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Turntable Pre-Echo Sound....?

When I turn my system up fairly high, I can make out a faint "pre-sound" of what is about to play, with the beginning of the songs starting very, very quietly about 3/10 of a second before it actually starts.

At I thought it could be my stabilizer brush fibers accidentally acting as little styli ahead of the needle, but it does this even with the brush locked up.

Equipment:
Linn Basik TT
Linn Basik Plus tonearm
Shure M97xE cart
Pro-Ject Phonobox preamp
Harmon Kardon AV240 receiver
NHT 2.5 speakers
Cheap interconnects

Thanks in advance,
Dusty
128x128heyitsmedusty
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
It's easy to tell which is the reason. Watch the LP and see if the "real" sound begins one recolution after the pre-echo. That would be 1.8 seconds for a 33.3 rpm. This has always been my observation, although mag tape print through is also real. However, I think this occurs when a tape has been stored for a long time (years) without rewinding. Only analog tapes are affected. For any LP made from a digital tape (and that includes most of them these days) any pre-echo must be from the cutting process.
anagreen
6 posts
 
Mind blown. I thought I was crazy. 
jw_dewdney
13 posts
 
actually it's called 'print- through' for reasons that may be obvious ....
wolf_garcia
6,696 posts
 
Man...another time jump thread...I get that pre-echo stuff on my rig and it really doesn't seem to have an audible effect on the "proper" musical bits, although logic dictates it should.
drbond
420 posts
 

Upon cursory review, I think this thread explains the pre-echo phenomenon the best.  Here's a similar explanation from an outside source:

"When you master an LP, you have to put each groove as close to the other as possible. As a result, in loud passages you sometimes can hear bleed-through from the previous groove. (A similar thing can happen in the master tape when one layer of tape magnetizes the next layer on top of it in the reel.) Compromises in the sound must be made to press music in this format, and bass is what mastering engineers have to compress and attenuate the most."

Quoted from:

The Joy of 45 Collecting: Why 45s Sound Better Than LPs (classic45s.com)

 

I'm hearing this in almost every quiet passage of music on LP's, throughout the LP, not just one revolution before the start of the LP.  This effect must induce some low level distortion, possibly 1-2%.  

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