Slight Hardness on LP's
You might want to try this Schitt LOKI tone control. It should tame down those live records that you find bothersome! https://www.schiit.com/products/loki https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94Nr6JR_Whg |
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Before purchasing anything I would revisit the cartridge setup. Specifically from your observation of a “hardness” or unnatural sound in clapping ect. if the general alignment is correct I would focus on reevaluating your SRA. Last evening I remounted my Koetsu Rosewood Signature Platinum. After a careful alignment the final adjustment was to finalize the SRA. Initially I had a lack of naturalness in cymbals and clapping with an unsettling hardness. After many slight adjustments (less than 0.5mm) both up and down, on the tonearm base I found the natural presentation I knew was possible. This is a slow and painstaking undertaking. Same song, same passage to compare, multiple tries. You could think you are correct but go one more adjustment. You may be going back or find additional improvement. You may have to go back to original setting and go the other way. Listen to cymbals for naturalness of attack and shimmer. If they are correct the rest will follow. This is an investment of time that should be explored before an investment of money. Also be sure your stylus is clean. |
I’d avoid using a tone control. It seems like a band aid. Elizabeth’s suggestion of hardwood blocks may help. Support materials are critical. You could also try different platter mats. Cork or leather may help. Try out various home made testers to get a feel for the changes. Try adjusting VTA. The Zu speakers can be a bit hot. If toed in, try moving them slightly out. |
Living in a remote location where trying gear is expensive and time consuming the last thing you want to do is throw ideas on the wall to see what sticks. Which is all you can do here. Only advice worth getting is do everything you can with what you have right now. First, to figure out what sounds like what. To narrow down as much as you can to the culprit. Try different speaker locations. Try different interconnects. Or if you don't have spares try moving around the ones you do have to see how they sound with different components. Try tweaking your turntable, cartridge, shelf, footers, etc, etc. Try listening to a lot of different recordings. They are not all the same you know, and you did say "some" LPs. Then you might try a few things that are cheap and easy and known to work. A sand bed under the turntable, cost next to nothing to try. Piece of sorbothane or other squishy material under the turntable or other component. Not offered as solutions, just some stuff to get you going. The more of this you do, even if you don't solve your problem you definitely will learn a lot more about your system and what affects the sound and what does not. So at least then if you still want to change or upgrade something you won't be totally in the dark any more. |
If the only thing you don't like about your system is that on some live recordings the audience clapping doesn't sound natural, then you have a great system and I would advise that you don't change a thing. BTW, for many rock and pop albums the clapping is not taped at the recording venue. It is added in the recording studio from sound effects tapes. |
I have to agree with onhwy61. |
Some good ideas above to try before buying gear. Unclear if this is a relatively new to you system or not? Also what acoustic treatments do you use? Are you all copper in the interconnects and speaker cables? Is it your ears changing -as in "the system was sounding fine for months/years until recently"? Or it has always sounded this way (harsh) sometimes and now it is time to do something about it? |
Through the years I have found the sound quality of LPs to vary radically especially on rock music. Back in the day, I had reportedly good quality turntables ... both belt drives with separate highend arms and a couple of Denon AC direct drives, one with a Magnapan arm, a Dynovector Ruby moving coil cartridge and a separate phono amp for that cartidge and some disks just sounded terrible. (For a long time I had 3 turntables. I am down to 2 now.) If most of your LPs sound edgy I suspect something is a miss in your setup. Some cartridge / arm combinations just don't work. A slightly worn stylus creates problems. The tiniest bit of lent causes midtracking. Static is an issue. With loud music and subs lack of enough turntable isolation can cause mistracking. 60 cycle hum can be a problem. With a great recording, a great pressing, a perfect setup and superior LP components, an LP can sound wonderful. In the end, however, nothing can fix a bad recording or a badly pressed LP. While the lowly CD format has it's own issues, for me, it is much easier to live with in the long run. |
Hi, David. As you have already been suggested by some fans, it is very important to register the LP and if we talk about pop-rock music, unfortunately, recordings are valid especially in the live versions are few. If you can detect with sound level meter and disk test would be ideal, if you can't, then you could try with recordings of some master discs. In Italy there is the "Fone 'Record", which makes excellent recordings with analog tube system, you can go to their site and check. Greetings from Italy Davide Giovanetti ... |
I also agree with @onhwy61. I suspect your source material. The stage microphones are designed to reject sound that doesn't originate directly in front of the mic and especially that which originates from the rear of the mic such as applause. Also proximity to the mic makes a big difference. The farther away you are from the mic the less sensitive it becomes and the less realistic the sounds that they pick up become. I am also pretty sure that separate mics are used to record the audience and have their own dedicated channels on the mixing console and even though these mics are aimed at the audience they will still be along distance from them and will still suffer from the proximity affect. Thirdly with with most of the applause being on dedicated channels on the recording I highly doubt that either the recoding engineer, the mixing engineer or the mastering engineer are spending much if any time making sure that these tracks sound realistic Lastly the frequency range of hands clapping is going to be in the same range of the upper harmonics of a vocalists, your melody instruments and the fundamental and harmonic range of the cymbals especially the hi-hat, so any adjustment you make that affects the tone of the applause will also affect the tone of everything else in that frequency range. |
Thanks, everyone, I have done all of the, above, except, the wood!!My main question is, should I go with my solid-state phono stage??, that has given me a deep bass!!, but a bit bright, overall, not all LP's, Shall I save my phono stage, which I like, and go for a Tube Pre Amp, will I lose bass slam?? coming from the phono stage??Friends can you help??Many ThanksDavid |
You do not need to buy anything. drrsutliff is correct. The vertical tracking angle on your arm is not set correctly. Go to soundSmith.com they describe exactly what you're referring to and how to solve it-that is by changing the VTA. bent |
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