ninetynine
Active Member
Are there ways to eliminate scratches on vinyls or generally improve the sound of a scratched record? or eliminating pops and static noises?
Improving sound quality on a scratched Vinyl
- Thread starter ninetynine
- Start date
On the stylus type note- IME, many times, MUCH lower noise can be achieved, by using a LINE-CONTACT stylus, as opposed to a conical or plain elliptical stylus. This is akin to having a tire on a car, wide enough to "bridge over" a small pothole... the line contact, goes far up and down the groove well enough, that it doesn't "fall into" the "craters and faults" that cause many pops and clicks.
Case in point here- my old ADC ZLM will play some rather abused vinyl, AMAZINGLYLY quietly, many times. It's surprised quite a few people...
Of course, line-contact styli-equipped cartridges, are somewhat more expensive as a rule... but really, the improvement is usually worth it, IMHO. I know the next carts I buy, will either be line contact, Geiger, or at least hyper-elliptical units...
Oh, also... something that may seem counter-intuitive... oftentimes, if you can find an extremely HIGH-BANDWIDTH cartridge (ie, like the old SQ/4 types, that can go up to 40 KHz or so before rolling off), you can oftentimes make things quieter in the audio band! This is because most scratches and pops are "impulse" noises, with near-infinite rise rates (ie, "square" wave type waveform), and with a high-bandwidth cart, the noise is "shifted up" above the audio band, to an extent. Then, you can electrically filter out the upper end stuff (click filter, etc) and probably remove more of the noise, than would otherwise be possible if the cartridge was lower bandwidth, and was "slew-rate limiting" and putting more of the noise INTO the usable audio band! I think this is another reason the ADC ZLM works so well- it's also SQ-certified (which is also cool, it means I can play any quad records I find!
)
Regards,
Gordon.
Case in point here- my old ADC ZLM will play some rather abused vinyl, AMAZINGLYLY quietly, many times. It's surprised quite a few people...
Of course, line-contact styli-equipped cartridges, are somewhat more expensive as a rule... but really, the improvement is usually worth it, IMHO. I know the next carts I buy, will either be line contact, Geiger, or at least hyper-elliptical units...
Oh, also... something that may seem counter-intuitive... oftentimes, if you can find an extremely HIGH-BANDWIDTH cartridge (ie, like the old SQ/4 types, that can go up to 40 KHz or so before rolling off), you can oftentimes make things quieter in the audio band! This is because most scratches and pops are "impulse" noises, with near-infinite rise rates (ie, "square" wave type waveform), and with a high-bandwidth cart, the noise is "shifted up" above the audio band, to an extent. Then, you can electrically filter out the upper end stuff (click filter, etc) and probably remove more of the noise, than would otherwise be possible if the cartridge was lower bandwidth, and was "slew-rate limiting" and putting more of the noise INTO the usable audio band! I think this is another reason the ADC ZLM works so well- it's also SQ-certified (which is also cool, it means I can play any quad records I find!
)Regards,
Gordon.
Last edited:
