You are hearing fewer distortions.
Records are engineered to play conical styluses. What happens when we use substitutes? Which wears more? Is it conical or elliptical/bi-radial styluses?
Luckily, the tests were done long ago. We get much less wear using conical styluses.
This comes from HiFi/Stereo Review; October, 1968; “Record-Groove Wear;” J. G. Woodward; page 88. The article and conclusions come from RCA laboratories.
Photos 5-C and 5-D are the most important. 5-D shows the least wear using conical styluses.
Italics are mine.
“The four photos in Figure 5 permit a side -by -side comparison of the wear patterns following fifty plays by four different pickups. At A we see the wear produced by the 0.7 -mil spherical -tipped stylus in the ceramic cartridge with a 5 -gram tracking force; photo B shows wear caused by a high -quality pickup with a 0.2 x 0.9 - mil elliptical stylus and a tracking force of 1.5 grams; C shows the results of using another high -quality cartridge with the 0.2 x 0.7 -mil elliptical stylus and a tracking force of 1.5 grams; and D is the wear pattern for this same pickup, but with the elliptical stylus replaced by a 0.7 -mil spherical -tipped stylus and with the tracking force still at 1.5 grams.
The almost complete absence of wear following fifty plays in this last case is remarkable.”
“These SEM [Scanning Electron Microscope] studies show that an elliptical stylus produces more visible wear than a spherical stylus with a 0.7 -mil tip radius in the same cartridge and with the same tracking force. This result should come as no surprise to anyone, for it is in accord with what is known about the behavior of plastics and other materials when a mechanical indenting element is pressed against the surface of the material. Indeed, the manufacturers of some of the better elliptical -styli cartridges have been aware of this fact and have devoted considerable effort to designing their cartridges to work with very low tracking forces, partly to minimize record wear, although other important benefits also accrue from these advanced designs.”
“The reason for the observed differences in wear for the two types of styli is quite simple. The applied tracking force presses the stylus tip against the record -groove walls, thereby deforming the wall surfaces at the areas of contact. Because of its larger tip radius, the 0.7 -mil spherical -tipped stylus has a larger area of contact than the elliptical stylus. Since the tracking force is the same in both cases, there is less force per unit area (pressure) for the spherical than for the elliptical stylus. As long as the force per unit area is below a certain threshold value (which depends on the material being deformed), the surface deformation is elastic. This means that when the stylus is removed, the surface returns to its initial condition. However, when the force per unit area exceeds the threshold, the plastic material at and just below the surface suffers some degree of permanent-as well as elastic-deformation. The permanent part of the deformation is what we observe in the photomicrographs. Evidently, the elliptical stylus exceeds the threshold at a 1.5 -gram tracking force, but the spherical stylus does not. However, the results for the 0.7 -mil stylus in the ceramic cartridge demonstrate that the permanent - deformation threshold is exceeded by a considerable amount when the tracking force is increased to 5 grams even for the larger spherical tip.”
Less damage could mean less distortions therefore cleaner sounding records.