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CONICAL LOVE -Who loves running a conical needle on a cartridge most don't???
- Thread starter illinoisteve
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flavio81
Turntable technician
I have only read glowing descriptions of the VN35G needle.
I hope to get one someday.
tubelectron
Super Member
@flavio : I also have an AT-VM540ML cartridge, so I understand that you changed the original ML stylus (VMN40xML for a Conical one on yours = the VMN10xCB, right ?
AT-VMN10xCB
Stylus Audio Technica VMN 10x CB
I'm tempted to go that route too, expecting a tad less brilliance in the highs : would it be effective or illusory ?
Thanks to let me know !
T
flavio81
Turntable technician
Correct, you just replace the stylus assembly.
Although the complete VM-510CB cartridge costs just a bit more than the stylus, so you might want to buy a complete one to have 2 cartridges for the future.
I'm tempted to go that route too, expecting a tad less brilliance in the highs : would it be effective or illusory ?
Thanks to let me know !
T
Illusory, the brilliance is still there, the frequency response is almost the same.
To tame it you should reduce cable capacitance or add loading (i.e. by inserting a resistor in parallel with the rca terminals). Or use a preamp with adjustable MM loading.
tubelectron
Super Member
flavio81
Turntable technician
Hi Sleiven
My observations:
1. We should take care with the "fine print", in other words "the devil is in the detail". As i mentioned in the past, it is all dependent on the recorded velocity. This graph will depend on the recorded velocity and the groove radius. As you see there, the graph is for 10 cm/s. This is a rather high velocity for treble frequencies. And, to keep things in focus, 10cm/s at 20KHz would require 1281g of acceleration.
2. 10% of complete 2nd harmonic distortion is not believed to be audible at all, in fact 10% 2nd-hd is the typical "limit" figure used to calculate the power of a valve amp for this reason.
Let's consier 10% 2nd-HD as our "limit", this means no more than 5KHz @ 10cm/Sec if it's going to be traced by a 18um conical (Also, please note that the conicals often discussed here, like most Audio-Technica conicals, are 15um, not 18um -- but let's assume 18um for now)
It is good to take a look at Jim Lesurf (hifi-news) pages, they have examples of the real recorded velocities on real records. I'm going to copy paste here:
" Bach’s Trio Sonata in C, BWV1037 as performed by Jaap Schroder, Stanley Richie and others on a half-speed mastered LP produced by Reference Recordings around ten years ago."
As you can see, 10cm/sec at 5KHz or more is never reached, there is no such combination (= acceleration) on the record.
A 18um conical would trace this with as low a distortion as any other stylus tip shape.
Let's see a more "challenging" record, "Mobile Fidelity LP of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon"
10cm/sec (or more) at 5KHz (or more) is achieved, but less than 0.5% of the playing time of the whole record is at these conditions.
The higher velocities are often at the beginning of the record, for obvious reasons. The graph you cited was calculated for the middle of the record.
Thus, either our "limit " is never reached, or it is reached but only at 0.5% of the playing time.
All in all, this shouldn't be any news for cutting engineers -- it is well known that records are almost always mastered to be traced(read) by a conical stylus.
Of course, part of me wishes they would cut records at much higher velocities, to be traced by finer shapes, to better take advantage of the medium. But honestly most (95%?) of the records out there will be traced cleanly by a conical.
Even a recent pair of records I bought from a very interesting musician ("Slugbug"), analog recorded, mastered by him, cut by Paul Gold in NYC straight from the analog tapes... those records are rather loud or a bit louder than average on my turntables. At the beginning I played it with one of the Microlines (AT-VM540ML) and it sounded so good, but the surprise was that it also played cleanly with my 0.6mil conical cartridges here (i.e. VM-510CB, AT91R), right to the inner grooves. I was surprised, but I shouldn't be that surprised.
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Nice to see the charts , they look familiar
I do not have the source anymore.can you please provide it?
About distortion we can tolerate quote a lot and even more on music than single tones. But to tolerate 10% the frequency needs to be quite high so it goes beyond our my groups hearing range. just take a look at the HifiNews test at high frequency the distortion is terrible but no one complains…
At 1000hz the detection level is about 0.3%
I have had many years with tube amps an and measured them too , pushing above 1% reduced clarity and at 3% it does not sound good any more.
luckily vinyl still can sound good, like this one shown below , but I compared with A meagre conical as AT3600L ,,, it makes OK sound and music but the sibilants are there and it just give an unsatisfactory sound to me. Conicals are useful if you no not have the skills or desire to put in an effort to make proper alignment. Otherwise I do not see the point to buy conicals, A conical MC is even worse considering the cost vs quality of sound. They are cheaper and last longer than elliptical, but tha is it
I do not have the source anymore.can you please provide it?
About distortion we can tolerate quote a lot and even more on music than single tones. But to tolerate 10% the frequency needs to be quite high so it goes beyond our my groups hearing range. just take a look at the HifiNews test at high frequency the distortion is terrible but no one complains…
At 1000hz the detection level is about 0.3%
I have had many years with tube amps an and measured them too , pushing above 1% reduced clarity and at 3% it does not sound good any more.
luckily vinyl still can sound good, like this one shown below , but I compared with A meagre conical as AT3600L ,,, it makes OK sound and music but the sibilants are there and it just give an unsatisfactory sound to me. Conicals are useful if you no not have the skills or desire to put in an effort to make proper alignment. Otherwise I do not see the point to buy conicals, A conical MC is even worse considering the cost vs quality of sound. They are cheaper and last longer than elliptical, but tha is it
flavio81
Turntable technician
Take a look at "around the bend" and other related articles:
For 2nd harmonic? Would you please care to indicate what is the source for this figure?
Were they push-pull amps?
AT3600L is not a cartridge that I would like or use. I don't find it good. If you have sibilance problems with it, I believe you, but it is not a fault of the stylus tip shape per se. I don't like how the 3600L sounds either, it sounds rough to me.
With the conical cartridges i've cited, i have no sibilant/sibilance problems at all. In fact in general whenever i have had sibilance problems, it has either been due to dirty stylus, damaged tonearm bearings, or damaged record. Many people say "oh, i changed to a microline stylus and now i don't have sibilance problems with this record" -- yes, the reason was that you have a damaged record. The line contact stylus will read the undamaged part.
I'm sorry but I fail to understand how is this frequency response chart related to our conversation, perhaps you want me to take a look at the disotrtion graph?
For the distortion graph there,it is completely meaningless for practical purposes:
On a test record like the JVC TRS-1007, the velocity of the "0dB" signal at 1Khz is about 5 cm/s, this means velocity will be very high at 10KHz or 20KHz, that's why you get values like distortion (2nd Harmonic) being -20dB at 20KHz, like in the graphic. Those are unrealistic values when compared to real music.
No music has such a spectrum where the 20KHz or 10KHz level is the same as the 1KHz level. Real music spectrum is very different:
example 1, from Yamamoto/1971 book cited by Yosh
Example 2. probably pop music, this one from Rod Elliot of Elliott Sound Products: "an example of a frequency response curve, in this case taken from my Clio analyser. The source material was an FM radio tuner, and the program was set up to show the highest peaks over a 15 minute period."
So as you see for real music, once you get to 10Khz the signal is down 30dB or more compared to circa 100Hz where the most energy is concentrated. This is bread-and-butter knowledge for speaker designers, btw.
Thus, for real usage the distortion of a record played by something like the AT-OC9MLII will be far, far lower than what the graph shows, because the recorded level at 5KHz, 10KHz, 20KHz is much reduced in level, and we have seen how this 2nd/3rd HD disttortion is proportional to the recorded level.
I know that there is other forum where they rave and groove and spend lots of time analyzing such graphics, but such people are ignoring the finer details, thus they are having a shallow understanding of the complete replay process.
I mention again speaker designers, one of the hardest things to do is to design a competitive, successful high end loudspeaker. 2nd and 3rd Harmonic Distortion tests doesn't have too much value for them in general.
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Also, the distortion graph neglects other, available, useful sizes of conicals, like 17 um, 16 um, 15um, even a rare 12-13 um....
Charting 5 um or thinner is misleading. Nobody uses such a thin, conical stylus.
Moreover, what is the source, frequency and level of the test tone ? Which test record ?
Charts and tests can look good on paper, but, simultaneously, not indicate anything concerning sound quality...
Charting 5 um or thinner is misleading. Nobody uses such a thin, conical stylus.
Moreover, what is the source, frequency and level of the test tone ? Which test record ?
Charts and tests can look good on paper, but, simultaneously, not indicate anything concerning sound quality...
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par4ken
Member
The AT3600L is an ultra budget cartridge so it would odd for it to have no faults. That being said it is about the best value for money today. I have a friend on a very limited budget who needed a new cartridge, I got him one of these. He loved it and ended up purchasing a couple more.
I remember having sililance problems back in the day (very early seventies), I think that was with an Acos ceramic cartridge. I then switched to the Shure M3D, my memory of if the sibilance was gone or not is by now rather hazy. I do remember being blown away by the sound that magnetic cartridge vs the ceramic at the time. I moved to the Shure M91ED then to the Grado F-1+. The Grado with its special shape blew away the elliptical Shure, don't know if the difference was due to stylus shape or more due to the low inductance of the Grado Superfluxbridger design.
I was similarly blown away by my switch from moving magnet to a moving coil cartridge (Sony XL-MC3) in the late eighties. I have never auditioned a conical moving coil however. This thread is peaking my curiosity.
flavio81
Turntable technician
In this case 5uM is useful because this is the result you would get with an ellpitical of 5uM side radius
steve2955
Member
One of my turntables has an Ortofon OM5e and my recently acquired TT has the VMN10CB installed. the Ortofon is elliptical and sounds really good on my system. I've become partial to the conical VMN10CB, however, as the sound seems smoother and has just as much detail if not more than the 5e.
flavio81
Turntable technician
Hello dear friend... Maybe try the Ortofon OM5S? There's a comparison on Youtube of the OM5E and OM5S playing the same material on the same system, straight from the preamp out. I liked the 5S a bit more. I would like to get an OM Pro S someday. It's a DJ cart, but I have curiosity.
EDIT: It is here:
LOL! One of the comments says "Son tan malas que suenan practicamente igual las tres", which in original Texan language
means "they suck so much that all three sound practically the same". I disagree, i think the OM line has the best value cartridges from Ortofon.But note that most likely, on your system the 510CB has a raised top end (10KHz-20Khz) compared to the OM5E. This can be heard as more "detail".
I'm playing the devil's advocate here, for I like the VM-510CB very much, as I've mentioned here and on other threads.