Tracing Distortion on Vinyl LPs

[EERecordist]

ASR may ben interested in this Audio Engineering Society paper.

Tracing Distortion on Vinyl LPs

VLADAN JOVANOVIC, AES Member, Consultant, Bloomington, IN

Tracing errors arise because the reproducing stylus is of a different shape than the cuttingchisel used to create the original acetate lacquer master for vinyl Long Play (LP) records.Tracing errors are typically the most significant source of distortion in vinyl reproductionand probably the main reason manufacturers of pickup cartridges seldom specified distortionfigures for their products. In this paper, a historical overview of harmonic distortion resultsdue to tracing errors is provided. In many cases, these results are 70–80 years old and, at leastin some cases, seem largely forgotten by now. Some new simulation results are provided toverify various approximations proposed and used in the past.

https://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20240715/22236.pdf

 

[DVDdoug]

I haven't "played records" in almost 40 years, but I didn't hear (or didn't notice) distortion on every record so I don't think I was hearing that. When I heard distortion it was probably tracking distortion or it was on the record itself.

45's usually sounded terrible. I'm not sure what that was... Maybe regular-old analog clipping & saturation from the analog loudness wars, passed through the RIAA record/playback equalization. Whatever it was, the album almost always sounded better.

The "snap", "crackle", and "pop" REALLY annoyed me. There was also lots of record-to-record variation in frequency response (or "frequency balance") with most records sounding a little dull (rolled-off highs).