Help guys. I really do need great vinyl,pics for going back to lyric. I am the first to admit my ignorance in vinyl . And wpuld like to buy one not joking. But I do want to hear it's worth it. With the money I have invested in this hobby already a 5 or 10 k more investment in something that is both cool and great sounding is welcome. Help me pic.
Al
Here are some things to keep in mind with respect to ticks and pops. Although they all originate at the cartridge, what the electronics do with them can have a big effect.
1) In a nutshell, if you want to reduce the effects of ticks and pops, the phono equalizer should be zero feedback and passively equalized. Here's why:
All circuits have something called 'propagation delay'. This is the length of time it takes for a signal to propagate from input to output. Now there are two ways to equalize for the RIAA curve: passive and active. Active EQ means that the EQ is accomplished by the action of a feedback circuit in the preamp. Essentially the feedback is taken from the output and applied back to the input and the EQ processes this feedback signal. Due to the propagation delay of the circuit, the feedback will always arrive just a tad late to actually do the job its supposed to do. As frequency increases, this error becomes more pronounced as the propagation time is a constant.
Essentailly what this means is that the feedback will extend the time signature of high frequencies. This will put emphasis on the tick or pop event, even though the actual measured frequency response is correct on paper.
The only way around that is to passively equalize and avoid feedback in the circuit. The result is that you can have the same bandwidth, but less emphasis on ticks and pops and general surface noise. This will have the effect of sounds emerging from a 'blacker background'.
2) With respect to the pickup: You will find that the better and more adjustable the arm is, the less important your choice of cartridge is. This too will be regarded as blasphemous by some. But to prove or disprove it you will need an arm that really is adjustable. There is a relationship that the arm and cartridge have together. The cartridge has a certainly pliability to the cantilever that is known as 'compliance'. This interacts with the mass of the cartridge and the mass of the arm together, resulting in a resonant frequency. Due to the amplitude and frequency of common warps and other artifacts of the LP surface, it has been found that the ideal resonant frequency lies somewhere between about 7Hz and 12Hz. If the mechanical resonance strays outside of that range mistracking can occur, and of course ticks and pops will become more obvious.
Another aspect of tracking is that if it is insufficient, breakup, manifesting in ticks and pops, can occur during complex or difficult passages. I delineated between the two as they are not the same. A difficult passage may not be complex, but it may pose difficulties to the ability of the arm and cartridge to play well together. One of the classic examples is low frequency information that is out of phase. But midrange information that is out of phase can be problematic as well. If the cartridge is not being managed very well by the arm it can break up while attempting to play such passages, which otherwise do not sound particularly complex.
So I advise get the best arm you can and then you won't have to spend so much on the cartridge! Currently the best bearings of any arm made are in the Triplanar- it has the hardest bearings made worldwide and also are some of the smallest, giving the arm very low 'sticktion' from the bearings. In addition is is very adjustable, including something called 'effective mass' which relates directly to mechanical resonance. This allows the arm to be set up with a wider range of cartridges.
A
3rd issue of ticks and pops is cartridge loading. Here is a rule of thumb: loading resistance affects MM cartridges at audio frequencies. Loading of most MC cartridge occurs at Radio Frequencies and has no effect at audio frequencies as far as the cartridge is concerned. Additionally, its a simple fact that if you don't have your cartridge loaded correctly, ticks and pops will be one of the manifestations.
I'm going to cover MC loading only in this post as its already getting long. When you have a MC cartridge in an arm and hooked up to a preamp, you have created a tuned Radio Frequency circuit known as an RF tank circuit (this will be from the capacitance of the arm and cable wiring, in parallel with the inductance of the cartridge). It is called a tank circuit as it can store energy. The cartridge signal can cause enough excitation of this circuit that it results in RF burst of energy occurring at the input of the preamp. These bursts happen at a very high frequency as the small inductance of the cartridge means that the resulting frequency of the tuned circuit will be at several MHz.
If the preamp has troubles with RFI at its input, it will be sensitive to loading. If unloaded, it may sound bright and will have excess ticks and pops.
OTOH, if the preamp is
insensitive to RFI, loading the cartridge will hardly have any effect at all.
Its important to understand that loading with MC cartridges has everything to do with the preamp, not the cartridge! FWIW, solid state preamps tend to have more issues with RFI due to the greater number of places in the preamp where RFI rectification can occur.
Bottom line: if you are careful with your setup and the design of the electronics, ticks and pops can be dramatically reduced! It is ignorance of the above facts that IMO has caused a great deal of frustration with audiophiles and as a result many of them have abandoned analog altogether.
