Excerpts from the full book, at Amazon and booksellers
Only the tip of an iceberg of 200+ performance charts, microphotos, & references in the full book.
by Robin Miller ©2017,
2022, 2024
ISBN: 979-8218067304
1 minute VIDEO
http://www.filmaker.com/video/video57s_Phono% 20Book%202nd%20Ed_221207sh.mp4
*****5-star reviews– A vinyl enthusiast's reference book with many historical anecdotes. Beautiful photographs and charts by a recognized professional audio engineer and musician. The hobby is full of misinformation which cause people to waste money…. It's anti-BS…
***** Information from professional experience, research, and study. I learned more about the stylus shape in getting the most out of the record grooves without distortion. The author's no-nonsense approach is refreshing in this age of fantasy thinking by hi-fi hucksters selling snake oil to innocent audiophiles. I'm glad for insights and information in this nice book…
***** A great gift for the enthusiast and those new to vinyl. Highly recommend!
***** Essential reading for anyone who wants to get the best from their vinyl by carefully setting up your system. Construction chapters show you how to make your own equipment. It is well written, easy to understand and has useful illustrations. This book is so good that it shows how great vinyl playback does not need thousands of dollars…
***** I intend to build both the book’s preamp and tonearm. A very thoughtful book on the turntable and its science …
***** Perfect for a techno-musiclover, it's a profusely illustrated guide, with dknowledge that’s harder to find than you’d think… [Comments edited for space.]
Can vinyl be better than digital? Technically no! But sound-wise…
Over-processed digital audio recordings – even intentionally clipped by some popular music labels (see red circles overleaf) sound worse than well-recorded vinyl. Clipping squares the audio signal’s wavetops & bottoms, adding raspy odd harmonic distortion. Vinyl grooves cannot be clipped because mechanical styli cannot make abrupt right angle turns The best sound in well-rmastered vinyl is baked in the groove, waiting for proper playback. However the stylus can mis-trace the groove to generate distortion (it’s not in the groove) that requires users to setup their turntables using a helpful reference book like this!
ISBN 979-8218067304 through booksellers, or amazon.com/dp/B0BGNF1HVQ
Digital over-compressed digital gaslights consumers to mistake immediately “louder as better.” You need only increase volume playing vinyl to make it as loud, yet enjoy lifelike dynamics & timbre (tone color) that truly sounds better. Compression literally compresses the loudest digital samples, raising remaining useful bits until the lowest are set to zero!
For many listeners, over-processing artifacts are irritating. For others, distortion adds brightness, often only compensating for deficiencies elsewhere in their systems. Or they habituate to unnaturally shiny sound, their new normal, although not high-fidelity. The full book Better Sound from your Phonograph is the science of How come? then How-to! play vinyl better than you may be now. Even if you are new to grooved media’s 150yr history.
Digital devices may be ‘plug‘n-play,’ but warn “No user-serviceable parts inside.” This book encourages turntable users to delve inside. Often issues can be dealt with by readers who want optimal performance. Adjustments in general tackle the causes of distortion, including cartridge alignment for best tracking without skipping, skating compensation, load capacitance for flat frequency response (good tone color), tonearm resonance to avoid speaker feedback and flabby bass, and channel balance for the best “soundstage” and proper mono mixing to cancel vertical distortion artifacts. These are all within reach of any user.
But often overlooked is the most critical fact: The SOUND of a phonograph is the sound of its STYLUS. Stylus attributes & damaging defects magnified 800x are in the full book. It’s not possible to include every tip by every manufacturer, so micro-photos in the book are chosen to represent every comparable product As with any gear, compare before you buy
Good turntables cost $150 used, or new for $179 by U-turn Audio to $4,000 by Technics
Stereo cartridge signals should precisely replicate both groove walls
Mastering a record, a chisel engraves mechanical replicas of the audio signals. The job of the turntable system is to reverse that transformation with minimal change (distortion)
Robin Miller - Excerpts from “Better Sound from your Phonograph” v250113
The record-player is an assembly of components: 1) the turntable-only (the “spinner”); 2) a pivoted tonearm; 3) a cartridge & stylus (needle); 4) a preamplifier (“phono stage”). Not the sum of these parts, the sound is a multiplication of its parts – a weak link degrades the entire chain proportionately. What is the weakest link? A user\installer lacking knowledge.
Eventually, the high pressure of a stylus tip wears itself and damages the vinyl groove. For two of the three basic tip shapes, asterisks (*) show their contact areas; all that touch the groove. Sphericals have small circular landing. Ovals for ellipticals. “Racetracks” for line-contacts, where its taller up & down dimension is many times that along the moving groove wall A taller footprint increases the contact area to reduce tip & groove pressure & wear. And as the groove moves, shorter tracing time resolves higher frequencies. Eventually tip wear damages itself and the groove: highest for elliptical, lowest for line contact. Irreversible accumulating tip+groove damage sounds of ever more distortion. Made from industrial diamond or jewelers’ dust ground to a cone, rounded at the tip. Sphericals are common consumer or DJ needles that generate the most distortion, while least capable re high frequencies (HF), especially at end-of-side. At the other extreme, the next image shows the ultimate line-contact tip. Its “race-track” bearing height is 28x its width. Emulating the cutting chisel, reducing tracing distortion 80%! Its high frequency (HF) ‘corner’ is 17kHz, up to 5 times the frequency of a spherical, at least 2x an elliptical.
←the first successful line-contact tip was by Pickering\Stanton for videodiscs, and the prototype for Shibata\line-contacts since. ↓ one of the book’s more than 200 valuable charts & illustrations
For advanced users, the full book does not recommend spherical styli, except for riding over severe scratches & dirt. Better is to clean disks before playing. Accessible styli are ellipticals: a 0.7 x 0.3mil for a good compromise, generating moderate distortion and good HF response. The cost is moderate wear, offset by a stylus of higher compliance (looser springiness) with a lower mass tonearm and tracking force. But once worn, any tip erases HF tones by “re-cutting” sharp turns it can’t negotiate. Literally cutting corners For both best frequency response, lowest distortion, and longest wear with minimal groove damage, use a line contact stylus, although they are expensive and sometimes hard to find.
ISBN 979-8218067304 through booksellers, or amazon.com/dp/B0BGNF1HVQ
Is the stylus tracing the groove faithfully? – avoidable mechanical distortions
A tip rides sine waves that comprise all music signals [Fourier]; its red contact paths engraved by the flat-across recording chisel are parallel radially, below left. The groove appears to narrow, widen, then narrow again. The “spherical stylus” drops down to fit where it can, at waveform peaks. But at the zero-crossings, it is pinched up. A narrowersided “Elliptical stylus” or narrowest line contact fits better everywhere, so rises & falls less. Vertical pinching adds distortion to both stereo channels that is not in the record. In addition, poid-like effects sharpen outside groove swings and broaden inside ones. Poid distortion transforms music’s component sine-waves [again Fourier] into sawtooth waveforms that add all harmonic orders of distortion Optimizing is in the full book.
Distortion is least in the groove, cut by a flat chisel, but added by styli pinching upward twice per cycle, generating 2nd harmonic artifacts out of polarity to sound outside stereo speakers! And more than a 7º skewed elliptical tip poidtransforms music’s sine waves to sawtooths, adding all orders of harmonics.
Alignment & resonance lowers distortion, flabby bass, acoustic speaker feedback
Author’s mirrored alignment protractor for cleanest enjoyment of music, at ISSUU.com/filmakertech
Anti-skating (bias compensation) for longest wear and lowest record damage
Friction between the stylus tip and the vinyl groove tugs at the tonearm, forcing it toward the spindle, called skating The stylus is swung right, its tip pressing harder on the inner groove wall and away from the outer wall to cause contact loss distortion and uneven tip
Robin Miller - Excerpts from “Better Sound from your Phonograph” v250113
wear and groove damage
Skating force redirects ~13% of vertical tracking force (VTF) causing groove hopping. Uneven tip wear limits tip life to the more worn side, e.g needing to replace a stylus in 500hr when it could last 1,000hr. Skating changes with the varying friction of each vinyl disk, but can be set for each visually, described in the full book.
Capacitive loading moving magnet & moving iron pickups – users’ responsibility
One omission has tainted the reputations of magnetic cartridges for decades – loading [Steinfeld 2010]. Loading completes a manufacturer’s design of its high impedance MM & MI cartridges. Although critical, it is external; the responsibility of users\installers Thus it is beyond control of its maker, who can only specify capacitive load by cartridge model. A mere 10~20% above or below manufacturer’s specified C-load results in its cartridge being criticized unjustly as “brittle” or “dull\muffled” in HF, or “thin” or “bottom-heavy” in bass. Failure of a reviewer to attend to C-load has likely led to significant errors in reproducing recorded tone colors (timbre). How to adjust C-load is fully discussed in the full book.
Two maker projects: high-performance RIAA preamp and transcription tonearm
The full book has step-by-step maker instructions for an accurate RIAA preamp with essential adjustments for capacitive loading, balancing varying cartridge channel sensitivities, and mono mixing to cancel vertical artifacts. The project takes 90min using $35 in parts, plus enclosure if needed and power supply if not two 9v batteries.
Alongside a typical tonearm, a low-distortion tonearm project in the book using simple hand tools and ordinary hardware (~$35 or free in your junk box?). Never mind this “steampunk” tonearm is not pretty.
Excerpts of the full book “Better Sound from your Phonograph” 2nd Ed. ISBN 979-8218067304 Unless noted, contents are IP the author, ©2017, 2022, 2024. No part may be reproduced in any form, except brief attributed quotes in reviews, without consent in writing from the author or his agent. Other’s IP incidental herein are IP their owners
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ISBN 979-8218067304 through booksellers, or amazon.com/dp/B0BGNF1HVQ