Do You Know Your Tracking Challengers?

[bauzace50]

Hi,
we all know about this but hardly ever mention it. We all have LPs with special tracking challenges. Some are hiding in plain sight ready to pounce on unsuspecting cartridges.

This came to attention during informal measurements exploring the newly acquired Denon DL-110. I accidentally left my DeciBel meter on while playing music on LPs. This drove home a point we already know but leave unattended.

The dB meter measured some peaks which were just as high on full symphony orchestras, as on small ensembles accompanying female vocals. One is easily lulled into trusting female vocal recordings to be easy to track. False! These CAN be among the most difficult grooves to excercise cartridges! Never mind cannon shots, train locomotives and laboratory test signals!

I have five special female vocal tracks in very fine recordings at Blue Heaven Studios (Salina, Kansas). These tracks are in the "Thorens 125 Anniversary Album", consisting of three 180-gram LPs with a special selection of music in top quality recordings.

They include Rickie Lee Jones, Nancy Bryan, Susan Tedeschi, and Myra Taylor, with instrumental accompaniment (guitar, mandolin, harmonica, percussion, horn, and keyboards).

The five female vocals accompanied with small instrumental ensembles are deceptively easy to play with no mind to tracking difficulty. But the DeciBel meters were swinging wildly into "danger" territory. More often than the symphony orchestra LPs I was using these days.

Microphones which are placed close to the sound sources in small ensembles pick up the full intensity of sound. That intensity is diminished when distancing the microphones for symphonic music.

One of the mentioned tracks had a harmonica, rich in midrange sound, maxing out my DeciBel meters!

But the cartridge under test passed all bands without a hitch and without sibilant distortion.

This demonstrates that some mistracking events MAY be the result of unsuspectedly tough grooves which are hidden in plain sight. One can identify those LPs for use with only high-tracking cartridges. And, alternatively, they can be identified for exploring the tracking ability of cartridges (with the only caution to use them sparingly to avoid damage from mistracking).

Regards,
bauzace50

PS- some cartridges CAN have stronger midrange balance and thrust out these voices aggressively "In-a you face!" The DL-110 still showed them up-front but comparatively two inches back ( gotta use some imagery for proper understanding), and this is a demonstration of what I call a more "relaxed midrange".

[Hepokatti]

Interesting read bauzace50!

I have no deeper opinion or observation about the matter as I use rather low-end tables and cartridges. Furthermore, my record collection is rather limited, but what I've noticed is that some harsh sounding Black Metal records are very challenging to track properly.

While extreme metal music sounds distorted and badly mixed to begin with, it is still really easy to notice the bad tracking in many albums from Celtic Frost and Darkthrone to S.Warmaster and alikes. Maybe the cuts are so "hot", but given how popular vinyls are in the scene, I find it strange that they often master them way too difficult/impossible to track. With cheap ellipticals like AT95E, extreme metal in its harshest form is simply unlistenable on vinyl.

More produced "modern" metal sound like Triptykon, however, sounds rather good and tracks well enough even on cheaper cartridges.

Anyhow, I'm so happy I realized that metal is pretty awful in all possible ways (aside from few exceptional ARTists, who really have found something essential) and there are a lot of other beautiful music to actually enjoy D

[bauzace50]

@ Hepokatti,

On a simple one-time experiment one could gauge the amount of mistracking as compared to the version on CD. Might give a good idea of the producer's original intentions. Some of those hard rock recordings can sound distorted on purpose. So it would take some experimenting to determine what is actual mistracking and what is purposely recorded.

Just a thought, and keep on spinning those grooves,
bauzace50

[Hepokatti]

Some of those hard rock recordings can sound distorted on purpose.

Good thought!

They ARE often distorted to boot and it IS hard to say if the distortion results from master, mix or mistracking. I've heard the same "effect" on few electronic music records where high frequency synthesizer samples are purposely sibilant - Kraftwerk would be an example here.

Sometimes, however, the mistracking is quite evident; It's like an "extra" distorion with a certain unpleasant highish frequency, while often tape recorded underground records have that trademark muddy/thick tape distortion, easily distinguishable from mistracking.

So it would take some experimenting to determine what is actual mistracking and what is purposely recorded.

I've actually done this to some extent, but not systematically. Mostly I've found that many modern rock records are unlistenable despite the format Furthermore, there is no separate vinyl master anymore (some bands/companies go through the trouble to do a separate master, and you'll hear it!) and as they are too loud in the Digital Master already, the music is not translated to vinyl very nicely.

Happy spinning!