Killing sibilance distortion - VPI & Jubilee

I've tried quite a few things, including different cartridges, and VTF, VTA and antiskate settings, but the sibilance is always there.

Sounds like a clue to me. Let's apply Occam's razor...

With all you've tried, why are you still assuming the problem's with your vinyl rig? You've changed virtually everything possible yet the problem persists. Time for a new approach.

What phono stage are you using? Have you considered the very real possiblity that it's unable to resolve the challenges presented by tracks like this?

I've personally only heard three phono stages that handle tracks like this with real clarity (I expect there are others, I just haven't heard them.) OTOH, I've heard dozens that can't avoid distortions when the source material gets really challenging, no matter how much time, money and effort you expend on the front end.

One more thought: try increasing the space between the wires coming from the cartridge clips as much as possible. Spread them as far apart as you can without dragging on the record surface.

Probably won't help with the sibilance problem, but may lower the noise floor a bit.

Also, VTF can't be optimized by using a scale. It can only be optimized by using your ears.

I doubt that's the cause of your problem, but you should experiment to learn how your cartridge behaves with varying amounts of downforce. Whatever you learn will change as the cartridge ages and perhaps even with the weather. The most a scale can do is get you in the ballpark.

I'm pretty certain it will be further in with the original VPI alignment.

Good prediction. If VPI's alignment is a single null point, as I think Downunder implied, or if its two null points are more closely spaced than Baerwald, that's guaranteed.

Unfortunately, a single point alignment or an alignment to two more narrowly spaced null points will put the stylus farther out of alignment on inner grooves.

I've not heard the GCPH, but the Syrah falls short of the performance levels needed to play challenging tracks like this with real clarity. I'm familiar with it and its costlier brothers, the Cortese and Grange, including the final mods to the Grange before it was dropped. They were all prone to microphonic feedback which resisted every attempt at isolation or damping. The tightly packed upper-midrange harmonics and their echoes in that AK recording would be muddied by any Supratek, IMO/IME.

Throw in an unstabilized unipivot and a cartridge which is not the last word in clarity and you may have a recipe for problems which no adjustments can fix.

Which other cartridges have you tried? The Jubilee was, in my system, somewhat muddy and undynamic. I don't remember it having sibilance isssues but I didn't try it on the most challenging material, since to our ears it couldn't pass muster on easier stuff.

What a depressing post. Sorry. :-(

Do try the suggestions of Axel, JohnBrown, Downunder and everyone else. I'm afraid my ideas involve spending lots of money.

Goatwuss,

Great information. As others said, you get A+ for diagnostic thorough-osity.

The zenith photo does appear to have been taken from an off angle relative to the null point, so we can't really assess your zenith angle. As Axel said it looks like azimuth is way off, but that could be due to the angle of the photo.

With all your efforts I really doubt alignment is the problem. The track you're having problems with is challenging and all gear has its limits.

I would not expect a Shelter 901 to play inner groove sibilants better than a Jubilee. From my own experience and also from theory I'd expect it to be worse.

IGD was the reason I stopped using my 901. It wouldn't play tough inner grooves clearly on 3 of the 4 tonearms I tried. The exception was a Schroeder Reference, but I'd hardly recommend buying a $6K tonearm just to get a Shelter to behave.

The Jubilee has a better stylus profile. On my TriPlanar it was no worse on inner grooves than any other part of the LP, though as I said before, it never performed at a level that encouraged me to feed it difficult stuff like that Allison Kraus track.

Try the Benz, just for kicks.

Regarding equipment and its limits...

Last night we played Mahler 8, "Symphony of a Thousand", on an excellent German Teldec pressing. Eight operatic soloists, two full choruses, boys choir, big pipe organ and large orchestra - all going full tilt in tutti or fugal counterpoint for four sides. That's more challenging than fifty over-miked Allison Krauss tracks.

My ZYX UNIverse may be the clearest, least congested cartridge on the planet. It plays that AK track without blinking, but it only just kept the Mahler under control. For the first time since I got my Mint the sound occasionally reminded me I was listening to a phono cartridge. It was by no means bad. Darn good actually. But it lacked the last bit of effortless clarity that I'm used to.

I redid my entire rig last weekend and adjusted VTA and VTF specifically for this recording, so it wasn't setup.

We played a lot of music last night and everything else sounded ravishing (a Bach cantata on authentic instruments, Ella singing Cole Porter, a Beethoven Piano Concerto that literally brought me to tears, then the Mahler, then Louis Armstrong's 'St. James Infirmary' and 'I ain't got nobody' on the Classic 45rpm reissue as a nightcap). The Mahler just pushed my system close to its limits. It would have pushed a 901 or Jubilee well past theirs.

I am wondering if you know of any surefire path to nail sibilance, IGD and tracking without spending a massive amount of money.

Now I here that Doug found his arm can pass the IGD trick.
Must be Doug's alignment skill, yes :-)

Nope. FWIW, here's my experience...

My Shelter 901 suffered unacceptable IGD and nothing I did helped. Not multiple alignments. Not even changing from an $800 OL Silver to a $4K TriPlanar.

My first change that profoundly reduced IGD was switching to a ZYX Airy 2. The Airy 3 was better, and two higher models (Atmos and UNIverse) produce no IGD that I can hear on nearly any record (assuming the rest of the system is up to snuff).

ZYX's former US distributor, Sorasound, is selling off their remaining stock at deep discounts. An Airy 3 is now just $1895 (I paid $800 more for mine). The Atmos is just $2495, a huge bargain for a cartridge that comes close to the top class. An Airy 3 or (especially) Atmos would address your IGD and sibilance problems (to the extent any cartridge can). They'd also provide a major performance boost vs. your existing cartridges. An Atmos would be a stupendous upgrade, too much cartridge for your rig at the normal price. I only recommend it because of the sale. (A UNIverse would be overkill in your system and irresponsible of me to recommend, even at a discounted price.)

Lest anyone think I'm pandering to ZYX, I'll add that Dynavector XV-1S, Lyra Titan i and Transfiguration Orpheus also have no IGD problems in my system, and they all rival the Atmos in playback quality. But I don't think they're available at Sorasound's fire sale prices. I'm pandering to value.

Upgrading the drive of your TT should also help with HF distortion and will reduce distortion generally. Short wavelengths (high frequencies) are very vulnerable to distortions in the time domain, which is what TT speed control is about. Consider the SDS or some controller if you don't already have.

Just to clarify Audiofeil's post about my post:

A. He's a dealer with a financial interest. Nothing wrong with that, but he should include a disclaimer when posting opinions about the superiority of his products vs. those of competitors.

B. There may be 2 (or 1, or 50, or 0) clearer and less congested cartridges. I can only speak about the ones I've heard, obviously. If the UNIverse is only #3, maybe I should move up. Are #1 or #2 available for < $4K?

Axel,

ZYX does use a micro-ridge stylus, and its ridges have the smallest contact radii of any stylus I know. (Audiofeil, please correct me if I'm wrong!) IMO this is a direct reason for its ability to trace smaller groove modulations.

If a stylus is physically larger than the curve it's trying to follow, it will contact only the two tops and never reach the bottom - producing a sort of clipping distortion. The finer the stylus, the higher the frequency it can trace accurately.

The finest styli of all are the cutting styli that make records in the first place. In theory we should be using them for playback too, though I wouldn't bet much on the lifespan of our records if we tried. ;-)

ZYX quotes seperate figures for lateral (15cu) and vertical (12cu) compliance. Whether those are at 100Hz or 10Hz I've never seen in any literature, but I understand what you're saying. (Of course for tracking sibilants, the compliance at 10kHz would be even more interesting!)

Bill,

If those other carts aren't in your line then why not share your experience for the OP's benefit? Surely you must have learned something useful in all those centuries...

Thanks for the youth compliment by the way.
Boomer disclaimer

Mmakshak,

I agree with your last two sentences. Unfortunately, your other points have been already addressed by Goatwuss.

Goatwuss,
I'd be astonished if any Rega TT played these difficult tracks with real clarity. A P1 certainly won't, so that trip was a waste of time. I expect you know that. :-(

Sadly, there are few dealers left willing to support a commitment to high end analog reproduction. There's too little market for it. People want convenience in their music, not quality. If I listened to singers who can't hit a note (like AK for example) I'd opt for convenience too. There's something to be said for the ability to change tracks quickly! ;-)

The more causes you eliminate, the more likely it becomes that TT speed instability is contributing to the problem. A cartridge change may help. So might a tonearm or phono stage change. But you're becoming so sensitized that I doubt you'll lick this to a degree you'll find satisfactory without improvements in that critical area.

Agreed. Stylus contact radius is a factor in meeting challenges like this.

You can't accurately trace short wavelength, high amplitude modulations with a stylus that's fatter than the modulations themselves. You also can't do fast laps around the Nurburgring in a tractor-trailer, at least not without whacking some of the pylons and carving up the grass.

We know its not a bad LP. Goatwuss has stated he gets similar distortions on many LP's. This one is just the example he chose.

If you have the entry level version JMW then I believe it lacks the fluid damping well that comes on higher models.

IME with the Graham 2.2, damping of the bearing is required with some (most) cartridges to avoid distortions of this kind. The JMW (another unstabilized, undamped unipivot) may be similar. The fact that VPI includes damping capabilities on their higher models may confirm this notion.

Just another thought to throw in the mix...

Sibilants, according to one source, is (treble) information out-side of the time envelope.

First, lets get our terms straight. "Sibilants" is the plural of "sibilant", which is a word for the sound shared by the letters "s", "sh", "z" and "zh" (in English), plus a few others in other languages. Producing or reproducing sibilants without stridency, distortion or harshness may be challenging, but sibilants don't necessarily include any of those problems. They're just a type of vocal sound.

"Sibilance" is an adjective meaning, "sounding like a sibilant". It too does not necessarily imply unpleasantness, though it’s more often used so. Your source probably meant to write, “Sibilance [distortion] is treble information out-side of the time domain.”

With that I mostly agree. Time-domain errors are the major cause of distorted or harsh sibilants. (Another is exaggerated amplitudes, which leads to stridency.) We’ve discussed speed control of the turntable, slewing distortions in the phono stage (or anywhere in the amplification chain), cartridge overhang, zenith angle and VTA/SRA. All these directly affect reproduction of waveforms in the time-domain.

I also agree that capacitors (in the crossover or elsewhere) affect time-coherency. Anyone who’s done a cap upgrade has probably heard this. It’s impossible for capacitance to occur without a time delay, but the better the cap the less delay there’ll be. Best of all is to eliminate capacitors completely, when feasible.

Another source of high frequency time-domain errors is the insulation of wires in the signal path. If the insulator in contact with a conductor has a significant dielectric quotient it can act as a micro-capacitor for the frequencies it’s in contact with. Now in any electrical conductor it’s the high frequencies (like sibilants in the 8-10kHz region) that travel at or near the surface, ie, near the insulator. Since teflon and other typical insulators are poor conductors (obviously), they induce spurious time delays in those frequencies.

The cure is to use wire that does not put materials in contact with the conductor. Interconnects and speaker cables with an air dielectric (or, theoretically, a vacuum) produce audibly clearer, less distorted highs. (If that sounds like a plug for Nordost it is, because it works.)

The speed and linearity of the tweeter also influences sibilant reproduction. My old B&W Nautilus aluminum tweeters were unforgiving. Everything else in the system had to be perfect or they could split your ears. The new diamond tweeters are faster, more linear and more revealing, but paradoxically more forgiving. They distort so much less that distortions coming to them from elsewhere in the signal path are not exaggerated. A good ribbon tweeter is even better.

The opposite approach, soft dome fabric tweeters, tames sibilants by smoothing each waveform and reducing amplitudes. This is a different kind of time domain distortion, similar to what Koetsu does in cartridges, but if it’s well done it can produce kinder, gentler highs. Not my cup of tea, because at the end of the day it conceals musical information, but it’s an approach used by many very popular speakers.

Search for stylus types on www.cartridgedb.com. There are many cartridges to choose from.

You probably appreciate this already, but clearly there's no such thing as a "hot" stylus, at least if that's meant to imply "too hot". That's a logical impossibility.

EVERY playback stylus is less "hot" (sharp) than ANY cutting stylus. If reproducing the path of the sharper cutting stylus is the goal then every playback stylus is too dull by definition. The cartridge, setup and/or other components may be too hot, but never the stylus.

In addition to shimming to achieve more normal VTA/SRA, try increasing VTF a tad. That can sometimes tame a "hot" sounding setup.

I doubt that a tonearm's tracking ability has much effect on the distortion levels of sibilants.

Much more important is the way a particular tonearm/cartridge COMBINATION handles stray mechanical energies. (This is what Raul and others mean when they emphazize the importance of arm/cart matching. It's not resonance behavior at 8-11 Hz, it's how the combination handles loose energies at 100, 1,000 or 10KHz, and everywhere in between.)

Every cartridge allows some mix of energies at various frequencies to escape from the generator as mechanical energy, rather than converting them to an electrical signal (which is what it's supposed to do). Those stray energies may reflect off the headshell back into the cartridge, or travel into the headshell and end up lord knows where, maybe reflected back into the cart or elsewhere.

Any stray energies that get back into the cartridge will distort the sound. They're at similar frequencies to the new signal but they're time-delayed, out of phase and probably distorted in waveform shape and amplitude themselves.

At lower frequencies this sounds like mud. At higher frequencies it sounds like fingernails on slate.

***

I don't actually own that AK record, but if someone wanted to mail me one, help me find the software and tell me how to get the signal to a desktop PC that's three rooms away, I'd be happy to post a recording. Might be fun (or embarassing, who knows!).

Jonathon,

Thanks for the clarifications and interior details. Very helpful in understanding why it's so difficult to tame problems like the OP's sibilance distortions. The Olympos, Titan and Helikon don't have this problem (on any arm I've heard them on), so we know the problem is solvable. The OP's experiment with an inexpensive MM having a fine stylus proves that's part of a (complex) solution. The fact that it sounds a bit dull and slow in other respects merely demonstates one way an inexpensive MM is not an Olympos, Titan or Helikon!

A minor clarification or two (nothing you don't know, better than I):

Most cartridges are capable of converting the movements of the coils into electrical energy - it isn't an "either/or" choice between electrical or mechanical energy.

1. All cartridges are capable of converting (some) movements of the coils into electrical energy - otherwise we wouldn't use them! ;-)

2. It actually is an either/or choice between electrical or mechanical energy. The energy created by any given stylus deflection cannot be lost. It can only be converted to other forms of energy, or not. Phono cartridges aren't capable of converting that mechanical energy to (say) chemical or nuclear energy, so it's pretty much a zero-sum game between electrical and mechanical (and heat, which from a molecular perspective might still be considered mechanical energy).

You know all that, so if I misunderstood that sentence please feel free to slap me awake.