Stanton LZS and Pickering XLZ

[GP49]

You are right richard. They have a patent on an aluminium oxide-covered cantilever making method which enables them to set the cantilever thickness in the precise, desired value. Maybe they have other ones on cantilevers, i haven't searched yet.

Certainly they don't look as standard Al cantilevers!!

The current Stanton company even says on its website that genuine Stanton styli have a dull metallic sheen to their cantilevers, characteristic of anodized aluminium; not the shiny bare aluminum as seen on aftermarket styli.  Aluminum oxide is VERY hard (the second hardest material known to man; sapphires and rubies are crystalline aluminum oxide).  Aluminum oxide will form very rapidly on any exposed aluminum, but only in a very thin, almost molecular layer because once it forms, it blocks exposure of the aluminum to the oxygen in the air.  Anodizing (applying a positive charge to the aluminum while in a chemical bath) builds up a far thicker layer of the aluminum oxide, to the point where its physical characteristics could be used in stylus design.  I'm not saying this is what Stanton actually does, and has patented; that is probably one of their proprietary "secrets."

[richard]

Flavio wrote,

It is a conductor and the designers claim to have achieved a direct earth connection from stylus to the cartridge earth pins, with a helpful (and silent) discharge of static charges from the record."

I will test my D89 AL stylus to see if it has such an earth connection!

Just put your meter probes on the cantilever and the mounting tube. Then put the needle back onto the cartridge body and check for continuity to the pin with the ground strap.

This is basic. All Stanton's needles have had this since their second generation of stereo pickups, when they changed from Norman Pickering's interchangeable stylus design to Walter Stanton's  (before the 500/V15). The cantilever is connected to ground ("earth") via the support wire inside the mounting tube.

The Shure styli that I've checked also have a support wire and are likewise grounded, but, most unlike Shure, I've never seen them brag about it, and this points to Stanton maybe having a patent on this and perhaps bragging rights. It's a slick feature that eliminates some of the pops and clicks. Stanton has used this wire for other aspects of cantilever control, too. I wish that Ortofon could incorporate this conductivity into their standard cartridges.

By the way, Richard, do you have an idea on what does the "AL" suffix means on their styli and cartridges?

In the past, Stanton had a logic to their stylus designations. In my mind, the suffixes pertain to different types of broadcasting applications. I am familiar with American broadcasting formats and the internal traditions and requirements of different types of radio stations. Thus, I can look at the photographs in radio stations that accompany the individual cartridge listings in the company's 1979 catalog that's aimed at professonal users, and say to myself, "Oh, of course! That needle is perfect for WFMT!"

The "AL" suffix was for their intentionally worst needles. Lowest compliance, restricted high frequencies, hefty tracking.  These had to withstand abuse at low-fidelity, "top-40" AM radio stations. In this situation, who cares about response at 15,000 cycles when the transmission only goes up to 7,000 and probably rolls off at 3,000. Some of Stanton's needles do an outstanding job of suppressing noise from dirt and scratches. Although I haven't tried them, I wouldn't be surpriesed if Shure's late SC35s provide some of these advantages.

After I bad-mouthed this needle, someone else with professional experience disagreed with me. It turned out that we were both correct: Stanton had improved the needle without changing its designation.

[flavio81]

The Shure styli that I've checked also have a support wire and are likewise grounded, but, most unlike Shure, I've never seen them brag about it, and this points to Stanton maybe having a patent on this and perhaps bragging rights. It's a slick feature that eliminates some of the pops and clicks. Stanton has used this wire for other aspects of cantilever control, too. I wish that Ortofon could incorporate this conductivity into their standard cartridges.

Hi Richard, you can try wet playback of records, one of the pluses is no static electricity problems. We have a thread on vinylengine called "wet playing revisited" if you want to check it out.

Thanks for the feedback on the "AL" suffix.

[flavio81]

Anodizing (applying a positive charge to the aluminum while in a chemical bath) builds up a far thicker layer of the aluminum oxide, to the point where its physical characteristics could be used in stylus design.  I'm not saying this is what Stanton actually does, and has patented; that is probably one of their proprietary "secrets."

They have a patent on it and they describe the process! It is exactly as you say.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT4509159

Note that it's a 1985 patent. So perhaps 60s or 70s styli did not have this process, or it was still secret at those times.

[Kent T]

Richard,

The Shure SC 35 is full response, good healthy output, and rugged enough for heavy hands DJ use at AM stations and FM stations demanding this. Tracks on the heavy side. Good for what it is. The Stanton 500 AL is much more useful for noisy old mono discs with limited frequency response at the HF end. I prefer not having response beyond what is really on the record I am playing to reduce out of band surface noise artifacts and that tip really excels for mono use. One reason why archivists love them.

[richard]

Kent, I want to ask you a couple of questions relative to your broadcasting experience.

The Stanton 500 AL is much more useful for noisy old mono discs with limited frequency response at the HF end. I prefer not having response beyond what is really on the record I am playing to reduce out of band surface noise artifacts and that tip really excels for mono use. One reason why archivists love them.

I agree completely. In fact, I recall working at at least two New York recording studios where sounds lower than 30 Hz and higher than 15KHz were filtered out. Indeed, I question the need for sonics beyond that when most music and acoustical instruments are considered. So, the stylus is an excellent place to filter out things like unwanted high frequency noise and to reduce the sharpness of record scratches. Large ellipse radii can be excellent tools. Likewise, I prefer a plain conical stylus for most 78s vs an elliptical. I think that Shure got this wrong with the 78 needles for their V15 cartridges, and so did Stanton when they recently re-introduced their own 78 styli. I'm talking here about general-purpose 78 tips. Obviously, Expert Stylus provides a superb selection of stylus types to cover the vast and varied landscape of groove sizes and damage found among shellac records.

Now, back to my question: in AM broadcasting, what is the practical high-frequency limit that's actually transmitted And for popular music, what's actually required? And what are typical dynamic ranges after audio processing has been applied in AM and FM?

It's been so long since I worked in radio that I've forgotten some of the details. We transmitted classical music on FM, in stereo with an additional subcarrier for a background music service. I recall seeing that these two subcarriers occupied a huge amount of dynamic range "real estate," feeling (and hearing) that this reduction of available range ate into the classical music.

I recall thinking at the time, that we could probably have gotten by with a 60db range, but didn't come close to this in practice.  In addition, it was explained to me that our transmitter wasn't designed to have these carriers injected into the audio, and this resulted in an intolerable "squiggling" noise and a steady "grinding machine" sound. After I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, I discovered a classical radio station on the same channel as the one where I'd worked in Massachusetts. It transmitted on the same channel as the one where I worked. It broadcast the same musical content complete with a subscriber channel. And it made exactly the same horrible noises!

These degredations probably would have been swept under the rug if the content were popular music or rock, but for classical music, they were deadly.

Would you care to comment?

[willbewill]

Interesting post Richard which also begs the question as to what frequency range our speakers really need as well.

[richard]

Malcolm wrote,

Interesting post Richard which also begs the question as to what frequency range our speakers really need as well.

I read a whole bunch of loudspeaker reviews in a music-oriented hi-fi magazine, looking for correlations between the tested responses and how the critics liked listening to music on the same speakers. One thing shot out at me: the critics preferred speakers that didn't have flat top ends, but had downward-sloping highs.

So, as far as I'm concerned, what matters about speakers is not so much their range as how uniform that range is. I home listening, what satisfies many people is flatness with reduced (but not absent) extreme highs.

In the control room, we want to hear every little nitpick that's going down on the master medium, so we want monitor speakers that are flat way up in the audible spectrum. But the same response, while more accurate, won't be so nice to live with day in and day out. For this, we'll prefer "musical" speakers, and the Brits have a long history of making wonderful living room speakers, with that balance between accuracy and musical satisfaction.

One thing that the Brits weren't doing in their rich "budget audiophile" range back in the 80s was providing tone controls. The audiophiles, in their trendiness, decided that tone controls were quaint and devious (further justified by claims of added distortion caused by tone circuits). If a manufacturer wanted to bring in some money, out they went!

I have both types of speakers from the same manufacturer: studio monitors and home speakers. Sure enough, the monitors are accurate, but they can also be painful. Tone controls sure help!

The monitor's driver compliment is telling. It's what I've named a "two-and-a-half-way" speaker, quite unusual. The 8" woofer has a vented magnet, which allows the designer to extend the driver's rnage in both directions. This is combined with a tweeter with a steeply-sloped crossover, to provide a nice 2-way speaker. But then, there's an additional driver: this is a super tweeter that adds only one octave: 10 to 20 KHz. In this design, the tweeter is stonewalled within the portion of its range that it handles most smoothly. Relative to most speakers, this one has the woofer going well into a tweeter's typical range, relieving the tweeter from handling its usual bottom end. And the super tweeter takes over the upper end of the tweeter's range. The secret of the entire thing is the vented woofer magnet.

The 6" home speakers also have a vented magnet, but the crossover slopes are a bit higher and there's no supertweeter. They're really winsome. Of course, they don't go as high as the monitors, and they naturally roll off. The Western Electric speakers that I sold a few years ago had massive holes in their magnet housings, improving their speed and transparency (and thus, extending their range upward, too).

I don't "roll" equipment much. Among the speakers that I've owned are these three pairs that have really sold me on the virtues of vented woofer magnets.

I want to confess that I'm lumping audiophiles together in the aggregate for want of a better word. I don't mean all of them. I've been thinking about how people with advanced audio consciousness listen to music, and the vocabulary just doesn't have the right words. I'm going to have to make up a couple of new terms. The words that I'm considering seem so awkward and forced.

[Kent T]

Richard,

AM stations can't transmit beyond 10 Khz after the NRSC (National Radio Systems Committee) recommendations were implemented in 1981. FM frequency response is good to 18 Khz. on the upper limits. Dynamic range is 20 db at best these days, with many modern overprocessed compact discs in reality less than 10 db dynamic range. I run very light processing and get to go for audio quality as I also program these stations I am employed by. For myself, flat and uncolored response in that useful response range is important and ruggedness for daily use is critical for vinyl playback. Out of band artifacts need to be reduced here or eliminated to be useful to the overall results on air. Record wear must be also low as possible. With classical formats, processing the audio is bare minimum and 40-50 db dynamic range is possible. AM stations now are often less compressed for commercial formats compared to FM commercial stations nowadays. The FM response limits are well tailored to 99% of music the world over realistically.

[flavio81]

Richard,

AM stations can't transmit beyond 10 Khz after the NRSC (National Radio Systems Committee) recommendations were implemented in 1981.

I always wondered why they chose to limit it so much; maybe because otherwise stations would overlap each other? Otherwise if we space the stations a bit further, total hi-fi (up to 20KHz) is totally possible with AM, in theory.

[GP49]

I always wondered why they chose to limit it so much; maybe because otherwise stations would overlap each other? Otherwise if we space the stations a bit further, total hi-fi (up to 20KHz) is totally possible with AM, in theory.

Yes, Flavio, that's the reason.

When an AM signal is modulated, "sidebands" appear on both sides of the carrier, spaced by the audio frequency.   If a station is broadcasting at 900kHz and sends out a constant tone of 10KHz, its sidebands are at 890kHz and 910kHz, which are the adjacent, licensed frequencies which another station could occupy.  Interference can occur; and already would, were there a channel at 910kHz (or 890kHz); if that 910kHz station simultaneously transmitted a 10kHz tone, it would also interfere with the 900kHz station.

There is an added reason for the 10kHz cutoff.  Although licensing authorities try their best to keep closely adjacent frequencies from being used by stations that are too close together, AM propagation at night can be long-distance, in the thousands of miles.  If a receiver is tuned to 900kHz and another station is coming in and receiveable at 910kHz, the result of the two signals beating against each other is a 10kHz difference signal in the receiver. Good AM radios have highly selective RF stages to reduce the adjacent channel reception; intermediate-frequency (IF) amplification stages that reduce this effect to a low level (but also knocks out high frequency audio response); and good radios also have steep audio filtering to kill everything 10kHz and above, because even at a low level, that constant 10kHz can be very annoying.  Cheap AM radios make do with a rolloff in the audio range that starts well below 10kHz.  So, there's a RECEIVER issue, limiting frequency response.

Proposed closer spacing of the AM band at 9kHz to squeeze in more stations would make matters worse.

Experimentation with low-power AM transmitters was something that electronics hobbyists used to do, often.  At under 100mW power, if such experimentation does not cause interference for other users, it's LEGAL in the USA.  WIth a TRF (tuned radio frequency) receiver that did have good response above 10kHz, it was surprising how good AM could sound if you could stay clear of broadcast stations.  I sometimes would play a trick on friends: I have an Atwater-Kent AM radio from the 1930s which is a TRF type; by carefully aligning it and substituting a modern loudspeaker for the field-coil type that originally was used with it (and providing a filter choke in the power supply to replace the field coil), i could feed a high-fidelity signal into a low-power, homebuilt transmitter in another room, and tune in wonderful, high-fidelity music on the Atwater-Kent.  MONO, of course!

[Kent T]

Wet cleaning is not recommended unless you are doing one pass only for a transfer. Accellerates record noise after that first play.

[richard]

Adding to what Gene wrote is this:

It's been well-known that the AM sections of almost all stereo receivers and tuners have been awful. It's strange that hi-fi manufacturers would do this, but it's true. To them, AM is just an accommodation.

Car radios have usually been better, maybe even ghetto blasters. Some broadcasting engineers have prided themselves over transmitting the best possible sound within the limits of their AM medium. If their content is worth it (a whole different topic), I think that getting excellent sound out over the air is a laudible goal. Too bad that there are so few receiving devices that could make good use of a good signal. It used to be that here in the San Francisco area, we had two FM classical music stations that also sent out parallel AM signals. The music was pretty compressed, which was actually helpful when listening in the car (sometimes low-fidelity is exactly what you need!).

I recall that during the 70s, some folks in New Zealand were selling a couple of very serious AM-only tuners. Their motive was to grab the best from BBC short wave transmissions.

Well, I'm pushing an off-topic parallel thread. Again. But I'd love a bit of chat about this.

[Kent T]

I use a McIntosh MAC 1900 receiver (tuner section is a tweaked out MR 73). The AM section is wideband and the only limitation is what the station is broadcasting. Pre-1973 HH Scott and pre-1980 Pioneer receivers have excellent AM sections and will give you what is broadcast. Post 1980, save for McIntosh and few others AM tuner sections became afterthoughts.

[flavio81]

Wet cleaning is not recommended unless you are doing one pass only for a transfer. Accellerates record noise after that first play.

Maybe wet cleaning but not wet playback of a clean record!! Check out my thread on wet play (last pages are more useful)
http://www.vinylengine.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=22360