I need help diagnosing a sibilant problem on vinyl

How many hours do you have on the Elys?

Btselect,

Thanks for asking. For clarity, I didn't mention records that are hard to track. I mentioned records whose HF's (particularly sibilants) are difficult to reproduce cleanly. These are not the same thing, since systems may distort HFs even when the stylus traces them perfectly.

Even distortions that sound exactly like mistracking are often not so. Some phono stage distortions can mimic mistracking even to experienced, professional ears. Frequent contributor Atmasphere has described this on several threads.

A few example LPs:

HARD - Alison Krauss, 'Live at Union Station', MOFI reissue
The inner grooves challenge many systems, though they play cleanly in mine.


REALLY HARD - 'La Boheme' with Renata Tebaldi, London OSA 1299
Mimi's aria at the end of side 1 distorts/congests on most systems. This is one LP I use to test any visiting component or potential upgrade in my own system. I've only heard it play truly clean a few times.


ABSOLUTELY FRIGGIN IMPOSSIBLE - Rene Clemencic et al, "Les Plaisirs De La Renaissance, Danses Et Chansons", Harmonia Mundi HMU 963
The last two tracks on side B will drive nearly any system into fingernails-on-blackboard distortions/congestions. I can empty a room full of audiophiles just by pulling this LP off the shelf, lol. I've heard it play cleanly exactly once, in my system but with a better tonearm than my TriPlanar VII (which is no slouch). Every component in the system must be top class to avoid distorting the closely spaced harmonics of Clemencic's counter-tenor, an alto recorder which doubles him and the many echoes in the stony room where this was recorded. IME, this LP is the acid test for a system's ability to sort out tightly packed upper mids and highs. Try it if you dare. ;-)

I would suspect a damaged stylus first, from experience this was the cause of such sibilance in my cartridge many years ago.

Doug, There's not too many adjustements you can make with Rega arm. Proper alignement, VTA and nothing more to adjust there. If gazilions of trial-errors made and still the damn sibliance, than it's time to inspect the cartridge.

You can add inadequate PS filtration in the Phono Pre and the rest of the chain to the list. I have become aware of this over the last year or so. My DIY gear (all K%K Audio fully differential designs) use active constant current sources in series with the B+. A resistor shunts a small amount of that current to ground establishing the B+ voltage (V=I*R, ohms law). These active CCSs have a very high AC impedance. One would think that very little crud would get through. However, replacing the shunt resistors with active shunt regulators made for a huge difference in clarity and yes, a reduction in apparent sibilance. The first shunt regulators used a simple JFET in series with a resistor to set the reference voltage for the shunt device. A second generation shunt reg. used a LM-334 current reg. wired as a zero temperature coefficient current source cascoded with a MOSFET (cascode current sources almost always perform better than single devices). Again, more transparency and less sibilance.

Recently I upgraded an early but fully modded K&K Maxed Out SE phono pre for a friend. This unit has active constant current plate loads on all the tubes. One might think that adding a current source fed active shunt to the B+ supply would not make a huge difference. It did, by a large amount.

I guess the take home here is this: no matter how much filtering you have in your power supplies, crud can get though and muck up the signal. I'm not a big fan AC power line filters as I think this should be addressed in the design of the equipment itself; but if all else fails you might try it. I would suggest you borrow the clean up filter first and try before any purchase.