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Turntables, cartidges, and phono stages

Balle Clorin

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I am getting back to my Vinyl, after having it packed down in boxes for 10 years
Started with A speed check
My Michell Gyro is doing good for belt drive.


the cartridge
 
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watchnerd

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I am getting back to my Vinyl, after heving it packed down in boxes for 10 tears
Started with A speed check
My Michell Gyro is doing good for belt drive.

What app are you using?

This is my last test with Platterspeed on my Michell Gyro SE (also with HR PS), before Feickert stopped updating it and killed it for iOS.

IMG_0012.png
 

BDWoody

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Ha! I know the feeling. I figured I'd reconnect mine and now I have 4TT's, several phono stages, etc..

Anyway, the Puffin took a trip out west to @watchnerd , so haven't had it in my system for a while, but he's been playing with it. He's given a few updates scattered about.

I'd get another one. It has some pretty cool features.
 

watchnerd

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Ha! I know the feeling. I figured I'd reconnect mine and now I have 4TT's, several phono stages, etc..

Anyway, the Puffin took a trip out west to @watchnerd , so haven't had it in my system for a while, but he's been playing with it. He's given a few updates scattered about.

I'd get another one. It has some pretty cool features.

The Devialet ate it.
 

EJ3

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Oh, and your phono stage:

Flexibility for configurations, whether pF for MMs, or Ohms for MC, plus clean gain, with low distortion, is incredibly important and can massively increase ROI for upper tier MM/MI carts, as well as mid-tier MCs.

Along the lines of pF for MMs, the Apt/Holman Preamp (of which I have 2, one done by resto-modded by Audio Proz owner, Vince Naeve (who has worked for companies such as Apt, H.H. Scott, and KLH) and the other with those mods + synergistic mods from Peter Williams (Quirk Audio).
Notice that Tomlinson Holman (the owner & designer of Apt) decided on the early 80's to have the pF selection available for the MM cartridges.
I do not have one with the MC for the other phono section because they were designed by request for the specific cartridge that you were using.
1608676755765.png
 

Balle Clorin

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What app are you using?

This is my last test with Platterspeed on my Michell Gyro SE (also with HR PS), before Feickert stopped updating it and killed it for iOS.

View attachment 101012
W/F wow Flutter by Philip Broder for IPhone
4E21E2FC-EA5A-41F3-A662-4E543D113705.jpeg

I got peak ineigthed unfiltered deviation 0.18 on Platterspeed free version , ( Clearaudio test record) but it is very hard to find a test record without eccentricity , and dr Feichert is not so good in that respect I have read. I place phone in center on top of Michell record clamp to get best result ( double sided tape to keep phone locked in place)


Try also this: software Wow & flutter meter WFGUI , have not tried it on my Michell yet
https://www.reeltoreel.nl/blog/?p=551
https://www.tapeheads.net/showthread.php?t=55581
http://www.ant-audio.co.uk/index.php?cat=post&qry=library

manual here:
https://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=33865.0

By saving the wav file one should get the w/F spectrum demodulated. Opening a synthetic testfile fromm Virtins Instruments in Cool EditPro(Adobe audition)
Capture.JPG




I did not get Spectrum lab to work...
https://www.mvaudiolabs.com/vynil/dual-1218-measurements-2/speed-stability-analysis/
https://www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/spectra1.html

Michel gyro test 2011 Hifi-World
Capture.JPG
4E21E2FC-EA5A-41F3-A662-4E543D113705.jpegCapture.JPGCapture.JPG


EDIT: added WFGUI data, Iphone app is quite accurate wrt giving peak dev 0.05-0.06% which is very similar to Raw data for "2 sigma"= 95% of data within +/- 0.05
Capture.JPG


This is how it looks, playing a recorded 3150 tone from ClearAudio Trackability test record. Good wrt eccentricity

Picture1.jpg
 
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Frank Dernie

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Thanks that was very interesting. In my own research I also came to the conclusion that Löfgren A is the best alignment. I have a Rega arm, and they come with Stevenson alignment by default. Inner groove distortion was an important topic for me, as I have some vinyl from the 80s where discs are used right until the label.

Note there is a calculator at vinylengine that can graph tracking distortion (you need an account for that). I did that for my arm. The UNI graph is just an approximnation as I haven't found any maths/calculator for that (they probably want to sell their protractors), but Mr. Fermer let it slip that the null points are 63.3mm and 112.5mm so I got close to that with an iterative method.

View attachment 100991
Inner groove distortion was a problem for me for a long time, I generally found that the move to better needles (Shibata/Audio Technica Fine Line etc...) gave the most improvement. However there is another thing that really fixed this for me: I made my own protractor using Conrad Hoffman's Custom arc template generator. I used Lofgren A, but an inner groove radius according to german DIN standard at 57.5mm.

As you can see from the graph, Lofgren A gives the lowest distortion:

- It doesn't start as high as the others
- In the middle section it doesn't rise as much as Stevenson and is still never higher than at the beginning
- And due to the small inner groove value of 57.5mm, by the time the distortion rises, the vinyl is already at it's end

If you had chosen a bigger inner groove radius, Stevenson might be of advantage, but to me these weird alignments don't really do it.
As I said UNI was approximated, so take that with a grain of salt. If I had to choose, UNI would be 2nd choice. Maybe it's better. I can follow the logic of it all but until there's a free calculator I'm not gonna bother paying money for their custom protractors.

I think inner groove radius plays a much bigger role than people think. Sure modern records often stop very early and come with multiple dics, but when time comes and you have that disc that is used from beginning to the end, the distortion rise at the end doesn't justify the gains IMHO. You see how the distortion just escapes upwards towards the end of the disc.

Another thing to keep in mind. People always want to optimize for the best result under the best circumstances. However, that is not how industrial products are made. They sell you the quality they can most likely guarantee to be consistent. Some products are gonne be better, some are gonne be worse, but what they optimize for is not the best product they can probably make, but the best product they can make under bad circumstances, because that ensures you get most usable products that are "good enough".

What I'm trying to say here. I had to manipulate the calculator at vinylengine in 0.1 increments in both overhang mm and angle ° to get to the UNI graph. I bought a USB microscope (they're really cheap) to optimally align my cartridge

View attachment 100996
and as you can see, that needle is not in the middle. Do I care? No. I arrived at this after a lot of tinkering, pushing the cartridge a little, fiddling with these screws that are not really screws (what the hell were they thinking?)

View attachment 100997

And this was good enough for me. If you really want to find the optimal alignment, you need something that accounts for human error and just mechanical imperfections. Ideally you'd have a measurement disk and a computer programm, so you can run the whole disc through and then it tells you what to adjust. Do that a couple of times until there are no more improvements. I mean at the end of the day we're trying to minimize the distortion sum under a graph. That is a solved problem. While you're at it, it could create a file that you can put into your convolver so that the turntable has perfect output (at least frequency response). Maybe something like this exists.

Until then, Löfgren A with DIN 45547 inner groove for me, easily best bang for the buck.
This is one of the reasons why I use a parallel tracker :)
 

DSJR

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Rega is just showing once again that the only standards they care about are the ones created by them.

I don't believe so. the 60mm approx was set in the 60's, many makers used it and SME also used this standard back then. The R200 arm (Japanese sourced) used this geometry and Rega kept the same spec in the early 80's launched RB models. These arms are 9.5" long as were popular Grace and many others of this time, half an inch longer than the SME's and equivalants. My Dual decks also use around 57mm for inner null point. On these latter models, setting this point to 65mm merely involves sliding the cartridge a mm or two forwards in its slots.

As I understand it, the Stevenson? 65mm approx inner null distance was optimised better for many LP records. Elliptical styli are pretty kind in any case and it's my experience that you only need to be fully anal about it with Shibata and line stylus types where you may hear slight misalignment.
 
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watchnerd

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W/F wow Flutter by Philip Broder for IPhone
View attachment 101099
I got peak ineigthed unfiltered deviation 0.18 on Platterspeed free version , ( Clearaudio test record) but it is very hard to find a test record without eccentricity , and dr Feichert is not so good in that respect I have read. I place phone in center on top of Michell record clamp to get best result ( double sided tape to keep phone locked in place)


Try also this: software Wow & flutter meter WFGUI , have not tried it on my Michell yet
https://www.reeltoreel.nl/blog/?p=551
https://www.tapeheads.net/showthread.php?t=55581
http://www.ant-audio.co.uk/index.php?cat=post&qry=library

manual here:
https://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=33865.0

By saving the wav file one should get the w/F spectrum demodulated. Opening a synthetic testfile fromm Virtins Instruments in Cool EditPro(Adobe audition)
View attachment 101100



I did not get Spectrum lab to work...
https://www.mvaudiolabs.com/vynil/dual-1218-measurements-2/speed-stability-analysis/
https://www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/spectra1.html

Michel gyro test 2011 Hifi-World
View attachment 101101View attachment 101099View attachment 101100View attachment 101101

Thanks.

Besides, the HR PSU, do you have any other tweaks or upgrades installed?

I replaced a few of the ball bearings with upgraded materials.

Also, which arm are you using?
 
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