Rumble from Turntable Bearing?

[Frank Dernie]

The thing many are not aware of is that you do not need a warp of the same frequency as the resonance to trigger the resonance. A disturbance like a sudden drop or bump is like an impulse it “contains “ many frequencies… this will be enough to trigger the resonance.

Exactly this. Off centre is one frequency, warps contain a plethora of frequencies depending on the shape of the warp.

I would say that the usual 8-12 Hz is based on a conventional tonearm and the warp f. In reality it is not so. Warp and record eccentricity numbers are different, which make the placement of resonance accordingly, laterally and vertically. A vertical Rf of 15 Hz and lateral of 8 Hz more ideal than having it at 11 Hz both ways.

Most types of "high end" linear tracking arms have a much higher lateral than vertical effective mass.

 

[Thomas_A]

Exactly this. Off centre is one frequency, warps contain a plethora of frequencies depending on the shape of the warp.

Most types of "high end" linear tracking arms have a much lower lateral than vertical effective mass.

You mean the other way around? Linear arms need to move the entire arm structure laterally making it higher mass. As shown above the Moerch DP-8 is a radial arm both with damping and higher moving mass laterally vs vertically.

 

[Frank Dernie]

You mean the other way around? Linear arms need to move the entire arm structure laterally making it higher mass. As shown above the Moerch DP-8 is a radial arm both with damping and higher moving mass laterally vs vertically.

Yes, typo I meant to type higher not lower. Usually very much higher too. I'll correct in the post.

 

[Sal1950]

I would love to hear anyone's opinions oof what is going on here. Do I have a good excuse to get a new TT?

It is insane. If I knew how insane I wouldn't have bothered. But I've gotten a lot of joy from it.

And a lot of pain. A constant source of inconvenience along with exaggerated costs for both the media and hardware.
Best overall choice is to bail out by selling it all now while the fad is holding prices of what you now have at a all time high.
Use the money for better speakers or to upgrade the system to a multich rig.

 

[aagstn]

And a lot of pain. A constant source of inconvenience along with exaggerated costs for both the media and hardware.
Best overall choice is to bail out by selling it all now while the fad is holding prices of what you now have at a all time high.
Use the money for better speakers or to upgrade the system to a multich rig.

I got drawn back into this for the nostalgia five years ago only to remember all the frustrations of the 80's and more since IMO the vinyl they are pressing now is of much lower quality than the 80's. You also can't just return a bad pressing to the record store like we could back in the old days. I sold off 95% of my vinyl over the course of 2025 and it was a decision I'm very happy with. I've learned to live with the fact I just can't have a physical copy of some recent albums and have made my peace with just getting them digitally and streaming them when CD isn't an option. The fact I could buy a blu-ray audio release with 3 or 4 different versions of an album for $10 to $20 less than a vinyl copy was also a big wake up call. The price gouging on vinyl is ridiculous.

If you are enjoying vinyl with none of these concerns by all means enjoy it. I definitely loved the artwork and how cool some of the jackets are. I found that getting the vinyl in many cases did not prevent me from dealing with the compressed audio of the CD. I picked up multiple releases that came from the same compressed master as the CD and got me nothing in improved audio quality.

 

[EJ3]

Exactly this. Off centre is one frequency, warps contain a plethora of frequencies depending on the shape of the warp.

Most types of "high end" linear tracking arms have a much higher lateral than vertical effective mass.

On my Technics SL-M3 (it is, of course, not perfect. But I think that it is better than most linear tracking tone arms):

It is equipped with a linear tracking arm that can make tracking error, which causes distortion during playback, and inside force, which causes channel imbalance, close to 0.

The tracking error angle is within ± 0.05 ° by detecting the arm deflection angle with an optical sensor and obtaining a high-precision detection signal.

The tone arm uses a dynamic balance system, and the arm bearing uses a 4-point support system gimbal suspension system.

In addition, the arm has a low mass design (it is made of Titanium Nitride) with an effective mass of 13g including the cartridge.

 

[Frank Dernie]

On my Technics SL-M3 (it is, of course, not perfect. But I think that it is better than most linear tracking tone arms):

It is equipped with a linear tracking arm that can make tracking error, which causes distortion during playback, and inside force, which causes channel imbalance, close to 0.

The tracking error angle is within ± 0.05 ° by detecting the arm deflection angle with an optical sensor and obtaining a high-precision detection signal.

The tone arm uses a dynamic balance system, and the arm bearing uses a 4-point support system gimbal suspension system.

In addition, the arm has a low mass design (it is made of Titanium Nitride) with an effective mass of 13g including the cartridge.

The ones with a high lateral effective mass are the ones on air bearings where the whole weight of the arm and counter weight are effective lateral mass.
Arms like the Rabco, Goldmund, Technics, B&O and Mitsubishi allow lateral pivoting like conventional arms but the pivot moves to maintain parallel tracking.
I have parallel tracking arms by Goldmund and B&O and conventional ones by Rega and EMT.

 

[EJ3]

The ones with a high lateral effective mass are the ones on air bearings where the whole weight of the arm and counter weight are effective lateral mass.
Arms like the Rabco, Goldmund, Technics, B&O and Mitsubishi allow lateral pivoting like conventional arms but the pivot moves to maintain parallel tracking.
I have parallel tracking arms by Goldmund and B&O and conventional ones by Rega and EMT.

I never had any other than the one on my SL-M3. My other TT is a DUAL 1229 that I use when I want to (God forbid!) STACK RECORDS. Yep, that is it's primary purpose, to stack records of Austrian, German & Italian folk songs.

 

[Waveform Fidelity]

Shure did 50 years ago.
The 2 curves showed the trackabilities of V 15 III and V 15 IV mounted on an SME 3009 arm. The dips in the curves were the effects from the resonance of the spring-mass system due to the cartridge compliance and tone arm effective mass.
View attachment 492932
View attachment 492933

Source: https://service.shure.com/s/article...technical-seminar?language=en_US&region=en-US

Oh! that brings back fond memories! The SME3009 and Shure V15s ADs appeared often in the Hi Fi magazines, but that combo would cost a month’s salary!! I had a Thorens TD160 and Sure M95HE and a reference record to test tracking with various test tones cut at different velocities. If that was plotted above the line would easily pass through the sample of recorded velocities. No amount of anti skate and tracking weights would allow a pure tone to be heard - at least at the higher frequencies where the cutting depth was emphasized with RIAA equalization.

One has to admire the precision engineering of the SME3009 and Shure’s matching V15’s

 

[Waveform Fidelity]

The thing many are not aware of is that you do not need a warp of the same frequency as the resonance to trigger the resonance. A disturbance like a sudden drop or bump is like an impulse it “contains “ many frequencies… this will be enough to trigger the resonance.

Yes, you can see from the plots the tonearm/cartridge is an undamped sytem that oscillates

 

[Frank Dernie]

Yes, you can see from the plots the tonearm/cartridge is an undamped sytem that oscillates

It is not undamped, though the damping is low since the higher the damping the higher the frequency at which the transducer starts to be accurate (ie the cartridge body is nearly enough a stator).
More damping also "short circuits" the suspension to an extent making the device less accurate at audio frequencies.
The compromise is to have little enough damping without amplitude at the fundamental resonance risk groove skipping but not so much the cartridge loses too much accuracy.

 

[Waveform Fidelity]

While we cannot hear these sounds, getting rid of them 'up-stream' has advantages, especially in an audio restoration framework:

• It reduces visual noise in editing software
• It may remove signals that would damage loudspeakers

I tend to agree that CD's can produce superior sounds. They can also be remastered to be compressed, have spurious stereo added or just messed around with. They tend to have artwork that is cramped, often unreadable and lack the intent of the artist who worked for a 12" or gatefold sleave.

I love the idea that my recording is as close as possible to the experience the artists had when they said 'that'll do".

Personally, the process of find some treasure in a record fair, bringing it home, capturing and restoring the sound has a massive Ikea Effect. That might not be rational, but the reason I do all that is that I enjoy my emotional connection to the music. Anything that adds to that connection is good for me,

In the early days of CD’s mastered from 24 track tape machines, CD’s sounded too bright, because some recording engineers still added extra HF boost to help with the record cutters!! At least that was my experience i the very short time I worked in a BBC recording studio(mid 80’s)

Anyway, I get that there is a lot of enjoyment in the vinyl revival sound - a bit like valve amps with lots of distortion and output transformers that screw around with the damping factor. Its those artifacts that make that all possible. So enjoy the warp and mis-tracking etc and marvel at the great engineering of that period.

 

[Waveform Fidelity]

It is not undamped, though the damping is low since the higher the damping the higher the frequency at which the transducer starts to be accurate (ie the cartridge body is nearly enough a stator).
More damping also "short circuits" the suspension to an extent making the device less accurate at audio frequencies.
The compromise is to have little enough damping without amplitude at the fundamental resonance risk groove skipping but not so much the cartridge loses too much accuracy.

My bad. I was thinking of an under-damped system, but said undamped. An undamped system would oscillate for ever

 

[EJ3]

In the early days of CD’s mastered from 24 track tape machines, CD’s sounded too bright, because some recording engineers still added extra HF boost to help with the record cutters!! At least that was my experience i the very short time I worked in a BBC recording studio(mid 80’s)

Some early CD players were not at all up to the best that there ever was, either.

 

[Doodski]

Some early CD players were not at all up to the best that there ever was, either.

I was using the brand new model in 1984 of the Sony CDX-5 car CD player before it hit the retail shelves and using the brand new 1982 Sony CDP-101 home player immediately after it was released. I worked in a Sony retailer so I got to compare it to everything and see what was what at that time in the 80s. The CD players absolutely kicked azz over all the cassette car decks/players and obliterated the turntables and sounded so much better. They did seem to be crisper/brighter/sharper sounding etc. but I think that was the fact that they simply have better frequency response. Some CDs for sure did sound a bit harsh, we all noticed that and where miffed as per why that could be occurring. But overall it was leaps and bounds improvement and a major upgrade over what we all had before the CD.

 

[Sal1950]

The ones with a high lateral effective mass are the ones on air bearings where the whole weight of the arm and counter weight are effective lateral mass.
Arms like the Rabco, Goldmund, Technics, B&O and Mitsubishi allow lateral pivoting like conventional arms but the pivot moves to maintain parallel tracking.
I have parallel tracking arms by Goldmund and B&O and conventional ones by Rega and EMT.

I always loved my H/K-Rabco ST8, a great table in it's day.

In the early days of CD’s mastered from 24 track tape machines, CD’s sounded too bright, because some recording engineers still added extra HF boost to help with the record cutters!!

More likely the CD's sounded bright because most listeners of the time weren't used to hearing a extended top end with lots of inner detail.
Vinyl masters due to the limitations of the cutting lathe's and playback medium are filtered on the top end for a number of reasons,

What is Mastering for Vinyl?

Mastering for vinyl is the process of creating a separate master that can be cut into a vinyl record without added unwanted distortion.

www.sageaudio.com

 

[Sal1950]

Some CDs for sure did sound a bit harsh, we all noticed that and where miffed as per why that could be occurring. But overall it was leaps and bounds improvement and a major upgrade over what we all had before the CD.

Yea, so many of the early classic rock recording tape masters actually did sound quite harsh and listeners weren't used to hearing them cleanly..
A case of "be careful what you ask for". We begged and pleaded for a clearer window to the tape masters and were a bit surprised that all was not as glorious as we had imagined. LOL

 

[Doodski]

Yea, so many of the early classic rock recording tape masters actually did sound quite harsh and listeners weren't used to hearing them cleanly..
A case of "be careful what you ask for". We begged and pleaded for a clearer window to the tape masters and were a bit surprised that all was not as glorious as we had imagined. LOL

Yes, it was not like a total boost of all the top end. It was more of a extra crispness tinkle to the tambourines and the cymbals had more shatter etc. Not really horribly boosted just boosted.

 

[Chrispy]

I didn't hear it, I saw it in audacity

Just worried about passing it on to capable subs?