MM vs MI vs MC

[eliash]

Hi. I recently purchased the Jico SAS/S stylus for my Shure V15 V-MR cartridge. I am hoping to contribute some wav files so that we can have its frequency response available in order to be able to compare the sapphire stylus to the other Jico ones as well as the original Shure stylus. I made these recordings using the CBS Test Record. Left channel only. I am not able to set-up Python properly to run the scripts that spit out the FR/Distortion graphs so I am hoping someone can help me out. (@Helicopter or @JPJ perhaps?) Attached are some wav files. I am not sure if I removed RIAA correctly so I am including 2 files, one with and one without (I think, when I ran the script on Audacity nothing seemed to happen). I hope this can be helpful to everyone on this thread.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ANGG4f1hCB7KiICTPIrkxY4EACVCQXpp?usp=sharing

View attachment 124429

Here is the relevant info, assuming everything was done properly:

CBS Test Record STR-100
Clearaudio Concept Turntable
-- Satisfy Carbon Tonearm
-- 1m Tonearm Cable Length
-- 260 pF/m Capacitance
Shure V15 V-MR Cartridge
-- Jico SAS Sapphire Stylus (SAS/S)
Cambridge Audio Alva Duo
-- MM Setting: 47k Ohms Impedance | 100 pF Input Capacitance
-- 90 dB SINAD
-- Rumble Filter
-- RIAA
MiniDSP SHD
-- 106 dB SINAD ADC
AUDACITY
-- 16-bit | 44.1
-- Remove RIAA?

There seems to be a itty bitty pop around the 40 second mark. I don't know if that makes a big difference. I recorded the FR tests a few times and it remains (but I can open my second record). If I need to rerun it, let me know.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ANGG4f1hCB7KiICTPIrkxY4EACVCQXpp?usp=sharing

Ah, didn't realise it was a sapphire cantilever you have. Behaves as Thomas_A decribed (ruby and sapphire do have almost equal mechanical properties, apart from their dimensions), slightly higher resonance around 15K instead of 13K, but stronger...

 

[Thomas_A]

Posted in another thread when I managed to use REW correctly. From top to bottom; NeoSAS ruby 130 pF/47 kOhm, 130 pF/27 kOhm and the boron 130 pF/47 kOhm. Body is V15Vx. This is with pink noise; have to redo with sweep to get more reliable results. But shows the principle.

 

[Thomas_A]

This is a comparison of the Elipson Sweep and the Ortofon sweep. As already known the Ortofon has a odd dropp 800 Hz-3 kHz.

 

[EJ3]

Yes, peeling away the small covers over the hinges and adding tiny amounts of silicon oil makes the damper more functional. I've had 3-4 JICO and a few of them appeared to have fluid, others not.

I own several JICO's (for my various SHURE V15 V cartridges but was unaware of this silicone oil mod. Thank you for putting this out there.

 

[Thomas_A]

I own several JICO's (for my various SHURE V15 V cartridges but was unaware of this silicone oil mod. Thank you for putting this out there.

If you place oil there, make sure that the covers are not pushed all the way in when remounting, since they may touch the plastic and interfere with the function. Unfortunately, this was some time ago and I don't remember the viscosity of the silicon oil. See some info here:

https://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/viewtopic.php?t=69652

 

[JP]

Posted in another thread when I managed to use REW correctly. From top to bottom; NeoSAS ruby 130 pF/47 kOhm, 130 pF/27 kOhm and the boron 130 pF/47 kOhm. Body is V15Vx. This is with pink noise; have to redo with sweep to get more reliable results. But shows the principle.

I'll see if I can find time to do a set with the V. I have OEM VN5MR, VNSE5MR, Ultra500, and Jico SAS/B, R, S, and Z.

 

[Thomas_A]

I spent this day figuring out how to create these graphs on Windows with the extremely generous support of @JPJ. There are some inconsistencies translating these things to Windows from Mac OS, so I figured I would point out some lessons learned here for anyone interested in this.

1. The Nyquist Prompt RIAA filter will not work on the current version of Audacity for Windows (3.00). Simply, in the latest version there is no option for the use of legacy syntax. I was able to download a legacy version of Audacity (2.44) and the filter worked like a charm. (I had used the RIAA inverse filter that comes with Audacity, but it is different than the one proposed here. With the Audacity filter I got 10 dB peaking while the Nyquist filter gives me 7 dB.)

2. There are some naming convention differences between Macs and PCs that complicate the running of the code. I was able to circumvent this issue by being creative with my names. I called HOME simply 'C:/' and _FILE a name closer to the full path name (e.g. '/Users/Franspambot/Folder/filename.wav'. Essentially the script finds the file when it starts and does it's thing before losing the file location toward the end of its run. By naming the file itself the full path, it will find it at the end.

View attachment 124633

Hope this helps!

Since the response is peaking around 17 kHz with the V15V body and that stylus, one could actually try a loading of around 810 pF and 27 kOhm to balance the mechanical and electrical peaking. Below is the result of the V15Vx and the boron stylus. The Vx fairs poorer due to its higher inductance and it is more difficult to balance electrical and mechanical resonances. A significant peaking around 17 kHz would aid keeping the frequency response more linear perhaps to 18 kHz.

 

[Thomas_A]

A comparison of the Shure V15VxMR original and the JICO SAS Boron. The darker sound of the "x" variant is quite obvious.

 

[charleski]

No, just general vinylista stuff, but a little more evidence based than some.

It's an old post, but just want to say thank you for that link. It's quite a fascinating site, even if it does strengthen my amazement that LPs produce anything vaguely resembling the original sound!

 

[Thomas_A]

It's an old post, but just want to say thank you for that link. It's quite a fascinating site, even if it does strengthen my amazement that LPs produce anything vaguely resembling the original sound!

Speaking of links, the reference for me is Yosh pages. It's more than enough information to go through the english pages.

http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~yosh/sitemap.htm

Korf audio has some interesting things, but some of them have issues regarding the "science".

 

[Thomas_A]

So I was wading in the back catalogue of the Miller Audio Research test archives and I found the results for the Clearaudio Concept turntable, which I own. I was dismayed to see that it did not pass their wow and flutter test, scoring 1.2% instead of the spec'd 0.4%. Now this review was conducted over 10 years ago, and any number of variables could have been responsible for the discrepancy, so I am hoping to test my turntable to see where it stands. I am curious to see if this is an issue with the line.

Is there a test record that you recommend? Am I correct in looking for a record with a 3000k or 3150Hz tone? It seems that the Clearaudio Trackability Test Record is a decent one, but are there any other options?

Difficult to say which one is best. Should be one with the most centered spindle hole. You could start initially with an app to see what numbers you get. Se e.g. below

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/fun-with-vinyl-measurements.20278/

Polar plots and FM/AM demodulations are most useful to see where the problems are.

1_kHz_Axis_V15-8c

 

[EJ3]

I'll see if I can find time to do a set with the V. I have OEM VN5MR, VNSE5MR, Ultra500, and Jico SAS/B, R, S, and Z.

I have the V and a few NOS styli, As well as the ULTRA 300 (T4P) & NOS styli. I, too, have Jico SAS/B's also for my various cart body's. I am quite interested in the R, S & Z variant's.

 

[eliash]

So I was wading in the back catalogue of the Miller Audio Research test archives and I found the results for the Clearaudio Concept turntable, which I own. I was dismayed to see that it did not pass their wow and flutter test, scoring 0.12% instead of the spec'd 0.04%. Now this review was conducted over 10 years ago, and any number of variables could have been responsible for the discrepancy, so I am hoping to test my turntable to see where it stands. I am curious to see if this is an issue with the line.

Is there a test record that you recommend? Am I correct in looking for a record with a 3000k or 3150Hz tone? It seems that the Clearaudio Trackability Test Record is a decent one, but are there any other options?

There is an affordable (free) solution to measure (or at least get a repeatable impression on) wow and flutter. I downloaded and installed the WFGUI 8.0 PC-tool (still available from A.N.T. Audio). Running it on an old Win XP laptop requires a new start, everytime parameters are changed, but apart from this, it works nicely from my perspective (44.1 sampling rate only!). It supports 3000 and 3150Hz test tones. Eventually, if needed you can still get a hold of the Dr. Feickert Adjust+ 7" test record, this was quite expensive (around 25bucks) one or two years ago, it exhibits some excentricity (that´s why Dr. Feickert took it from the market as I understood), but for me it worked, when checking belt wear and pulley shortcomings on my Thorens TD146 Mk VI. What I noticed as well was high flutter (>0.09%weighted), due to a poor aftermarket pulley (33 only), exchanging helped a bit (down to 0.04%weighted for both speeds with another aftermarket one). At least for my ears, this was acceptable...on the other hand belt wow was always high, in the same magnitude as from the excentricity of the record. One can nicely follow the slow peak wow beating amplitude caused by the different round trip time of the belt (longer, due to the extra drive pulley loop way) and the platter circumference. 0.5%peak is a common value, even with a SME Model 15 TT (at least flutter is much better on this). I checked several different belts on the Thorens and three on the SME, there are quality differences, but not in decade, rather in sub-octave range.

 

[Thomas_A]

There is an affordable (free) solution to measure (or at least get a repeatable impression on) wow and flutter. I downloaded and installed the WFGUI 8.0 PC-tool (still available from A.N.T. Audio). Running it on an old Win XP laptop requires a new start, everytime parameters are changed, but apart from this, it works nicely from my perspective (44.1 sampling rate only!). It supports 3000 and 3150Hz test tones. Eventually, if needed you can still get a hold of the Dr. Feickert Adjust+ 7" test record, this was quite expensive (around 25bucks) one or two years ago, it exhibits some excentricity (that´s why Dr. Feickert took it from the market as I understood), but for me it worked, when checking belt wear and pulley shortcomings on my Thorens TD146 Mk VI. What I noticed as well was high flutter (>0.09%weighted), due to a poor aftermarket pulley (33 only), exchanging helped a bit (down to 0.04%weighted for both speeds with another aftermarket one). At least for my ears, this was acceptable...one the other hand belt wow was always high, in the same magnitude as from the excentricity of the record. One can nicely follow the slow peak wow beating amplitude caused by the different round trip time of the belt (longer, due to the extra drive pulley loop way) and the platter circumference. 0.5%peak is a common value, even with a SME Model 15 TT (at least flutter is much better on this). I checked several different belts on the Thorens and three on the SME, there are quality differences, but not in decade, rather in sub-octave range.

What frequencies do you see the belt wow? I have hard times seeing anything else than 0.55 Hz x n, and the slightly skewed pulley on my Axis (4.16 Hz), but then this is a constant f signal/constant friction. Belt wow should appear if you have sudden differential drag force of the signal measured.

 

[eliash]

What frequencies do you see the belt wow? I have hard times seeing anything else than 0.55 Hz x n, and the slightly skewed pulley on my Axis (4.16 Hz), but then this is a constant f signal/constant friction. Belt wow should appear if you have sudden differential drag force of the signal measured.

Actually the beating is in the (app.) sub minute range (if I remember correct, 20-30s in the case of the Thorens, longer with the SME), because dominating belt irregularites (e.g. thickness variation over one full turn of the belt) and record hole excentricity effects add up. The different period times (1 turn of the platter vs. 1 turn of the belt) cause an effect of slow phase shift between both, resulting in the peak wow reading slowly rising and falling, depending on the individual amplitudes of both irregularities. From that it is possible in principle to differentiate between both effects, noting the min. and the max peak wow. By testing different belts or just from the influence of the tonearm angle when playing the long Dr. Feickert test track it could be possible to identifiy and calculate both effects by number...anyway, the max peak wow visible over this track lets one compare the relative belt quality...I regard the ~1/0.55s period time as the relevant one, because one can hear it quite well with the pure tone test signal, fortunately not with music...but you notice how the effect varies over time...I haven´t seen or heard any effects from skewing, maybe because I always did an accurate motor tilt adjustment because of previously off-jumping belts...

 

[USER]

Got my NOS VN5MR stylus today and here are some quick results that confirm what was expected:

A couple of things:

1. It seems that my test record has some issues at around 15-17kHz so I would not take that bump seriously (even though it is marginal in the case of the VN5MR). Consider this graph flat, with a -1 dB slope. Pas mal! That said, it is fair to assume that the bump in the SAS/S graph is also boosted similarly.

2. There is a dip at around 5200Hz on both cartridge measurements that seems to be related to the record as well. I would ignore that too.

3. The SAS/S has less distortion than the NOS stylus and with EQ is a pretty darn good option (though I would go with the boron version if I were starting over). I would bring it down 6 or 7 dB at the end instead of 8.5 dB as I originally thought.

4. You can't rely on these graphs (test records) without comparisons.

 

[JP]

@franspambot for W&F, if you record a tone I can generate a polar plot along with FM demodulated spectrum. Test records are hit and miss so doing measurements from two different 'tables help in determining what issues are the test record itself. Stay away from AP's Ultimate Test record for W&F.

 

[scott wurcer]

Eventually, if needed you can still get a hold of the Dr. Feickert Adjust+ 7" test record, this was quite expensive (around 25bucks) one or two years ago, it exhibits some excentricity (that´s why Dr. Feickert took it from the market as I understood)

If need be you can enlarge the hole (slightly) with a reamer and align an LP by finding the max and min deviation going back and forth 1/2 a rev and splitting the difference (a down looking USB microscope works great). My problem is my spindle is below the RIAA spec for diameter so most LP's are always a little off.

IIRC JPJ has a couple of beautiful plots from his Lenco. New posters also might have missed that he is also the keeper of the two utilities that we did for the polar FM plot and frequency response/distortion plot. They are always free and run on (I think) any platform.

 

[JP]

SP-10MK3 and R. Yes when I find some time I'll put the code somewhere with some better instructions on getting a Python environment going. I also need to fix some of my changes so they work on Windows as well as Mac, or minimally implement OS detection so code that doesn't run right under Windows isn't used.

 

[JP]

Got my NOS VN5MR stylus today and here are some quick results that confirm what was expected:
View attachment 125649
View attachment 125650

View attachment 125648
A couple of things:

1. It seems that my test record has some issues at around 15-17kHz so I would not take that bump seriously (even though it is marginal in the case of the VN5MR). Consider this graph flat, with a -1 dB slope. Pas mal! That said, it is fair to assume that the bump in the SAS/S graph is also boosted similarly.

2. There is a dip at around 5200Hz on both cartridge measurements that seems to be related to the record as well. I would ignore that too.

3. The SAS/S has less distortion than the NOS stylus and with EQ is a pretty darn good option (though I would go with the boron version if I were starting over). I would bring it down 6 or 7 dB at the end instead of 8.5 dB as I originally thought.

4. You can't rely on these graphs (test records) without comparisons.

For comparison: