End of Record Distortion

Someone just posted on VA that changing mats and/or clamps on his MMF 5 resulted in changing levels of inner groove distortion.

I expect that the combination which sounded best did so because it reduced intra-vinyl resonances best. This in turn gave the stylus a quieter environment, which allowed it to trace those difficult grooves more cleanly.

No idea which clamps/mats work best with these Denons, but that's another avenue worth exploring.

Hey Doug and Thinkat,

I haven't used a protractor on this 'table. I intially used the Denon-supplied alignment tool, and then used the MFSL Geo Disc for fine tuning.

I didn't like the Denon-supplied mat. I tried Sorbothane (formerly sold by Audioquest), but that seemed to suck the life out of the music. I ended up pulling the cast metal platter out and turning it upside down. On the perimeter there is a series of "wells." I glued 1/2" Sorbothane into the wells, and then filled the remaining space with GE Silicone II. I then glued 1/8" Sorbothane to the more "interior" section of the platter's underside. I also glued more Sorbothane to the inside of the plinth's side and bottom. For the mat, I first applied the self-adhesive cork sold by VPI, and then topped with the Ringmat. I lightly apply the KAB record clamp.

Removing the feet and replacing with cones helped too. The cones sit in cups; the cups sit on 1/8" Sorbothane; the 1/8" Sorbothane sits on 1.75" inch thick granite; the granite sits on 4 rounds of 1/2" thick Sorbothane; and that Sorbothane (finally) sits on the shelf. The bottom half of the motor is wrapped in a clay-like, vibration-absorbing polymer material.

The knock on direct drive is that you can't isolate the motor, and it generates vibration and noise. This is true. But if you can tame those vibrations, the system works well -- depending on the build quality of the 'table, of course. This 'table has spot-on speed accuracy with vanishingly little wow.

Doug, I mentioned lubricating the shaft and bearing well because I wondered if it was possible, if the shaft were generating noise, that the cartridge would pick it up as it moved closer to the shaft, and generate some "end of record noise." The Q-damping is a misguided attempt to dampen the tonearm assembly; it ends up just muffling the sound.

Best regards,
Paul

All the angles and forces make for an interesting discussion, but maybe your stylus is just picking up dust. Well, actually it's not a question of whether there is dust, but rather how much.

Surely you clean off the stylus before you begin to play each LP. This implies that you recognize the existance of dust.

some records? Any of them "simply Vinyl" 180 gram....?
I have two "Dire Straits" lps, "Brothers in Arms", and "Love over Gold". Both lps are dead quiet until the very end of the last song, side two, of both lps. As the music fades out there is a distorted static sound just before the lead out on the records.

Jea48,
Is that static sound worse in the left channel? If so, and assuming that cleaning does not help, I'd suspect a pressing flaw. That sound can be caused by the vinyl not flowing fully down into the L channel groove modulations, typically because the temp was too low when they started pressing that copy. It tends to happen on the L channel because that is the inner groove wall. The molten vinyl is pressed from the center outward. If it's not hot enough to flow smoothly it can skip over part of the downward slope as it moves past the groove and leave a gap.