs, arms are simply inadequate, but vinyl afficianados don't seem to care.

Agreed ... and unfortunatly this is still very much prevelant today. To make matters worse, if one believes that the turntable and arm are more important to overall sound quality than the cartridge itself (as I do), then it becomes near impossible to identify what the reviewer is really hearing.

As I've done prior, comparing the similar mastered CD to the LP rip tells a much more accurate tale of events ...

recently incorporated a Nagoaka MP50s into my turntable. When doing such cart changes, I go a few steps further than most, in that I also adjust the phono pre-amp internally to accomodate load and a more precise gain per each channel. It takes me quite a while to get things correct, especially azimuth, bias, and SRA. Much is done by hearing, but ripping and comparing is a great indicator of how accurate the setup.

I think I've got it setup near correct, below, left ch. mp50s, using Tracy Chapman's Fast Car, Orig CD(white) compared to the Orig LP(brown); 20hz to 1khz.

I chose this particular recording for testing because it represented (to me at least) a watershed moment in vinyl vs digital recording. It was originally mastered in digital (16bits) and subsequently released on vinyl where it gained popularity with vinyl heads; because it did sound amazingly realistic, the originals (cd&lp) had superb dynamic range (Fast Car=DR15). At the time of release, few realized it was a digital recording, and hence (I can still remember at many shows and demo's) the LP was often used to demonstrate "vinyl superiority". I tho, have always preferred the CD, because the bass line is very rich and quite difficult to get correct on LP.

My orig LP is now very old and well played, scraped by many stylus shapes over the decades, but as you can see above ... it still compares.

 

[TBone]

I think it is worth noting that there is no such thing as a TT that eliminates all resonances and achieves perfect isolation from all internal and external vibrations. But I would bet that the Rockport comes as close as any design in doing so. I'd be willing to bet the Rockport is an audibly transparent TT. I'd also be willing to bet that the Forsell is not. Also there is no getting around that pickup arm design always involves some sort of compromise. There is no such thing as a perfectly transparent pickup arm. There comes a point where a designer has to make choices in pickarm design that involve some sort of subjective preferences.

I MUCH prefer comparing real-world turntables, not esoteric monsters, however ...

I've heard the Rock and actually have quite a few rips derived from one. It has a very VERY low noise floor, which indicates a real lack of resonance. That said, the cartridge used in the those rips was tonally bright (high-freq lift) ... hence it made the biggest difference.

 

[Analog Scott]

I MUCH prefer comparing real-world turntables, not esoteric monsters, however ...

I've heard the Rock and actually have quite a few rips derived from one. It has a very VERY low noise floor, which indicates a real lack of resonance. That said, the cartridge used in the those rips was tonally bright (high-freq lift) ... hence it made the biggest difference.

I generally prefer not comparing them at all. Such a PIA. Of course I had to jump at the chance to spend several hours in one of Hong Kong's top audio shops comparing 3 such designs all with the same exact cartridge. I haven't really auditioned any vinyl playback gear since then. I hear various vinyl playback gear at shows and at audio shops but haven't really given anything a serious audition. That was 17 years ago. I went home, bought a well cared for used Forsell for a fraction of the retail price and never had the urge to upgrade since then. If I were to get any such urges now I would defitinetly use digital rips. No doubt that digital rips offer a much much more effective means of auditioning any sort of vinyl playback gear.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Nah; those truly experienced with higher-end vinyl have long realized that the advantages of vinyl have little to do with "special" induced resonances; and far more to do with properly recreating the original mastering put to vinyl, notably, the farrrrrrrr less compressed original recordings as compared to the vast majority of >compressed digital remasters.

Exactly, even if one goes to great lengths with TT isolation ... a simple rip with headphones averts any such feedback issues.

I don't know. I agree the lower the resonance in the TT and arm the better I like it. I still have this experience from quite a few years back. My group of audiophile friends put together a number of RTR, vinyl and CD recordings in which we had the same recordings in all three formats. I think mastering of master tapes for use on LP was the big compromise. To our considerable surprise LP was always the odd man out. We had good though maybe not SOTA playback gear (well we did have a SOTA TT lol). The tonal balance was pretty close on pre-recorded RTR and CD. LP was in every instance obviously different. So a great turntable gets you closer to the original master tape for LP, but that isn't the master master tape if you will. We did this on 3 different systems so it wasn't just this or that piece of gear polluting the results. The experience was the same. CD and RTR were close in how they were balanced and mastered. LP was the outlier. Now sometimes we liked the LP better, and sometimes we didn't.

This experience is why I never bought into the idea top level LP playback was a good Reference. It can be very, very good. It isn't a good reference in my opinion. How many years did digital gear chase the Reference of sounding like an LP? It was never going to happen. Digital is too good. When I eventually had a decent quality ADC to make digital recordings of LPs on a quality LP rig that pretty much nailed the coffin shut in my mind. Digital could be so much more transparent and high fidelity than LP it wasn't even close.

The funny thing is all these re-mastered re-released old analog recordings start with tape. To satisfy LP customers, they should have put together a top flight LP rig, pressed LP's or sought out pristine originals and digitized that for re-sell. Of course then you don't get to rinse and repeat three or more times until your customers die off.

 

[Analog Scott]

I don't know. I agree the lower the resonance in the TT and arm the better I like it. I still have this experience from quite a few years back. My group of audiophile friends put together a number of RTR, vinyl and CD recordings in which we had the same recordings in all three formats. I think mastering of master tapes for use on LP was the big compromise. To our considerable surprise LP was always the odd man out. We had good though maybe not SOTA playback gear (well we did have a SOTA TT lol). The tonal balance was pretty close on pre-recorded RTR and CD. LP was in every instance obviously different. So a great turntable gets you closer to the original master tape for LP, but that isn't the master master tape if you will. We did this on 3 different systems so it wasn't just this or that piece of gear polluting the results. The experience was the same. CD and RTR were close in how they were balanced and mastered. LP was the outlier. Now sometimes we liked the LP better, and sometimes we didn't.

This experience is why I never bought into the idea top level LP playback was a good Reference. It can be very, very good. It isn't a good reference in my opinion. How many years did digital gear chase the Reference of sounding like an LP? It was never going to happen. Digital is too good. When I eventually had a decent quality ADC to make digital recordings of LPs on a quality LP rig that pretty much nailed the coffin shut in my mind. Digital could be so much more transparent and high fidelity than LP it wasn't even close.

The funny thing is all these re-mastered re-released old analog recordings start with tape. To satisfy LP customers, they should have put together a top flight LP rig, pressed LP's or sought out pristine originals and digitized that for re-sell. Of course then you don't get to rinse and repeat three or more times until your customers die off.

If the mastering was different then the comparison has a big problematic variable when it comes to judging the actual medium.

 

[Blumlein 88]

If the mastering was different then the comparison has a big problematic variable when it comes to judging the actual medium.

Yes of course it is. And we know for a certain fact, that you had to use different masters for LP than for CD or tape. That is not due to some preference in sound, it was a necessity for pressing LPs that would work on TTs. The two striking results were that LP was so obviously different, and also that early CD and RTR were so very similar in balance. We of course couldn't know if the CD and RTR used the same masters. The results would lend credence to the idea CDs were from pre-LP mastering or were derived from the pre-LP mix tape.

Certainly doing digital needledrops that sound like the LP itself says something about digital fidelity. Seems with all the LPs released from digital masters in recent years there should be some digital and LP copies sourced via digital to compare out in the wild. Anyone done anything like that?

We also have an abundance of measurable reasons LP falls short or digital fidelity.

 

[Analog Scott]

Yes of course it is. And we know for a certain fact, that you had to use different masters for LP than for CD or tape. That is not due to some preference in sound, it was a necessity for pressing LPs that would work on TTs. The two striking results were that LP was so obviously different, and also that early CD and RTR were so very similar in balance. We of course couldn't know if the CD and RTR used the same masters. The results would lend credence to the idea CDs were from pre-LP mastering or were derived from the pre-LP mix tape.

That is true for only a few recordings like the Telarc 1812 overture and a few other unusual and notable exceptions. The fact is a good many very very dynamic recordings have been mastered to vinyl with zero compression, limiting or EQ and no summing of the bass to mono. So unless you were using recordings such as the Telarc 1812 overture and/or others like it the LPs did not neccessarily have to be mastered differently. Since I have no idea what specific recordings you used it's really hard for me to say how the LPs were mastered or how they needed to be mastered. Maybe you can share with us which recordings you used in those comparisons?

Certainly doing digital needledrops that sound like the LP itself says something about digital fidelity. Seems with all the LPs released from digital masters in recent years there should be some digital and LP copies sourced via digital to compare out in the wild. Anyone done anything like that?

oh yeah, I do quite often. The results vary. Just because a recording is digital doesn't mean things don't get changed in the mastering. Be it the original releases or the reissues. Be it vinyl or digital media. Results are all over the place.

 

[tomelex]

That is true for only a few recordings like the Telarc 1812 overture and a few other unusual and notable exceptions. The fact is a good many very very dynamic recordings have been mastered to vinyl with zero compression, limiting or EQ and no summing of the bass to mono. So unless you were using recordings such as the Telarc 1812 overture and/or others like it the LPs did not neccessarily have to be mastered differently. Since I have no idea what specific recordings you used it's really hard for me to say how the LPs were mastered or how they needed to be mastered. Maybe you can share with us which recordings you used in those comparisons?




oh yeah, I do quite often. The results vary. Just because a recording is digital doesn't mean things don't get changed in the mastering. Be it the original releases or the reissues. Be it vinyl or digital media. Results are all over the place.

No, go back and read up on cutting lathes, the exception would be an LP that had the same information on it as a CD. Almost none ( I seem to recall there are a few) of the LP versions remotely at that, nearly match the CD masterings. They are two different creatures, in all ways. Good luck finding us a handful of these so called LP and CD masterings that are the same across the audio band.