Groove damage from spherical styli

Mescalito said:
Not a problem I have anymore, Nando. I'm giving my t/t the elbow just as soon as I get around to finishing the digitisation of my LPs. As I said in an earlier post, I will not regret the passing of vinyl from my life one little bit.

And sorry for not picking upon your humour mate.

Chris
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Chris, how many albums are you digitising?
 
RobHolt said:
I reject the argument you make because it is patently wrong.

If your phono stages 'spec and measure identically' irrespective of the additional PSU stiffness, to use your own words, this simply proves that they are no more 'load rejecting' than any other competent phono stage, of which there are very many.

All you are describing is the requirement for stable power supply rails.
This is good practice for any circuit and is neither revolutionary nor original.

... and it has naff-all to do with correctly loading a MM cartridge!
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Struth Rob we had already got past that point I was refering to your comments about power supplies made no difference to the quality of the unit, nothing to do with loading. But yes the power supply does have something to do with load rejection characteristic, it changes and improves with bigger supplies, but the main reason is how the circuit uses that, and the circuit design.

You are infatuated in looking at loading in isolation, or just in conjunction with the cartridge. If you want to understand what is going on you have to look at both sides of the interface, surely you can see the logic in that.

Once again I can prove to anyone who has the time that 1/ loading influence is also subject to the phono stage you use 2/ Power supply size has an enormous influence over the behaviour and musical performance of a phono stage.
 
RobHolt said:
Chris, how many albums are you digitising?
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Hi, Rob,

Of the 1100 or so LPs in my collection, I have manged to either source .flac downloads or CDs for about 850 of them.

I always compare the digiyal version to the analog version to make sure that the boy-re-masters haven't "improved" the sound too much before adding the files to my NAS.

I am about half way through the remainder, and I basically do the conversions as and when the fancy takes me,

I use an LP12/Ittok/Troika feeding a Linto which in turn feeds into my Audigy soundcard. I digitise at 24/96.

I am generally very pleased with the results.

Regards,

Chris
 
Richard Dunn said:
Struth Rob we had already got past that point I was refering to your comments about power supplies made no difference to the quality of the unit, nothing to do with loading. But yes the power supply does have something to do with load rejection characteristic, it changes and improves with bigger supplies, but the main reason is how the circuit uses that, and the circuit design.

You are infatuated in looking at loading in isolation, or just in conjunction with the cartridge. If you want to understand what is going on you have to look at both sides of the interface, surely you can see the logic in that.

Once again I can prove to anyone who has the time that 1/ loading influence is also subject to the phono stage you use 2/ Power supply size has an enormous influence over the behaviour and musical performance of a phono stage.
Click to expand...

But we are in the world of the subjective with this, since it cannot me measured, as you rightly state.
Many other designers will refute your claims, and claim that they can prove it.

My own testing with substituting larger and larger VA transformers is that they make no (subjective) difference when you go beyond something adequate for the job, which is about 20VA typically with clean regulation.
Different kettle of fish with power amplifiers where you have a mix of high and low current circuits potentially sharring rails. Not so with a phono stage using a couple of op amps.
 
I think Richard means you have to look one component beyond the input cap and resistors in the circuit to see what else is changing, and that you can't just considering that resistive and capacitive input loading effects stop at far end of these components.

and he's right.
 
I've got spherical and super-fine line versions of the same cartridge.

From initial listening tests, I prefer the sound of the spherical - which sounds a little bit more open, a little bit more life, better metalic sheen and splash to cymbals.

There's a moulding fault in one of the records I've used to compare these cartridges. The super-fine line sailed though it without me realising it was there. The spherical jumped all over the place at this bit.
 
sq225917 said:
I think Richard means you have to look one component beyond the input cap and resistors in the circuit to see what else is changing, and that you can't just considering that resistive and capacitive input loading effects stop at far end of these components.

and he's right.
Click to expand...

In terms of loading, the cartridge sees the lumped load effects and will react with them.
It matters not that, for example the input capacitance is determined by the specific loading capacitor combined with the capacitance of the circuit that follows. The cartridge sees the combined load. Just the same as it sees the arm cable, connectors etc.

Richards point here is concerned with up-sizing the power transformer hugely, so several hundred VA on a phono stage. It won't have any effect on cartridge loading. His argument has moved onto different turf - that of the subjective benefits this is claimed to bring to the performance of the stage. Different argument entirely.
 

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