The analog thread.

[blessingx]

Mysterious, but just showed up in the Twitterverse...

http://turntable.fm/

[Emooze]

Doesn't seem very vinyl oriented unfortunately...

http://www.betabeat.com/2011/06/10/what-is-this-magical-turntable-fm-everyones-talking-about/

[blessingx]

[Knuckledragger]

8 Reasons Why Vinyl Is Cleaner Than the Cloud...

Apologies if this has been posted before, I didn't wade through all 43 pages of this thread.

[Emooze]

Looking to get a second headshell for my TT. Are there any real differences or is it all the same hype and BS?

[CarlSeibert]

I am listening to an oh-my-god-I've-owned-this-record-for-36-years Janis Ian album on one of the Regas, now sporting a GrooveTracer acrylic platter.

Very nice. I was apprehensive about the platter, but it turns out to be all good - less noise, tighter, better extended at both ends, PRaTy, very musical.

GrooveTracer is two for two for me now.

I could kind of tell something good was gonna happen when I used the sticky roller thingie to clean up a record and it was pretty quiet. On the glass platter and felt mat, that gizmo sounds like you're ripping the disk in half.

[jp11801]

for those with adjustable speed controls there is a great newish app called platter speed, it is free but needs a 3150k signal to report the speed. I've got the analog productions test record so it was free to use. I like it better than the KAB. It will also test 33 and 45 rpm speeds.

[blessingx]

For those with adjustable eating habits...

The Turntable Kitchen Pairing Box

"Every month, you’ll receive a hand-assembled box of goodies to create a unique food and music pairing of your own. In each box you’ll find:

A limited-edition, hand-numbered 7-inch vinyl single featuring a pair of tracks by one of TK’s favorite artists/bands.

An exclusive, downloadable TK-curated digital mixtape packed with some of the most exciting up-and-coming new artists we’ve listened to.

A collection of three seasonal, themed recipes for you to try. Think: Fall Brunch, A Russian December Dinner, etc.

1-2 premium dried ingredients for you to make 2-4 servings of each dish or drink (depending on each month’s theme). Each month, we’ll feature a special spice, flour, grain, or bean you’ll need to pull together a fabulous meal for yourself and a few friends.

Our suggested Pairings, tasting notes, and additional insights into the music and food that we’re sharing with you.

Occasional treats in the form of edible goodies, artist recipes, special reviews and bonus songs will surprise you along the way!"

[blessingx]

Okay, I'll try to keep the vinyl newbie questions to the minimum. Scouts honor.

Loving the TT experience overall and especially with speakers, but (and yes, I had been warned) with headphones the surface noise/pops are a bit much as is. Reset the cartridge properly and verified weight/tone arm placement, cleaned records (though been playing mostly new Jazz reissues) and made sure needle was clean. Is there anything else to eliminate or is this the reality for this gear setup? It's sounding much worse than the needledrops I've collected (and never had a problem with phones).

[Voltron]

Not sure you will get rid of the surface noise or pops and clicks if playing a record through headphones. Steady table, well set up arm/cart, clean records, and low static is about all you can do to minimize it. The NDs you hear have mostly been de-clicked and possibly even cleaned a bit to drop off the surface noise. \

[Grahame]

Well, Here's an 80 page thread on the use of wood glue as a vinyl cleaner to keep you busy

[Grahame]

Not forgetting

and a Zerostat

My father used them.

[Dusty Chalk]

Get yourself a good cleaning setup. You need to clean even new records. They have ..."protective stuff"... on them that needs to be cleaned off.

[CarlSeibert]

I've used one of these before every spin for years:

And with proper credit to JP for discovering the thing, this gizmo from Music Direct works wonders if you don't happen to want to go to the trouble of doing a machine cleaning. It has quieted some pretty noisy records for me.

(This is the $19 In the Groove gizmo with the gooey roller, not the $40 one that has tear-off sheets like a lint roller.)

[HeadphoneAddict]

Back in the old days I had a ZeroStat and a Rotel gooey roller, and can attest that they did work very well. I didn't know anyone made a gooey roller these days, and Zero Stat prices went sky high vs in the 80's when I last owned as vinyl rig. I did pick up a cheap $60 SpinCleaner which is a manual wet disc cleaner, but the rollers break easily and need to be glued back together. I've read that the best way to get quiet records is to get a $500 VPI vacuum LP washer, and I tried the shortcut with the manual cleaner which isn't so great.

[jp11801]

Get yourself a good cleaning setup. You need to clean even new records. They have ..."protective stuff"... on them that needs to be cleaned off.

I've often heard of the dreaded "mold release compound" and have to say I've never heard this effect over the many hundred of new records I have heard/purchased. The compound is part of the manufacturing process that allows the LP to leave the press in one piece. Kinda like pam spray on a waffle maker. What I have found is the "hot stamper" effect may in fact be true as it appears that record presses need to stamp the vinyl at a fairly specific temp to create as noise free a pressing as possible. I just played a brand new unwashed record and a regularly played and washed record (the alternate blues) pressed by analog productions and both copies had similar defects of noise that O believe to be related to vinyl formulation and or temp of pressing. Think about how perfect the groove walls need to be to represent perfect silence to a shibata/line contact stylus.

Analog Productions has just gone into the record making business under the name Quality Records and this seemed to be one of the many concerns when they were putting together the new record pressing plant.

[blessingx]

Thanks for the tips guys.

[deepak]

I'm estimating I've had about 70/30 shot in getting new vinyl that is noisy turn quiet after a cleaning (70% in favor of). I am only talking about vinyl that is visually pristine but noisy. Not vinyl with scuffs/scratches; no amount of cleaning can absolve those issues. I know this isn't all in my head, since I've played something, heard the noise on headphones, cleaned the vinyl and then listened again and the vinyl is pretty much dead silent. I screen all my new vinyl on headphones since there are a lot of problems that speakers can't detect (or it's super faint).

My method is DD Miracle (2 parts DD, 1 part deionized water) vacuum, followed 2 deionized water vacuum cycles on my VPI 16.5

I'll only clean new vinyl if it's noisy. Otherwise like JP I don't believe mold release compound has anything to do with noise or sound quality.

[grawk]

steam

[swt61]

^

To clean the record, or to power the TT?

[grawk]

both, obv.

[CD44hi]

After a tad more than 2.5 years I just turned on my turntable! Oh, sweet music...

I am using a Tandberg 3002A as preamp/phono. Incidentally, not bad phono section on this thing, MM/MC with different settings for load, capacitance, It's got a dedicated headphone amp which surprisingly has way more than enough juice to carry the K1000.

So for now it is the Rega P25 with a ZYX R100 Fuji, to the Tandberg.Using TTVJ mat. (Blast from the past, anyone else using this mat?) I think the cartridge is going to need a few LPs to wake up from such a long nap. But so far, it's good stuff!

Good thing about climate control storage, everything has come out just as I left it. I was concerned specially about the cartridge.

[blessingx]

Goofy question as from chats there seems to be more than a few who use vinyl only for speakers - if analog for speakers and digital for headphones [besides needledrops or combo packs or buying things twice] how do you decide formats for future purchases?

[Dusty Chalk]

Yeezh -- acoustic feedback make headphones the preferable output device for vinyl. I've recorded it -- and you can, too -- try it to see how bad your system feeds back. Just listen at normal volumes, record direct, and alternately mute and unmute.

So short answer is set up a needledrop system, and always get the vinyl. Unless you hear that a digital version is better.

[deepak]

Yeezh -- acoustic feedback make headphones the preferable output device for vinyl.

Can you elaborate on this Dusty?