Hey everyone.
I rip a lot of vinyl. i use the digital out (spdif) of my turntable directly into the digital in on my soundcard. something i notice on almost all records is that the right side generally shows a bit higher levels than the left. i know sure there might be pannign differences in instruments, but it seems to be almost always favoring the right side.

do you think this has something to do with my needle setup or needle itself, or the table, or what? is this a common issue? i have a new needle i could try but i need to break it in first and of course that will take about a night of just sittin in the groove so i cant test it right now.

any ideas?

-j

It could be a lot of things. Working backwards from your ears, here are some things that are at least possible, in decreasing order of probability:

• Balance error in the cartidge itself. +-1db is not unusual.
• Azimuth error in cartridge alignment. A 1 degree error in azimuth can have a pretty impressive effect on crosstalk and balance for mono material.
• Balance error in the RIAA eq network on the turntable, or its ADC. +-1db is not unheard of for consumer phono stages.
• Mild low-frequency hearing loss in one ear. Don't laugh - I have this, and my left ear is a few db more sensitive than my right at around 250hz or less. You may not notice this unless you are critically listening to material. I stopped caring about this, since it is so troublesome to fix, even though I can always hear it if I'm looking for it.
• Headphone balance errors (if using headphones). Tolerances can sometimes be outside the inaudible range.
• Computer input/output balance errors. Rather unlikely but they do happen.

I'd first try switching channels on your speakers/headphones to eliminate that as a possible issue. If you have access to another turntable or preamp, try those. Check your alignment, and your azimuth in particular with a mirror. See if anybody else can hear it. If you have material that you know is mono, consider obtaining a spectrum plot of each channel and comparing frequency intensities, to perhaps boost/cut frequencies at individual channels.

That said, yes, I think this is extremely common.

Hopefully it is clear that, while some imbalance may be common, favoring any particular side over the other, when comparing different setups, is not what is common.

The stylus is also always accelerating slightly towards the centre of the record.

That's what the anti-skate control is supposed to correct if your turntable has one.

Well, that is a new one to me: breaking in a needle. I would think they are closest to spec fresh out of the box and degrade from there. As a diamond will last 1,000 to 3,000 hours, I wonder what playing it for a night would do? Where did you get this interesting idea??

'breaking in' new needles isnt really nothing crazy, and its not PLAYING the record all night that breaks it in....you just leave it in the groove of the record over night, or just play a couple records normally for a little while, i dont know how long.

anyway, i think it more to do with the records because i just ripped another one that seemed a bit more normal. still, i can see on most records that right is a tiny bit louder.

and yea as far as audible differences, thats not so much the case, this is visual. im ripping into audactiy and can see the vu meters and the waveforms themselves imbalanced.

i imagine its a small combination of a lot of things, but i guess its pretty normal and im not really going to worry about it. i rip raw so i can edit later IF i want to, although i rarely do. i did do click removal on an old ray charles my grandpa gave me, but i even hesitate with that.

Let me see if I understand this. You say resting a cut and polished diamond on a piece of plastic under about one gram's weight overnight will make it sound better? Hmmm. Pretty interesting. Just where did you get this bit of info? Did you think to ask for an explanation or to question it in any way???

Another question: you say you use the digital out of your turntable. Do you have a digital cartridge?? That's a new one on me. This is getting curiouser and curiouser.

Cantilever suspensions are rubberized, and at least one non-audiophile cartridge manufacturer (Shure) recommends a breakin period of a few hours to loosen the suspension from its deliberately stiff configuration from the factory. Many turntables now come with digital outs via a built-in RIAA preamp and ADC.

A common source of stereo imbalance is the wearing of the record, that is stronger on one side than on the other, because of the anti-skating setting not being exactly adjusted.

Wouldn't this also cause a change in frequency response (high frequencies wear down quicker than low frequencies) - it would be interesting to see what the OP has observed.

I stand corrected. Shure, who consider themselves to make audiophile cartridges (M97 series) say it will soften the bearing for better skip protection:

"Chapter 1

Accelerating Break-In (M44-7)

* Normal break-in time takes about two weeks. The bearing, a critical part of the stylus suspension system, is stiff from the factory. Skip resistance improves with use.
* You can speed up the break in period by leaving the cartridge in the record groove, with the turntable turned off, for two hours each night letting nature (gravity) do its thing."


News to me. And digital out it news to me, too. But I can see it as part of a built-in pre-amp. I have not kept up with this, obviously.

yea the digital out is nice, but i guess it puts me at the mercy of the internal preamp on the table. it sounds pretty crisp to me, but ive never compared it directly wit say an analog signal from my mixer, which, i imgaine, might even have better preamps.

still i figure taking the digital signal is pretty clean, and when i play that again through a mixer it should color it anyway.

If you're seriously interested enough in solving or at least quantifying this to do some work there are a couple of steps you can take. First is to try a real monaural record. That means one from the 1950s, later "mono" records may actually have been cut on a stereo lathe which may show some difference between channels. Hit the thrift store. Record it to WAV, not mp3. If you still see a difference looking at the waveforms in a WAV editor, switch the left and right channels =at the cartridge=. Repeat. If the problem switches channels you'd be looking at a problem with the cartridge, which may be slightly adjustable with azimuth adjustments, etc. If the same channel is still louder, something is up with the downstream electronics and you may want to speak to the manufacturer to see if adjustments are possible.

And contrary to statements above I've never heard of one channel being damaged through wear such that one channel is at a lower level, nor should anti-skate adjustments have any bearing on signal level.

Good luck!

Interesting. What kind of turntable IS this, that has a SPDIF output? I think I missed something!

(seriously, I'm interested, it could save me a fair bit of time)

Just google 'digital turntable or 'turntable digital out' and you'll find them.

There are now a fair number of low-end TTs with built in preamp and DAC. How does that save any time?

FWIW, when I ripped from vinyl (I've done hundreds of LPs) I meticulously perfected the channel balance (the cartridge was not spot-on) and turned the volume down to get rid of any feedback between the speakers and the cartridge. Technically, I didn't know what I was doing, but things worked out pretty well.

To the poster who said that changing the anti-skating wouldn't change anything and gave the advice of swapping channels on the cartridge to see what was going on... interesting stuff. I don't know enough to know if you're right or not about the anti-skating not affecting the channel balance but it's cool to see another take on the subject.

Also, this is the first credible instance of burn-in I've ever heard of, in a very surprising context. Fun thread.

There is one thing antiskate changes can do that won't change the balance between channels, but will make one channel perceptually louder: THD changes. I've found that THD results on test records are fairly sensitive to what your antiskate is at. If one channel is considerably higher in THD than the other, then the distortion will act to both a) increase the harmonic content of the music into higher frequencies, and b) intermodulate the music against itself. Both of these effects can throw distortion into the most sensitive regions of hearing (1-5Khz), much so in one channel than another. This may or may not be visible on a VU meter. No, I have not yet ABX'd this, but I can provide THD results if asked, and possibly literature references if prodded hard enough.

(EDIT: Yeah, I forgot about this in my original post, sorry.)

Also, burn-in is a very well-measured and documented phenomenon with speakers. In fact, I would argue that in general, anything that a) moves and b) involves a plastic deformation (or permanent mechanical deformation) of some sort will have burn in. This includes: speaker drivers, cantilever damping, record wear, headphone pads, lawn furniture...

That's interesting about THD. The way to settle it would be an ABX and measurements, but that would be so much trouble!

As far as burn-in -- maybe I should have said significant burn-in. I'll grant you headphone pads, maybe cantilever damping, and definitely lawn furniture. As far as speakers, let's not get started. There's enough on the internet already, and this isn't the thread for it. This is about turntables, and your observations are interesting and entertaining.

Many things are unquestionably different but cannot be so distinguished with human senses. That is what ABX testing is about, not to determine if differences exist, which is usually the case if one is bothering to test, but to determine if the changes are perceptible.

What's well documented is that speaker burn in occurs within minutes, not days or weeks. Everything after that is more likely listener's psyhcological accomodation (*listener* burn-in). That's quite contrary to the 'suggested burn in' that some of the more shameless speaker mfrs advocate (surprisingly often, it's about as long as the return period...)

And too, the measured 'brun in' evidence that I've seen, tends to be within the *unit to unit* measured variance levels between same-model speakers.

I'd like to see these famous documents everyone talks about but nobody cites. The only hard data that I have seen is this one : http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry209911

It shows evidence of speaker burn-in for a time between 30 and 50 hours that can't be explained by drivers differences nor by statistical fluctuations.
The only follow-up was a remark that speakers should return to their initial state after several days of rest.

Audioholics has done an article on it: here, with discussion here. Tom Nousaine has done an article too.

The general consensus I see is that burn in is arguably measurable, in some sense, but the differences are pretty likely to be inaudible. So yeah, my foot's in my mouth, as far as speakers are concerned.

I will say one thing though, about cartridges and burnin: I tried "breaking in" my AT440ML cart by letting it run on the inner groove of a record overnight. The cantilever was straight the night before, and half a degree bent the day after. It broke in, all right, and I'm never going to do that again.