Dreamth, I think your tonearm is a real accomplishment. How many hours did you spend on it, do you think? I only mention this because in DIY, that is what is normally traded: personal time VS actual cash used. This is a good trade, but many people (at least the thousands that I associate with) make their money easier, and then are happier to pay someone else for their time and investment in getting a superior tone arm or whatever.
My favorite tone arm, in my experience, was the Breuer, made in Lucerne Switzerland.
Herr Breuer gave me an arm for introducing it in the USA, but unfortunately, it was lost in a firestorm (we have them often in California). I have never been able to replace it, because like most of us, I can't afford to replace it. I have something used, on a Linn turntable. It is not as good as the Breuer, but it is OK enough. I bought it with the Linn, used. (I can't afford a new Linn either)
What I like about vinyl, so far, has not been duplicated by home based digital, to the best of my experience. If many here are happy with their digital, well, good listening to them, but I would not digitize my records and expect the same listening quality.
My favorite tone arm, in my experience, was the Breuer, made in Lucerne Switzerland.
Herr Breuer gave me an arm for introducing it in the USA, but unfortunately, it was lost in a firestorm (we have them often in California). I have never been able to replace it, because like most of us, I can't afford to replace it. I have something used, on a Linn turntable. It is not as good as the Breuer, but it is OK enough. I bought it with the Linn, used. (I can't afford a new Linn either)
What I like about vinyl, so far, has not been duplicated by home based digital, to the best of my experience. If many here are happy with their digital, well, good listening to them, but I would not digitize my records and expect the same listening quality.
He's probably done that already for many times .Being the owner of a musical content brings money in.
No can do: the mothers are disposed of after a finite number of pressing. Even if there were a rogue one left, we still have the problem of reading a "negative image". I think I've seen cartridges designed just for this (Stanton?), but I'm very pessimistic about their quality.
No, Doug Sax was in charge.
Actually, they used the backup tape to produce the CD versions.
It took me 2 days to build it because i didn't know exactly how to do it...I didn't have the original materials so i improvised destroying a fishing rod.I still have material for one more tonearm like that.I don't make money easier , i was never good at it...i just have a ton of materials to work with and no personal life...
I had two very good turntables to compare and i was amazed by the idea first and by the results later. Any cartridge start to sound better with that system.
I wanted first to build a tonearm based on Garrard zero 100 idea as i already have one and i liked the idea...Just that in real life it's not that great as advertised.The motor used in that model is the real achievement and actually Garrard still have the best way of controlling platter speed to this day, applied in the Garrard 301 .I applied it myself to a Dual 1219 as it is also used in Formula one cars to slow down at higher speeds where mechanical contact is too dangerous.
I would have also built the Rabco SL-8e:
Rabco SL-8E SL-8: Tangential Tonearm, Servo Control, Parallel Tracking, Functioning, Drawings, Construction, Manual.
But too complicated for me.
There's a whole subject here on these types of tonearms:
Angling for 90° - tangential pivot tonearms
If you have the time and the energy try to build the on water sliding system .It's worth both the money and time.What i couldn't really do was to find very fine long litz wire as you need more of them in parallel and the SNR wasn't great enough, but the results were unexpectedly good at tracking.
I had three shure m75 d(i still have 2 of them) used on dual 1219 and a shure v15type 3 used on dual 701.When i moved the m75d on 701 the sound of 75 d was instantly better because the dual 701 tonearm is better too.
When tried them all on the water sliding tonearm i was simply speechless.The water is the best damping system for such an application.
As to listening vinyl recordings on digital i think it's not just a good way to preserve the vinyl, but the most modern digital recording sound cards can replicate perfectly the vinyl sound if you can deal with the preamp output levels to be less than the max ADC input levels which often means compression .Those Dynavectors don't use electromagnetic shunts for nothing.It gives you the opportunity to remove electronic soft compression. from your amplification system.If you don't have it there, you need eddy rings in your speaker so you can't get away without using compressors or slew rate killers.
Many people used the VK-7 or dbx gate noise made for tape to process the vinyl and apparently the results are quite good. Scott has it's own digital version.There's not a single way apparently.
Most professionals are using compressors or noise gates before introducing any instrument or source into a sound card so they might do the same with a phono preamp as a source.
Sorry for my dumbness, but I'm still trying to work out how that operates.
Does the arm pivot on the water thingy?
Doug Sax and I discussed CD when it first appeared. It was a compromise then, just like it is a compromise today. Direct disc can be 'magic'. Magnetic recorders always reduce the quality, at least a little. I learned this when I worked at Ampex, 50 years ago. The older guys told me that direct disc recording was the best. Years later, Doug Sax and others proved it to me.
Has anyone else tried shielding their VLS IC's....DSP IC, DAC IC etc. These high speed, high density IC's produce a lot of EMI/RFI. Not enough to escape the steel chassis but within a mixed signal pcb, I thought I would shield them.
I put some 3M Scotch copper foil tape with glue on one side on the tops of these noise generators. Then a stiff short grounding wire soldered to the shield.
Listen. What do you think ?
THx-RNMarsh
I put some 3M Scotch copper foil tape with glue on one side on the tops of these noise generators. Then a stiff short grounding wire soldered to the shield.
Listen. What do you think ?
THx-RNMarsh
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Thorens was the original system upon which Linn based their designs...Thorens is still cheap and good enough.
Bang & Olufsen refined the Thorens system, but they used very atypical tonearms and cartridges...so you can't use a different cartridge on a B&O.I have one and it's a piece of fine engineering.
Still...you have lots of Lenco L78 in the USA too.They have the best idle drive system in my opinion.
I personally found some direct drives to be better than any other design, but i won't fight the whole audiophile world now on that...If you ever agree to accept personal messages i can tell you a very fine model that you can find in the USA(Unfortunately almost none in the EU) and is still very cheap.
I used snail copper foil tape (gardening irem) on my dacs , connected it to ground used for both 78l05 regulators on top of it and for the dac itself.It actually saved one of my dacs the other day as i soldered the iout to v- by accident , the foil got hot dissipating the heat so i had the time to turn it off.
Attachments
The tonearm has a low friction roller underneath, rubbing against the bike spoke that's a bit angled.There's some friction, but not too much.The vinyl is guiding the tonearm.
I watched your discourse on youtube where you said about 1% h3 in tape measured in your years at Ampex...Most modern tapeheads and tapes can get way lower than that.Even a pioneer cassette deck could get 0.6% thd in the late 90's , early 2000's just that the tape techniques were abandoned.
Today you can make tape sound very good and basically way more pleasant than any digital source.
I used to play my cd player through my 3 head pioneer cassette deck and the sound was simply awesome.
I can't agree with any of you about today's techniques of recording a CD.I have cd's recorded in between 1985...2017 and no matter the production year you can always find a very good cd recording.
The 2012...2017 are simply very good.The recording techniques and associated software had a huge leap in the last 10 years plus it needed for a new generation of sound engineers to be formed in this digital era.
My poor English ? The mother (that is the same as the final records (positive), but in metal) is used to mold the stampers (negative) and that those stampers that are used to mold the final vinyls, and have to be changed.
@dreamth
In my opinion, in exchange for trying to tolerate ýour character, please show us what you got best. But must be 100% invented, designed and made by you.
Use PM if you feel necessary.
Else please lower either your silly activist tone, or your expectations from us.
Your accusations on some of us might be true, God knows we all do mistakes: However your standing today is honestly not good at all, at least on physics topics - to start with, and therefore I have my serious doubts that you can actually be technically qualified as the judge for our work, not even (=especially not) partially.
All best wishes.
In my opinion, in exchange for trying to tolerate ýour character, please show us what you got best. But must be 100% invented, designed and made by you.
Use PM if you feel necessary.
Else please lower either your silly activist tone, or your expectations from us.
Your accusations on some of us might be true, God knows we all do mistakes: However your standing today is honestly not good at all, at least on physics topics - to start with, and therefore I have my serious doubts that you can actually be technically qualified as the judge for our work, not even (=especially not) partially.
All best wishes.
In terms of noise on the mother/DMM there will be a surface roughness that will be the limit of noise. After all you have machined the groove at some speed. Apparently Teldec did measure this for the DMM process but I have not seen the reference. Safe to say its lower than tape noise and MUCH higher than digital zero.
Aside: I have a hatred of noise gates in recordings used bluntly. You are listening to something and you hear the jump in the noise floor before an instrument starts then drop again as it finishes. This grates with me and I would rather the noise stayed constant level so my brain could get on with blocking it out.
Aside: I have a hatred of noise gates in recordings used bluntly. You are listening to something and you hear the jump in the noise floor before an instrument starts then drop again as it finishes. This grates with me and I would rather the noise stayed constant level so my brain could get on with blocking it out.
Seen this many times under your signature, John. But here, you are, with all the respect you deserve, totally wrong. It is just you like the various distortions + blur, noise, losses of treble etc introduced by the vinyls. And the fact that you are used to.
From the master tape (analog or digital) in the studio to the vinyl, a lot of processing are at work in the mastering room. Tonal corrections to compensate the usual losses of the vinyl, multi ways limiters, to avoid any crossing of the groove etc.
I told-it several time, but each time I listened to the first vinyl pressing of one of my masters, I was just able to cry. While, honestly, I hardly can make, with a good enough DAC, any difference between the master and the CD if no correction were applied in between. We made a lot of listening comparison seances with a lot of people, at the beginning of digital, before to decide to move on this technology. With an average cheap DAC, the difference is subtle, no change in the response curve, just less "separation", like a perfectly similar photography, just a lille less "sharp", one hundred time less than the mashed potatoes of the vinyl.
By the way, be honest, digitize one of your preferred vinyls with a good ADC in 24/96 and compare.
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