Frustrated with Vinly

Looking at the settings on my phono stage dip switches, this is what I see:

- 100pf
- 47k
- RIAA curve
- 40db

OK. So we can say at this point that the phono stage settings are not contributing to the tics/pops/crackling problem. From a sonic standpoint, though, chances are you’ll find that changing the 100 pf setting to zero will be beneficial in the treble part of the spectrum. Although that will depend on the unknown capacitances of the phono cable and tonearm wiring, as well as on how complementary the change is to the sonic character of the rest of the system.

Another setting change that I suspect would be sonically beneficial is to lower the setting of the antiskating dial on the turntable. As is the case with many such turntables, the instructions for yours say to set the antiskating dial to the same value as the tracking force, which IME is invariably much too high. In fact if you’ve set it in that manner you may notice when you view the cartridge from the front while the stylus is in the groove of a rotating record that the cantilever is deflected to the left (toward the center of the record), rather than assuming the nominally straight ahead position it assumes when the stylus is lifted off of the record. I suggest setting the antiskating dial to about 60% of the tracking force, i.e., if the tracking force is 1.8 grams set the antiskating dial to about 1.0 or 1.1.

The others have given you lots of good suggestions about the tics/pops/crackling problem, so I don’t have anything to add at this point. I was going to suggest that you buy some Mobile Fidelity record sleeves, but Noromance and Antinn beat me to it!

Good luck. Regards,
-- Al

Some questions:

What settings are you using on the SimAudio phono stage? With a 2M Blue I would expect the best settings to be:

Input impedance: 47K
Gain: 40 db
Input capacitance: 0 pf

The recommended load capacitance for the 2M Blue is 150 to 300 pf, which will probably be provided by the capacitance of your phono cable and the tonearm wiring. Given the very high inductance of that cartridge (700 mH), if you are not using the minimum capacitance setting of the phono stage ("0 pf," which in reality is probably a few tens of pfs), you would be moving a high frequency resonant peak in the overall response well down into the mid-treble region, which would likely add a good deal of emphasis to tics and pops. And that would be especially true if you are using either the 330 pf or 430 pf input capacitance setting provided by the phono stage.

Also, if the gain of the phono stage is set to something higher than 40 db it is possible that some of the crackling you hear at times may actually be the result of overloading the phono stage or the preamp or integrated amp.

Finally, what tracking force are you using? It should be in the area of 1.8 to 2.0 grams.

Regards,
-- Al