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High-Resolution Vinyl Disc Playback, How do you EQ older discs

dlaloum

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I'm glad you added this. I have a Stanton 681 EEE from 1979. It has a new stylus on it, and it sounds quite wonderful. So you're saying it's generally true that most or all decades' old cartridges are okay as long as they have relatively new styli?
Yep absolutely - MM (or MI) cartridges with the removable/exchangeable styli, the body has nothing in it that "ages"... I have over 100 various MM cartridges in my "library" all of them are more than 20 years old, some more than 40 years old.... all are good.

Styli is a different story - there are many different compounds used for the cantilever suspension - and some are unaffected by age, others completely degrade and turn to mush....

Some very very valuable styli (eg: Technics EPC100mk4 styli) even brand new in box, have to be very carefully refurbished before use, replacing the suspension rubber, which will have completely degraded...

So new Stylus and old Body = brand new cartridge to all intents and purposes!
 

Chaconne

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Thanks dialoum. Years ago, I read a thread on Vinyl Engine in which a guy who used to work for Stanton said the same thing you just did. I wanted to be sure I remembered it correctly. I appreciate it. Wouldn't mind finding a good 881 if there are any good sources for a stylus around! The KAB site says there is nothing available from his suppliers.
 

August West

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I recently cleaned then transferred my 500 LP collection from mostly the 70's. The music of my "childhood" you might say. Used a DSD recorder and the 5.6 rate aka DSD 128. Their was plenty of noise. I converted the dff files to 24-96 flacs. I used the Sound Forge click and crackle removal too to deal with the issue. It worked nicely. Clicks and pops and surface noise were greatly reduced. An interesting fact: the files were the exact same size after the cleaning. So I would say it seem non-destructive to me. I'm old and don't trust my own hearing anymore. But I thought it was nothing but an improvement when I listened back to my efforts. Tonal adjustments, I know nothing.
 

dlaloum

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Thanks dialoum. Years ago, I read a thread on Vinyl Engine in which a guy who used to work for Stanton said the same thing you just did. I wanted to be sure I remembered it correctly. I appreciate it. Wouldn't mind finding a good 881 if there are any good sources for a stylus around! The KAB site says there is nothing available from his suppliers.
You might need to keep an eye out on ebay for NOS - it does come up every so often! And the stereohedron 881 styli are very good indeed - although the cantilever is aluminium, stanton had a proprietary hardening tech (some form of anodising?) which resulted in very low effective mass, very stiff cantilever, without going to exotic materials.

It is the best Aluminium cantilever I have measured to date... superior to many very well regarded exotic material based styli (boron, sapphire etc...)
 

Mr. Widget

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I have a ton of beloved music on 1950s thru 1980s vinyl. Most are original issues, not remastered. The collection includes what were then 'audiophile quality' classical, symphonic, opera, jazz, chamber, and vocal commercial vinyl records by well-known labels like Decca, RCA Victor, DG, Columbia, Capitol, etc.
I don't really play older albums but my Marantz Model 7 was designed for this. It has rumble and HF frequency filters and has built in EQ for RIAA, 78s, and the old Columbia curve. Even though it is a tube pre and it is very vintage, the darned thing is surprisingly accurate. The only thing I miss is the remote.

Screen Shot 2023-03-06 at 7.36.59 PM.png
 

Chaconne

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Getting back to OP Jim Shaw's original issues, I find the same thing in many older LPs. My main gripe is with shrill, strident violins. I'm not sure it's exclusively an equalization issue. I've digitized several LPs that have these problems and used the graphic equalizer in iTunes (aka Apple Music app). I knock down the 2K Hz slider because I believe that's the range where most of the brightness resides. While it does help a bit, I find that it doesn't really change the character of the sound. It's still bright, just not as loud, if that makes any sense at all. (Maybe I'm not EQing it correctly.) When playing LPs directly, I tend to adjust the treble tone control, which helps a bit, but like most treble controls I've seen, it is centered on 10K Hz, which I believe is beyond the brightness/shrillness range.

BTW, for many years I used a Quad 66 preamp, with its tilt controls and filters (it's still napping in a closet somewhere). Those are quite useful, though not much better than traditional tone controls in dealing with the problem under discussion. In fact, I've found that you can mimic the tilt control using bass and treble controls, boosting one and cutting another. Below, I'm going to try to insert an image from an old Quad brochure that shows the unit's tilt and filter controls. Hope it works!
IMG_4092.jpeg
 

atmasphere

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I'm glad you added this. I have a Stanton 681 EEE from 1979. It has a new stylus on it, and it sounds quite wonderful. So you're saying it's generally true that most or all decades' old cartridges are okay as long as they have relatively new styli?
OK yes, but don't expect SOTA performance. There have been improvements in the mechanisms of cartridge over the last 40-50 years :)
Also, if using high output MM cartridges of this sort, you really have to pay attention to loading of the cartridge! See this link for more information.
http://www.hagtech.com/loading.html
If you don't pay attention to this, recordings may sound shrill due to the electrical resonance of the cartridge and tonearm cable and having nothing to do the LPs at all!!

Getting back to OP Jim Shaw's original issues, I find the same thing in many older LPs. My main gripe is with shrill, strident violins. I'm not sure it's exclusively an equalization issue. I've digitized several LPs that have these problems and used the graphic equalizer in iTunes (aka Apple Music app). I knock down the 2K Hz slider because I believe that's the range where most of the brightness resides. While it does help a bit, I find that it doesn't really change the character of the sound. It's still bright, just not as loud, if that makes any sense at all. (Maybe I'm not EQing it correctly.) When playing LPs directly, I tend to adjust the treble tone control, which helps a bit, but like most treble controls I've seen, it is centered on 10K Hz, which I believe is beyond the brightness/shrillness range.

I find this comment highly suspect. If you are having problems with the string section sounding right, if I were you I'd look into the age of your stylus (past 5 years its shot no matter how much time is on it since the suspension of the cantilever will perish), cartridge loading (see link above) and also the provenience of your LPs. For example, inexpensive reissues often sound bright because they lack the bass of the originals, since mastering LPs without bass is so much easier (and therefore cheaper) for the mastering engineer. Also look to the label- I've found that the various labels doing classical music vary quite a lot in terms of how well they were able to document the musical event.

Old stereo LPs can sound amazing and is a reason why some of them were so collectable.
 

dlaloum

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Getting back to OP Jim Shaw's original issues, I find the same thing in many older LPs. My main gripe is with shrill, strident violins. I'm not sure it's exclusively an equalization issue. I've digitized several LPs that have these problems and used the graphic equalizer in iTunes (aka Apple Music app). I knock down the 2K Hz slider because I believe that's the range where most of the brightness resides. While it does help a bit, I find that it doesn't really change the character of the sound. It's still bright, just not as loud, if that makes any sense at all. (Maybe I'm not EQing it correctly.) When playing LPs directly, I tend to adjust the treble tone control, which helps a bit, but like most treble controls I've seen, it is centered on 10K Hz, which I believe is beyond the brightness/shrillness range.

BTW, for many years I used a Quad 66 preamp, with its tilt controls and filters (it's still napping in a closet somewhere). Those are quite useful, though not much better than traditional tone controls in dealing with the problem under discussion. In fact, I've found that you can mimic the tilt control using bass and treble controls, boosting one and cutting another. Below, I'm going to try to insert an image from an old Quad brochure that shows the unit's tilt and filter controls. Hope it works!
View attachment 270032
In terms of user interace, the Tilt control remains one of the most useful controls ever devised in audio!!
Simple and smart!
 

dlaloum

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OK yes, but don't expect SOTA performance. There have been improvements in the mechanisms of cartridge over the last 40-50 years :)
Also, if using high output MM cartridges of this sort, you really have to pay attention to loading of the cartridge! See this link for more information.
http://www.hagtech.com/loading.html
If you don't pay attention to this, recordings may sound shrill due to the electrical resonance of the cartridge and tonearm cable and having nothing to do the LPs at all!!



I find this comment highly suspect. If you are having problems with the string section sounding right, if I were you I'd look into the age of your stylus (past 5 years its shot no matter how much time is on it since the suspension of the cantilever will perish), cartridge loading (see link above) and also the provenience of your LPs. For example, inexpensive reissues often sound bright because they lack the bass of the originals, since mastering LPs without bass is so much easier (and therefore cheaper) for the mastering engineer. Also look to the label- I've found that the various labels doing classical music vary quite a lot in terms of how well they were able to document the musical event.

Old stereo LPs can sound amazing and is a reason why some of them were so collectable.
I challenge that statement...

In a number of critical ways, we have gone backwards in cartridge technology and performance...

The key aspect where we have gone backwards is effective tip mass.
The peak of performance (the lowest effective tip mass) was achieved with the Technics EPC100mk4 - using very very thin walled boron tube cantilevers. There were a number of manufacturers at the time that used either Boron or Beryllium tube cantilevers resulting in very very low effective mass.

That then pushes the mechanical resonance up above the audible range, reduces tracking distortions and increases tracking ability, etc...

By the late 80's - the SOTA was clearly defined....

The needle profiles we still use today were all available at that time

The critical mass of manufacturing volume required for high end cantilevers dropped off in the 90's, Beryllium was a health and safety issue - and the facilities making those shut down (there are work arounds but they are expensive...)
Boron tube cantilevers - similarly an expensive technology not particularly suited to mass production...

And in the meantime we had moved to an environment where snake oil, and "magic thinking" was driving sales, rather than measured and measurable performance.

There are some areas where the state of the art has progressed... eg: anti resonant body construction, but these are aspects of performance that have very small impacts, relative to the massive impact that the mass of the cantilever has on the performance across multiple areas.

Today, we can choose from solid boron, ruby and sapphire cantilevers ... nice but not a patch on the best of the 1980's

In terms of the bodies/generators - the best of the 1980's had laminations to reduce the impact of eddy currents, and differing materials for mounting and resonance control were used...
MM's were also made in low-output versions, which behave (and need to be loaded) much like MC's - the Stanton LZS cartridges are a prime example.... and by the way, they share their styli with the high output 881... - the LOMM's reduced things like eddy current issues to a non issue (much like LOMC's)

My measurements of the 881 stylus, seems to indicate that this stylus has its cantileverresonance at around 19kHz - that makes it the highest resonance of any aluminium cantilever I have come across ... ie: lowest effective tip mass.

As a contrast... I have measured 2 different Jico SAS Boron examples, and the cantilever resonance on these was 14kHz and 16kHz respectively.

So today, some of the best boron cantilevers, cannot match a 40 years old aluminium cantilever from Stanton.

I do agree with how important it is to get the loading right on an MM cartridge...

With regards to suspension, the Stanton and Pickering cartridges do not appear to suffer from suspension degradation.

This "suspension rot" effect has been known to affect certain brands and certain stylus models from within those brands in particular... others appear to be totally immune to aging.

My Stanton/Pickering styli, seem to be good (measurably so!) even though they are decades old, so do my AT and Ortofon styli.
Technics styli are particularly prone to suspension rot (especially the TOTL models from the 80's), and some of the TOTL ADC cartridges had major suspension rot issues, but they varied by production batch, as ADC experimented a lot with formulations, and fixed some of the suspension rot issues with later production batches.

The main proponents of the "suspension rot" theory, are cartridge and stylus retailers, who benefit from the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) around this!!
 

Chaconne

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I find this comment highly suspect. If you are having problems with the string section sounding right, if I were you I'd look into the age of your stylus (past 5 years its shot no matter how much time is on it since the suspension of the cantilever will perish), cartridge loading (see link above) and also the provenience of your LPs. For example, inexpensive reissues often sound bright because they lack the bass of the originals, since mastering LPs without bass is so much easier (and therefore cheaper) for the mastering engineer. Also look to the label- I've found that the various labels doing classical music vary quite a lot in terms of how well they were able to document the musical event.

Old stereo LPs can sound amazing and is a reason why some of them were so collectable.
"Highly suspect" or not, my comments above regarding string tone were not meant to apply to all LPs or even a wide range. So I'm not "having problems with the string section," consistently across a wide range of albums. Rather, my comments applied to some poorly recorded LPs. I do not experience the issue universally. I also use a wide range of cartridges, some of which do better than others on poor recordings. I should probably have been clearer in my post. And yes, I'm aware that old LPs can sound amazing. I have many that do
 

Galliardist

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To get back to the original question, the answer is a three stage approach.
Firstly equalisation curves. Yes, the RIAA curve was developed by 1954 and widely adopted in the late ‘50s as a standard. Having said that, this was an occasional topic in the UK hifi press and a number of later LPs were discovered with house curves including some Bob Dylan albums which I think we can s safely date to later than 1958, and a number of US classical releases from the 1960s were found.

Wikipedia tells us that alternative curves were in use into the 1970s...

There are archival phono stages - Graham Slee Jazz Club was popular in the UK for this purpose - that wlll allow you to use the different companies' pre-RIAA curves. This approach will work with your 1950s LPs and probably some of the more recent ones as well. I think this will surprise you. An alternative is software equalisation with the same curves - VinylStudio does this: I'm not sure if VinylStudio can be included in real time playback though. There's almost certainly other hardware and software out there for this purpose, some time searching may throw up a better choice for you.

Secondly, get your cartridge checked as suggested above. Ah, should have said cartridges!

Thirdly, consider an equaliser as @restorer-john suggested to fix any remaining problems. That can be done in software as well of course. All of these equalisation curves are just that - equalisation - so they can be corrected as such. If you had correct information about a curve on a disc or a number of discs, you can correct it manually from the RIAA curve. It just seems a lot harder than choosing a preset, or flicking a switch or two.
 

atmasphere

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I challenge that statement...

In a number of critical ways, we have gone backwards in cartridge technology and performance...

The key aspect where we have gone backwards is effective tip mass.
The peak of performance (the lowest effective tip mass) was achieved with the Technics EPC100mk4 - using very very thin walled boron tube cantilevers. There were a number of manufacturers at the time that used either Boron or Beryllium tube cantilevers resulting in very very low effective mass.

That then pushes the mechanical resonance up above the audible range, reduces tracking distortions and increases tracking ability, etc...

By the late 80's - the SOTA was clearly defined....

The needle profiles we still use today were all available at that time

The critical mass of manufacturing volume required for high end cantilevers dropped off in the 90's, Beryllium was a health and safety issue - and the facilities making those shut down (there are work arounds but they are expensive...)
Boron tube cantilevers - similarly an expensive technology not particularly suited to mass production...

And in the meantime we had moved to an environment where snake oil, and "magic thinking" was driving sales, rather than measured and measurable performance.

There are some areas where the state of the art has progressed... eg: anti resonant body construction, but these are aspects of performance that have very small impacts, relative to the massive impact that the mass of the cantilever has on the performance across multiple areas.

Today, we can choose from solid boron, ruby and sapphire cantilevers ... nice but not a patch on the best of the 1980's

In terms of the bodies/generators - the best of the 1980's had laminations to reduce the impact of eddy currents, and differing materials for mounting and resonance control were used...
MM's were also made in low-output versions, which behave (and need to be loaded) much like MC's - the Stanton LZS cartridges are a prime example.... and by the way, they share their styli with the high output 881... - the LOMM's reduced things like eddy current issues to a non issue (much like LOMC's)

My measurements of the 881 stylus, seems to indicate that this stylus has its cantileverresonance at around 19kHz - that makes it the highest resonance of any aluminium cantilever I have come across ... ie: lowest effective tip mass.

As a contrast... I have measured 2 different Jico SAS Boron examples, and the cantilever resonance on these was 14kHz and 16kHz respectively.

So today, some of the best boron cantilevers, cannot match a 40 years old aluminium cantilever from Stanton.

I do agree with how important it is to get the loading right on an MM cartridge...

With regards to suspension, the Stanton and Pickering cartridges do not appear to suffer from suspension degradation.

This "suspension rot" effect has been known to affect certain brands and certain stylus models from within those brands in particular... others appear to be totally immune to aging.

My Stanton/Pickering styli, seem to be good (measurably so!) even though they are decades old, so do my AT and Ortofon styli.
Technics styli are particularly prone to suspension rot (especially the TOTL models from the 80's), and some of the TOTL ADC cartridges had major suspension rot issues, but they varied by production batch, as ADC experimented a lot with formulations, and fixed some of the suspension rot issues with later production batches.

The main proponents of the "suspension rot" theory, are cartridge and stylus retailers, who benefit from the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) around this!!
While I agree that a it would be nice to have lower tip mass, the simple fact is the internal workings of cartridges have improved. As it is though, the tip mass isn't that big a deal. When I was running my LP mastering operation, I could easily play back a 30KHz tone using a Technics SL1200 equipped with a Grado Gold cartridge. So while tip mass might help bandwidth, with any decent modern cartridge the bandwidth is well past that of human hearing- and without mistracking.

I've seen the suspensions fail on all of the cartridges I've owned over the last 50 years (that's about 10 cartridges, some MM and some LOMC). Your idea that its a 'theory' is for selling isn't borne out in practice. Its very real, and very measurable (we could easily see how a problematic cartridge performed when playing back a 15KHz sine in our studio).

When you did your measurements of tip mass, did you have the cartridge properly loaded?
 

Jack Harrison

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While I agree that a it would be nice to have lower tip mass, the simple fact is the internal workings of cartridges have improved. As it is though, the tip mass isn't that big a deal. When I was running my LP mastering operation, I could easily play back a 30KHz tone using a Technics SL1200 equipped with a Grado Gold cartridge. So while tip mass might help bandwidth, with any decent modern cartridge the bandwidth is well past that of human hearing- and without mistracking.

I've seen the suspensions fail on all of the cartridges I've owned over the last 50 years (that's about 10 cartridges, some MM and some LOMC). Your idea that its a 'theory' is for selling isn't borne out in practice. Its very real, and very measurable (we could easily see how a problematic cartridge performed when playing back a 15KHz sine in our studio).

When you did your measurements of tip mass, did you have the cartridge properly loaded?
The internal workings of the best MM cartridges have hardly improved if at all. Many/ most of the best current designs are decades old - at least. Audio Technica are bringing out new cartridges but the designs have hardly changed and some of their best performing cartridges are no longer being made Like the AT150mlx The generator on my venerable A&R P77mg is still being used on cartridges (some excellent ones) today. Very few current MM cartridges are being manufactured to the standards of the ancient Shure V15 range, and certainly the specs are no higher. And some MC designs current today are also pretty ancient.
 
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atmasphere

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How, exactly?
Since going to LOMC I've not kept track of what's happening in the MM world, but I don't recall some of the magnet structures and neodymium being used 40 years ago. Am I wrong in thinking there are more stylus types than were available in the old days?

To my understanding boron rod cantilevers are available because they can be built to have a good Young's Modulus value; IOW if designed correctly can be stiffer and lighter.
 

dlaloum

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Since going to LOMC I've not kept track of what's happening in the MM world, but I don't recall some of the magnet structures and neodymium being used 40 years ago. Am I wrong in thinking there are more stylus types than were available in the old days?

To my understanding boron rod cantilevers are available because they can be built to have a good Young's Modulus value; IOW if designed correctly can be stiffer and lighter.
Boron was in use in the 1980's and possibly 70's....

A rod is easier to make than a tube... the tube were made by a complex vapor deposition followed by solvent to get rid of the core...

So yes, boron Is a good material, but the best tubes of yore had less than half the mass of the current rods.
 

Jack Harrison

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Shure were selling the V15v with a beryllium cantilever and a microridge stylus in 1983. Shibata styli were introduced in the 1970s with the ability to play quadraphonic records. I don’t know much really about lomc cartridges but the Denon DL103 dates from 1963. The Decca London cartridge which has always been a fairly exotic high end choice I think predates stereo recording.
I think what happened is that with the advent of CDs there was no money left in the cartridge business for such significant r&d but at the same time cartridge development had reached a pretty incredible peak.
 

dlaloum

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Shure were selling the V15v with a beryllium cantilever and a microridge stylus in 1983. Shibata styli were introduced in the 1970s with the ability to play quadraphonic records. I don’t know much really about lomc cartridges but the Denon DL103 dates from 1963. The Decca London cartridge which has always been a fairly exotic high end choice I think predates stereo recording.
I think what happened is that with the advent of CDs there was no money left in the cartridge business for such significant r&d but at the same time cartridge development had reached a pretty incredible peak.
The Decca London is a completely different mechanical structure, I have no idea what it's effective mass would be - in theory it should be low - there is almost no cantilever on that!

LOMC's were touted as another means of reducing effective mass, as the coils were/are incredibly light - but the connecting coil wire has always been a problem - and failures usually relate to wear at that point! - but in the 80's when cantilever mass reached its spectacular nadir, LOMC was the cherry on top of the best cantilevers....
 

Ron206

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Just to report back on my experience re 1970's vinyl.
The record being discussed is an original Simon and Garfunkel from Columbia. Mostly played using a Shure V15 typeIV (but occasionally loaned to god knows what). Some years ago I moved to a Stanton 881 881MK II-S, that seemed good (years ago) but generated extremely disappointing results recently when I renewed my interest in some of my 1970's vinyl. I ordered a new Goldring E3 and a re-mastered CD. The cartridge is a dramatic improvement but the CD is clearly the way to go (at least for this album and my listening taste). Much more clarity, dynamic range and musical depth that is just not evident in my vinyl and cartridge.

I'm sure there may be better ways to recover the audio from my vinyl but (at my price point) the CD is clearly the way to go for the records that have CD re-masters.

This is a complex topic which runs far beyond equalization. The CD (if a good one is available) avoids the countless issues with audio to mechanical to audio reproduction of vinyl. If an accurate model of that process could be made (a model that would include compression, distortion, transient, etc effects) I think it would be possible to post process vinyl to achieve CD like performance but ..... Part of the experience of listening is the manipulation of the record and the unique sound that is created. I see no reason to mess with that experience if that is what is wanted.

Thanx
 

Jack Harrison

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My first experience of getting back into vinyl about 15 years ago after merrily rolling along with the Cd revolution of the 80s was ‘good grief!’ But in a really good way: ‘hey come and listen to this!’ I’ve ended up with a vinyl front end that cost a lot more than my CD player or DAC but produces a really enjoyable sound. More things can easily ruin vinyl though - the LP might be a bad pressing or worn out or damaged by an old stylus. The stylus might even be worn on your cart perhaps? And the cartridge set up can be off increasing mistracking and inner groove distortion, which is built in to or worse on some records which pack too much into either or both sides. The best stylus profiles for getting rid of igd are microline variants, personally I think plain ellipticals are worst for that.
There are many badly produced CDs where the vinyl sounds better to me even though technically the CD should be more capable - better s/n ratio, less distortion, higher dynamic range etc.
 
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