Record cleaning

[m. zillch]

The Dust Bug doesn't need to track in synch with the stylus, it just needs to clean the surface. The time between its cleaning and the stylus passing through the cleaned area isn't enough to matter as long as the air isn't suspending a lot of dust that could drop to the surface.

My air suspends enough dust such that after playing a freshly cleaned record side (with a freshly cleaned stylus) there is sometimes still visible dust successfully accumulated on my stylus' attached cleaning brush from that one play. I like that the stylus brush on my Shure cartridge does track perfectly with play even if "exact synchronization isn't actually necessary" (paraphrased) as you say, so it is unlikely I'd invest in a redundant, secondary, in-play type cleaner at this point for the playback of a medium I rarely use and largely abandoned in the early 1980s because I found something better without such issues.

What color is your Dust Bug, by the way?

 

[m. zillch]

The mass of the DustBug and the soft, fuzzy brush won't make any noise, nor will the bristles on the brush do that and any noise they do make will be masked by the audio coming from the cartridge.

Taking this part I've underlined literally it means the in-play cleaning brush will make audibly detectable noise during the musical silence between tracks. Personally I wouldn't want that.

 

[highfigh]

My air suspends enough dust such that after playing a freshly cleaned record side (with a freshly cleaned stylus) there is sometimes still visible dust successfully accumulated on my stylus' attached cleaning brush from that one play. I like that the stylus brush on my Shure cartridge does track perfectly with play even if "exact synchronization isn't actually necessary" (paraphrased) as you say, so it is unlikely I'd invest in a redundant, secondary, in-play type cleaner at this point for the playback of a medium I rarely use and largely abandoned in the early 1980s because I found something better without such issues.

What color is your Dust Bug, by the way?

With a Shure cartridge that has a brush, the dust is still removed about 1 revolution before the stylus track through it. Are you using a dust cover on the turntable? That obviously reduces the dust settling signifiantly.

I don't have one but when my brother bought his first stereo system (Panasonic- a real POS), he bought a dust bug for it. IIRC, the roller was black but this was around 1972 and I never saw that stereo after about Fall of that year because he took it to college.

 

[highfigh]

Taking this part I've underlined literally it means the in-play cleaning brush will make audibly detectable noise during the musical silence between tracks. Personally I wouldn't want that.

I think you're arguing about a problem that doesn't exist.

 

[m. zillch]

I think you're arguing about a problem that doesn't exist.

Ah, so I was wrong to take this literally then. Despite not currently owning one to evaluate/test it you are of the mind that they are entirely noise free even during silent tracks. Thank you for clearing that up.

Please tell us then what you feel Shure means when they write this in their supplied manual, then:
"When such stabilization is not required,
the stabilizer can be locked into its up position, which can
improve sound quality under ideal playing conditions."

Thanks.

 

[lovinthehd]

Ah, so I was wrong to take this literally then. Despite not currently owning one to evaluate/test it you are of the mind that they are entirely noise free even during silent tracks. Thank you for clearing that up.

Please tell us then what you feel Shure means when they write in their supplied manual:
"When such stabilization is not required,
the stabilizer can be locked into its up position, which can
improve sound quality under ideal playing conditions."

Thanks.

Could be the same sort of difference in an avr turning it to "pure direct" makes over regular "direct"?

 

[m. zillch]

You only have "pure direct"? Wait till you hear "Ultra direct"!
Technically some brands do differentiate between those by what happens with video signals and the front panel display, by the way.

I once sold an int amp with 4, yes 4 forms of direct! No joke.

 

[highfigh]

Ah, so I was wrong to take this literally then. Despite not currently owning one to evaluate/test it you are of the mind that they are entirely noise free even during silent tracks. Thank you for clearing that up.

Please tell us then what you feel Shure means when they write in their supplied manual:
"When such stabilization is not required,
the stabilizer can be locked into its up position, which can
improve sound quality under ideal playing conditions."

Thanks.

IMO, nothing is totally noise-free if the testing equipment and conditions allow measuring it. What I'm saying is: the noise isn't going to be heard unless the SPL is high enough between songs and during the program material, it won't be audible because of the masking. I wrote nothing about stabilization but if they wrote that about the brush being in the raised position, I would bet that any difference is audible because the brush is so close to the stylus, not somewhere near 180°/8"-11" away as it is with a Dust Bug.

As I have posted, no liquid has touched my LPs since about the mid-'70s except for the few that were "cleaned" by that debacle the rep was borrowing and they sounded worse than when I took them to his house. My turntable is very quiet and while I do hear a bit of surface on some LPs, the rest are very quiet and I do use a record cleaner with cloth that's similar to corduroy- I use filtered compressed air to blow the dust out, not exiting the nozzle fast enough to produce condensation. I maintain humidity that's high enough to prevent a lot of static electricity because I have acoustic guitars but as I posted, nothing is totally noise-free.

I'm not neurotic enough to worry about LPs being perfectly clean or having the bestest system and I can listen without freaking out when I hear a little bit of noise but if it becomes distracting, I'll use a different version or buy a replacement.

I really wish I had grabbed some photos of the Nitty Gritty and the subsequent 'much better' cleaners- the Nitty Gritty had a roughly sawn block of 4x4 to support the bottle of liquid, the Oak box was shaped and finished in a way that made it look like a 1970s water bed, ALL of the wires inside were red and it was so loud I used my ear plugs. The "much better" one had a pair of spinning paint roller covers like the ones in the photo, which I assume were there to dry the surfaces, but they made almost no contact. Last price I saw for a similar Nitty Gritty was almost $900 and the other was more than $1300, nearly ten years ago.

 

[highfigh]

You only have "pure direct"? Wait till you hear "Ultra direct"!
Technically some brands do differentiate between those by what happens with video signals and the front panel display, by the way.

I once sold an int amp with 4, yes 4 forms of direct! No joke.

I won't buy an AVR until they have a button with "Really, really direct".

Four Direct modes? 'Direct', 'More Direct', 'Secret Handshake Direct' and 'If You Have To Ask...'

 

[m. zillch]

. . . if they wrote that about the brush being in the raised position, I would bet that any difference is audible because the brush is so close to the stylus, not somewhere near 180°/8"-11" away as it is with a Dust Bug..

The potential theoretical noise from a Dust bug I'd fear is not the acoustical noise traveling through he air* [which you, as a human being standing next to it in a silent room can hear, by the way, at least as I remember it] : It's the mechanical transfer of noise/vibration down into the record plastic traveling away from the dust bug and over to the stylus through the plastic.


*where I agree distance matters

 

[highfigh]

The potential theoretical noise from a Dust bug I'd fear is not the acoustical noise traveling through he air* [which you, as a human being standing next to it in a silent room can hear, by the way, at least as I remember it] : It's the mechanical transfer of noise/vibration down into the record plastic traveling away from the dust bug and over to the stylus through the plastic.


*where I agree distance matters

I was referring to the same- transmitted through the vinyl. I use a record clamp, not because I believe it will make life-altering improvements, but because it was free and can't hurt anything. It's not a weight, though- turntables usually aren't designed for added weight on the bearing.

 

[m. zillch]

Four Direct modes? 'Direct', 'More Direct', 'Secret Handshake Direct' and 'If You Have To Ask...'

I'm not endorsing it however if I recall the forms I've seen over the years independently bypassed different things, by different names by brand (so don't assume the terminolgy is "universal across brands), for example:

- video circuits killed/bypassed. Only audio remains.
- front panel fluorescent display killed [I used to think that was bunk until one day I noticed on a product that it really did remove a slight, faint buzz noise, at least for that product (it was a DAT recorder I owned)]
- "Source direct" = no tone control circuits engaged (they do have faint, usually innocuous noise). The selected source goes straight to the amplification stage.
- "CD Direct" = no input selector function for you!. It's bypassed. The CD input goes straight to the amp
- "Super duper pure direct" no ADC for analog incoming sources hence no digital room correction processing for you! [And for most units no subwoofer signal generation from 2.0 analog sources]

- "HT bypass" usually means no volume control action either. The incoming preamp analog L/R signal passes straight out to the preamp outs without passing through any electronics other than that A/B switch itself.

 

[highfigh]

I'm not endorsing it however if I recall the forms I've seen over the years independently bypassed different things, by different names, for example:

- video circuits killed/bypassed. Only audio remains.
- front panel fluorescent display killed [I used to think that was bunk until one day I noticed on a product that it really did remove a slight, faint buzz noise, at least for that product (it was a DAT recorder I owned)]
- "Source direct" = no tone control circuits engaged (they do have noise). The selected source goes straight to the amplification stage.
- "CD Direct" = no input selector function for you!. It's bypassed. The CD input goes straight to the amp
- "Super duper pure direct" no ADC for analog incoming sources hence no digital room correction processing for you! [And for most units no subwoofer signal generation from 2.0 analog sources]

I had 'Tone Defeat' buttons on just about every integrated amp or preamp I have owned, starting in 1978- if it made a difference, it was extremely subtle and hard to hear but there were no flourescent/LED/LCD displays, either. I'm very much in favor of using the most simple signal path- if it's not making noise, it can affect the signal, in some way. I found out by accident that some of the integrated amps I used had passive tone control circuits and all audio path when I was using a model that didn't originally has pre out, but I had it modified so I could use a specific power amp. I turned off the integrated before the power amp and since that produced no pop or other noise, I was surprised to hear the music continue, so I switched between the other sources and the only difference was in the video input circuits and phono preamp- all others continued to produce sound. The tone controls still worked, too. That one had a button called 'Direct', but again, the tone controls still worked when the power was off.

The simple signal path is one area where I agree with the tweaky audiopiles.

 

[m. zillch]

I forgot one. One brand I sold, Proceed (a division of Mark Levinson. It was effectively the same guts and built/designed/manufactured by the same people but with lower weight and build quality) had "Auto Video Direct" (or whatever). In my training from them they claimed that most competitors make their AVP's OSD (on screen display for video screen graphics overlay) such that it's always in the video signal path but usually just not overlaying anything on top. They bragged that their clever auto direct mode didn't just shut off the text, it completely bypassed the circuit board generating the OSD entirely when graphics weren't actively needed.

 

[TLS Guy]

It is unclear to me if you mean here literally a blank surface or a surface with a groove cut in it with no recorded sound.

I have all sorts of test discs, but in this instance I'm talking about a flat surface, no grooves.