Linn Bedrok LP12 Plinth Upgrade

@lewm

@daveyf

Is it noise or is it really there?

Not talking about noise from the turntable but from the mechanics of ‘cutting’ a record.

Do you find it interesting to hear things between the tracks?

l had never noticed there was ‘information’ buried between tracks until l bought my Logic DM100. It was definitely more obvious and there after l upgraded the arm to a Syrinx PU3 and a hyper-compliance Goldring G900IGC.

Out of interest is there anyone who has detected this phenomena?

l can only describe it as a very faint subsonic ‘nub’ sound right in the middle of the few seconds gaps between tracks. It’s not on all records but more often found on 60s and 70s pressings. I can only deduce that the cutting engineer physically stopped the turntable at these points (maybe to cue tapes) leaving a short modulation when restarting the cutter. Or maybe he had to lift the cutter and drop it again when starting the next track? That’s the only explanation l can think of.

Interesting l have only noticed this more recently with much older battered ears!

AFTER THOUGHT.

Could it be master tape edits (splices) if whole albums were assembled this way?

Any old cutting engineers out there? The noise is similar to the resulting splices when made to the optical soundtracks on 35mm film which l noticed during my cinema projection years.

@lewm Obviously if the record has pressing defects or scratches etc., it will sound. I am talking about a clean pressing that does not have these issues. 

The bearing of the Linn ( and I think in reality, all turntables) is probably the most important aspect of the whole affair. There is where I now believe one gets the biggest benefit to the SQ. Hard to know this ( hear this?) when so many table manufacturer's are not really concentrating on this aspect. Linn is..and the results are clearly audible.

Davey, You said you can put your stylus into the lead in groove and there is dead silence.  All I am saying is that should be the case for any decent turntable at normal listening levels, because one ought not to hear bearing noise (even though bearing noise is undoubtedly present at some very low level below the signal) with any decent turntable. And of course the Linn is much better than "decent". 

In regard to Mylogic's subsequent comment, some LPs and some cartridges are more prone than others to pick up what some call "pre-groove echo".  Pre-groove echo is often audible at a very low level when the stylus is seemingly between cuts but is really entering into the grooves for the next cut.  So that could seem like you are hearing "information" between grooves.

@lewm

Pre-groove inter-modulation.

Yes that can be easily a case if a heavily modulated track is present perpendicular to where the stylus is tracking. There is some heat generated by the cutting stylus which can meld into the adjacent track….the echo effect you rightly mentioned.

l am not talking about this but about a sound (nothing to do with any iner-modulation) that is totally alien to anything recorded intentionally. I am just listening funnily enough and l am hearing this ‘nub’ between every track of Quincy Jones’s soundtrack of ‘In Cold Blood’ RCA RD-7931 (1967)

Another example from memory is Manfred Mann’s original soundtrack to ‘Up the Junction’ again from the 60s on Fontana label which was where l first noticed this.

Strange but true…..

One other thought to share….

l always tell friends to use Dire Straits ‘Love Over Gold’ album as a test record for a whole Hi-Fi system. If You can’t hear the breaking milk bottle in the ‘Private Investigations’ track, your Hi-Fi is not as ‘Hi’ as you think. If that breaking milk bottle is not there, then it is most likely the front end is just not retrieving it.

@lewm  While you might expect that a dead silence be portrayed by any decent table when placing the stylus into the lead in groove, you might be surprised how rare that experience is. I have heard numerous high end tables that cannot do this 'trick' even though they are set up correctly. All of my prior tables and even my LP12 with Cirkus, could not manage this. There was always a slight noise from the speakers, not complete silence. 

@mylogic  While I agree with you that the Dire Straits breaking milk bottle is a test, it is a very low lying test. IMO, you would have to have a pretty veiled set up to miss that part of the track. A better test would be whether your system can portray depth, intimacy and scale...which very very few can. Scale in particular is very hard to portray, usually requiring a large space and large speakers with excellent dynamic contrast. In my many years as a hobbyist, I can count on one hand systems that can portray scale, depth and intimacy...all three. Most folks think their systems can portray these things, in reality most portray ( at best) one of the three.