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Is it possible for a record to be too loud?

I was just listen to a copy of a newish Sigur Ros album "Valtari" and on last two tracks on side B it has pretty huge dynamic swings. It gets so loud that my cart, EMT TSD 15, starts doing what I can only describe as maxing out. Left channel starting squawking and both channels sound crazy compressed.

The only other things I could think of is maybe I am overloading my input impedance on the pre, since this is a MC with a 1.05mv output that doesn't seem like it should be ruled out.

Any ideas? Bad pressing? Faulty cartridge to tonearm matching?..which is a Ortofon RS 309d and preforms absolutely wonderfully on every other record in my collection.
ohnofiasco

Showing 3 responses by hdm

hdm
1,075 posts
 
Actusreus:

I agree. It is surprising how much gain matching seems to be ignored in terms of really optimising sound quality, not just here but on many forums.

IMO, even with a good quality phono stage, probably more so in fact, the window for optimum sound quality is very narrow. Probably within 2 dB with low output MC's.

Ultimately, I think it's a lot easier to come to this conclusion if one has a phono stage with infinitely variable gain as opposed to fixed gain, but most stages on the market do indeed have fixed gain.

And 55 dB of gain is a whopping ton of gain for a 1.05 mV cartridge. 48-50 would probably be the sweet spot in most systems.
hdm
1,075 posts
 
"The issue is can a cartridge of 1.05 mV or so overload a phono section set up for a low output moving coil cartridge."

The OP's phono stage has a stated sensitivity of 500 uV in for 300 mV out with an overload margin of 31 dB.

Any thoughts on what it would take in terms of mV at the input to overload based on those specs?
hdm
1,075 posts
 
If the phono stage doesn't overload until 17.75 mV then that should not be an issue as a 1 mV cartridge is probably maxing out around 10-12 mV on peaks.

What about the phono stage overloading the preamp ahead of it? Seems that is a not an unusual occurrence when high output cartridges are paired with high gain phono preamps.
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