Tracking Troubles--Upgrade or Setup?

The table is not a huge factor in tracking. Arm and cartridge are both critical, as are setup, stylus cleaning and LP cleaning. You've done the setup, but are your stylus and vinyl cleaning up to par?

Of course we haven't actually established that you're hearing physical mistracking, though you certainly could be.

One equally likely alternative is phono stage overload and distortion. This can and does sound EXACTLY like mistracking in all but the highest resolution systems. Try borrowing another phono stage. If the "mistracking" goes away, you'll have identified the true culprit.

Another possibility is pre-damaged vinyl, and even new vinyl is not immune from suspicion. I recently helped a fellow 'phile who also thought his rig (much costlier than yours) was mistracking. Turns out the brand new LP's he was having trouble with were just flawed vinyl. No rig in the world would have played them without extraneous noise.

Before launching into new components which may or may not help, why not listen to some suspect LP's on other people's rigs? Bring your phono stage along and see if that performs okay with another rig. Borrow a friend's phono stage and try it in your sytem. Do a little more investigation before spraying money around.

It could indeed be clipping. I've heard it with quite a few phono stages and I know Rushton has too.

Just as with a power amp or any amp, dynamic peaks cause phono stage problems if the power supplies can't provide enough instantaneous current to meet peak demand. What happens then is that the musical signal starts modulating the incoming power, which results in distorted waveforms until the music settles down and the power supplies can catch up again.

It gets worse on inner grooves because their shorter wavelengths are more difficult for a stylus to track cleanly and also because tracking angle error is increasing. The separate but very closely related waveforms that result can be difficult for a phono stage to keep separate and reproduce cleanly. Once it starts smearing slightly separate sounds into one, the sonics go into "fingernails on chalkboard" mode pretty quickly. ;-)

Here's a simple test for vinyl damage: "play" the suspect passage by rotating your platter BY HAND at very slow rpm, like 4-5rpm or so. The music should sound like a murky, LF growl. If there's any damage in the grooves it will usually sound like sharper, quicker clicks, much crisper and higher in frequency than the music. If you hear that and cleaning doesn't remove it, the LP's damaged.

Chashmal,

When "mistracking noises" ("MN's") are heard then actual mistracking, vinyl damage and phono stage clipping are all possible culprits. The next step is to diagnose.

If MN's occur on multiple LP's, both old and new, we can probably eliminate vinyl damage.

Next question, are the MN's in one channel or both?

If the MN's are all (or nearly all) in one channel, you probably have mistracking. Try tweaking antiskating. Increase AS to eliminate R channel MN's, reduce AS to eliminate L channel MN's. If this doesn't affect the MN's, keep reading...

If the MN's occur about equally in both channels or if AS adjustment has no effect, try increasing VTF in .1g increments (until you reach the maximum VTF for your cartridge). If this materially reduces/eliminates the MN's you've found your (a) culprit. Try playing your rig just barely above the VTF needed to prevent MN's. Many cartridges perform very well at that point, which balances the downforce needed to prevent vinyl damage against freedom from unnecessary or excessive cantilever damping.

If none of the above eliminates the MN's, try a different (better) phono stage. Inexpensive phono stages often clip high amplitude signals at certain problematic (to them) frequencies. This can sound so close to mistracking that even expert ears can't tell the difference.

There's also the slow play test to be doubly sure you're not hearing damaged vinyl. "Play" a suspect passage by spinning the platter by hand at VERY SLOWWWWWWWWWW RPM's. The music should sound like a low frequency growl. Any vinyl damage will be much quicker and higher in pitch, very noticeably different from the music. If you hear that the record is to blame and there's no cure. New vinyl can have flaws that this test will reveal, as can old, damaged vinyl.

Oh, you wanted the short answer? Yes, try more VTF! Why not?

:-)

Chashmal,

First, let's learn some jargon so we can confuse each other in the same language.

"VTF" = Vertical Tracking Force, sometimes referred to as just "tracking force" or "downforce". It's what you meant by "tracking weight" (though scientists/engineers would correct your use of the word "weight", since that's technically inaccurate).

Whoever told you Rega doesn't "honor" antiskating is clueless. Every Rega tonearm includes an antiskating adjustment. Your Rega manual, using British terminology, calls it a "bias" or "anti-bias" adjustment but it's the same thing. On an RB-300 it's adjusted by sliding a small button along a slot in an extension of the arm base (beneath the arm tube when the tube's in the arm rest). Toward the base increases antiskate, away from the arm base reduces it. Try various settings, from none to maximum.

Palasr added some valuable tips, but since much of this is new you do need to build a knowledge base or pay someone to do it for you. Most on this (and other) forums prefer/enjoy doing it themselves, and certainly that is the path to maximize performance. Vinyl playback is not plug and play, as you see. Neither is it set and forget. The perfomance of cartridges (especially) changes over time, with the weather, etc. If you rely on someone else to set up you're at the mercy of their schedule, not to mention their prices.

You can learn all this by reading and doing. There are many good sources online, including the FAQ's at Vinyl Asylum, Vinyl Engine, searching this board, etc. For an organized presentation in one place, consider Michael Fremer's DVD on vinyl setup, available from many online retailers. Well worth the time and investment if hours of online reading isn't your thing.