STOP Ruining Your Vinyl Record Experience with This Advice

There's a lot of bad advice floating around when it comes to enjoying your vinyl records. I'll admit, I've fallen prey to it at times as well. Let's talk about some of them!

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[andyr]

Ah, tone controls... The amp I own has got tone controls, and I will never buy any other amp that doesn't have them. I use them because most recordings (vinyl or digital) do sound different from each other. Sometimes, there is not enough bass or treble, and I need to turn it up. I don't care what the "purists" say. As long as I am happy with the way the music sounds, that is what really matters.

[larryfisher]

A lot of us older folks that have spent time in the military or construction or manufacturing have a certain amount of high frequency hearing loss even with hearing aids tone controls will help with the enjoyment of listening and being able to hear what the artist intended.

[somd_fishing]

My amplifier is a Yamaha A-S501. It does have tone controls, however, I have grown to really enjoy the “Pure Direct” setting.

[freemindpointo]

I am literally sitting here with an Audio Technica LP60 and Edifier Powered speakers. 🤣

[MikeGervasi]

Tube rolling is absolutely a tone (and volume) control. Swapping the driver tubes ie. AX7s will shape the tone and going down in gain (AU7/AT7)
will give you softer but more headroom (more high end). Swapping power tubes i.e. EL84s/KT88, KT120 will give you more punch and low end the higher you go.

[black_cap]

I've been into this hobby about 50 years now and I agree with you 100 %.

[rogerking]

I pretty much agree with all of this. Having collected LPs since the early 1970s I have pretty decent gear to play them on. However, I agree that you don't have to have £1500 tone arms and cartridges, etc, to enjoy the music. As you say though, there is a level below which you shouldn't drop when it comes to the turntable, if only to prevent damage to your LPs. And yes, more money spent on gear will generally lead to better sound, but the law of diminishing returns never applied to anything more than it does to vinyl replay, so a modest budget well spent will still sound great. Now back in 1973, the oil crisis struck and LPs became thinner and thinner until it was unusual to buy one that didn't resemble a roller coaster ride. Even now, fifty years later this has biased me to the 180gm discs, simply because they are flat. I agree that there is nothing about the weight that inherently promises better sound; I just get the feeling that the 180gm versions are made with a little more care overall (yes, I might be deluded here) and they generally seem to have lower surface noise, presumably because the vinyl is less contaminated.

[wwz]

My go to system consists of garage sale and thrift store finds. KLH 23 speakers, Pioneer PL-560 turntable, JVC receiver. I have less than $100 in the system. I do have a second higher end system. But it's not necessary. Most of my albums are thrift store finds, but I reject 90% of the vintage LPs due to condition.

[uhfch]

Regarding anti-skate — In the past, I have always adjusted anti-skate so that the stylus remains perfectly still (no exerted force inward or outward). I was given some advice that the anti-skate should drift slightly inward, since this is the natural direct of the groove. Otherwise, the groove would be constantly pushing in stylus inward. This new method has seemed to make a slight difference in sound balance.

[neilfisher]

Ah, good stuff. There are always lots of expert opinions out there that are heavy on the opinion side and light on the expert side. Tone controls are always an interesting topic. If you have them, don't be afraid to use them. I don't have them on my amp, so the choice is made for me. But consider this analysis. Really, every component of your system is a form of tone control. Every amp has its own sound signature. So do your speakers and your source components. So, theoretically, you are customizing your tone to meet your preferences by the way you put your system together. If you want to add an eq to the mix, that's your preference as well.

[NoEggu]

@2:45 -- 180 gram records.
I agree, 100%.

It is a marketing gimmick, and it throws off your vertical tracking alignment (just a bit).

What matters, for sound quality, is the mixing and mastering done in the studio, and the chemical formulation of the vinyl.

Approximately 15 years ago, I purchased several new records. All of them played very quietly. They also all put me to sleep. They lacked life.
My conclusion was that the pressing plants were using a new vinyl brewing formula to combat the belief that vinyl records are noisy. And this is where it gets tricky, because there is some truth to vinyl records being noisy.

The noise comes from 1) dirty records, and 2) misaligned tone-arm and cartridge set-up. When the stylus rubs where it should not be rubbing, it generates noise.

So the pressing plants decided to combat that avoidable noise problem by using a lousy vinyl formula that not only deadens surface noise, it also removes the life of the music. Due to that experience, I gave up on new pressings. Perhaps now, over a decade later, things have improved?


@5:14 -- I respectfully disagree, but with a caveat.
If you have very good gear, in a good sounding room, then you should steer clear of tone controls. Tone controls are a pre-amp, within a pre-amp. You would not normally want to add another active process into the signal chain.

But if you have no other reasonable way to combat some issue with your stereo or your room, and tone controls help, then by all means, use tone controls.
Or, some folks love exaggerated bass and treble. If you are into that type of sound, then have at it with tone controls.

But if you have a fantastic sounding system, and you then insert an equalizer (even a fantastic sounding equalizer), and you left all of its controls in their neutral positions, you will hear it, and not for the better. Any box, without exception, that you add to the signal chain will be heard. Depending on the overall realism of your stereo, how much you will hear with an additional box will vary. The better your stereo, the more the sonic damage that an additional box will contribute. And tone controls on a pre-amp is the similar to an extra box.

Tone controls serve two purposes (that I can think of):
1) You like augmenting the sound (extra bass, etc).
2) You are fixing a sound quality issue.

#2 would work best by correcting the sound quality issue at its source. Not having a sound quality issue would negate the need for tone controls. Not having the issue is ideal.


@6:59 -- Although swapping tubes is a form of tone control, it is not the same thing.

For a stereo to work, your pre-amp, phono-amp, and amps have to exist. The ones that are designed with tubes, have to have tubes. Using different tubes is not adding another box into the signal chain. Whereas, adding tone controls is adding another box into the signal chain.

When you tube swap, you are making no new additions to the signal chain. One set of tubes is removed, and one set of tubes is added. That is a break even on the component count.

People swap entire pre-amps. That, too, can be deemed tone control. Swapping your cartridge, or swapping your speakers, can be deemed a form of tone control. It will change the tone of your stereo. But you are at break even with your component count. No extra hop for the signal to traverse. You did a swap, but added nothing to the signal chain.

The bottom line is to use any equipment that pleases your ears.

[analoguecity]

People who say not to use tone control are wrong! Recorded music is a planned illusion, and before it gets to your speaker's it EQed by the engineers, your never going to get "exactly" what is heard in the studio because sound changes when it first goes through the microphones! That's just physics's!😊

[JamesBeggs-ht]

Don't use tone controles??? But. . .but. . .but, what do I do with my 14 channel equalizer???

[JoeOrber]

Wow, that last one really caught me off guard hahaha 😂 if that was the case all of my records would be destroyed, as well as my cartridge, turntable and apartment hahaha 🤣. Fantastic video, thank you for sharing it with us 😊

[tobymummert]

Good video. I am a little touchy on the tone controls part but I definitely agree with the 180 g advice. I stopped buying them in mass quantities about 5 years ago because the cost kept going up and up for the first part and then I still have my very clean original copies that are 140 G that were originally pressed with the original analog source and quite frankly do sound better than all these 180 g vinyl records and all of these 180 g records are all still pressed with a digital source so you're not getting anything better than the original and the original audio recording is what you want. I still have some of my 180 g vinyl records but I have gotten rid of a slew of them because they are heavy pieces of junk that cost way too much. It's better to seek out a very clean original copy of a record then to buy that record on a 180 g. pressing

[AmazonasBiotop]

Fun to see you grow and gain experience.
The last one that: "don't play to loud"

Could actually have a valid point especially for TT playing.
I guess that you have not yet experienced it.

But if you have the preconditions right.. That the:
1. TT is rather close to the speaker.
2. That it is base heavy music that contain just that right frequency that is the resonance frequency for the specific cartridge (its conplience and mass) and tonarm (effective mass) combination.
3. To have electronic (riaa and so forth) that is and can amplify that lower frequency.
4. A FULL range speaker that also are able to reproduce that low note. (For example maybe a bookshelf go down to only 40 hz and then we don't experience any issue even if the match is in practice bad.
5. And play LOUD(ER)..

If you happen to have all of those preconditions then you may encounter feedback trough/via the air from the speakers that excite the cartridge and tonearm combo!

So the stylus will start to jump around in the groove in just that frequency that goes to your riaa and gets amplified again and to your speakers that reproduce that frequency and excite the cartridge again and tonearm even more and we can't stop that viscous cycle if we don't turn down the volume. Called "rumble"
And not good to have a diamond in a groove that hitting the groove walls like a forceful vibration hammer.

This is a technical wrong setup that can be eliminated but needs some preconditions to occur. (There is a reasons why we have lighter and heavier effective mass tonearms. And that there is cartridges with more or less compliance. So we can MATCH the right ones for the job. To lower the resonance frequency to low and safe frequency and not let it go up in frequency so that we amplify it an reproduce it.. Or you can cheat by use a rumble filter that is not optimal when you cut away the lowest bass because you have not done your homework and done a bad match (there is calculators for that). And now you will suffer with removing the lowest notes as a "penalty")

That is WHY it is hard to explain.. And hard to understand if not experienced it AND understanding why..🎉

[osliverpool]

LOL - love the "don't play the record too loud" one 😀

[JWD]

Agreed on tone controls. I agree that if a record was mastered for a specific setup and a specific room, tone controls should not be used. But I do not think we have to worry about that happening, haha. Plus the "neutral" positions of the tone controls on a certain amplifier with a certain pair of speakers will have a different frequency response than another amplifier with another pair of speakers—or the same amplifier with a another pair of speakers; or another amplifier with the same pair of speakers; etc.

And yes, anti-skate is very real.

"Don't play them too loud"? Wow, there's a new gem, haha.

[bear]

Hi again Rick, I meant to mention that made up isolation boards using over 1” bamboo board with sorbothane pads to reduce vibrations and things like that to improve your audio, and of course decent headphones which trying to achieve the audio quality from your speakers . With regards to tines control yiu nat have to adjust to compensate for your room dynamics . Kind regards mark

[rolando_j_]

The thought on tone controls is that they aren't necessary, not that you shouldn't use them. This is more of an audiophile thing where you've spent resources including the the time to find gear that matches properly. It's not that audiophiles don't know how to use tone controls, they do. It's more that they have the experience to walk away from gear during a new purchase if they'd have to use them. If you don't like the bass or the treble during an audition of the gear, then maybe this isn't the right amp or speakers. That being said, you don't get that experiece without having used tone controls. I'll state this that, most higher end gear don't have tone controls. And if they do, they often add a by-pass switch to turn them off. The manufacturers don't want to add the extra circuitry which will only degrade the circuitry they designed in the amplification. So you should use them if you think you need to use them. That circuit already exists and unless you want to solder on the circuit board to eliminate those controls, they aren't going anywhere. What an audiophile would do during an upgrade is buy gear where the need for tone controls aren't needed. But I'll also state that audiophiles tend to be neurotic about their pressings where the only the best will be played. And while I think you're always better off if you have the better pressing, you may not be able to get one. They may be unaffordable or perhaps unavailable. And if you have a record and tone controls allow you to better enjoy the record you already own, then there's no reason not to use them. If you have gear and it's all you can afford that is bettered with an adjustment of the tone controls, then you should absolutely use them. The point here is that you need to do what works with what you have. Audiophiles will think what they have isn't working, so they'll buy something that does work. If you don't care to spend more money, then it'd be really dumb not to use those tone controls if they fix the problem. The audiophile will insist that the problem isn't fixed and it's just not as big of a problem using the controls. But we all don't have to be neurotic when we listen to our music.