Adventures in Analog: Audio-Technica AT440MLa

As much as I treasure my vinyl, dealing with it has been, at times, equal parts joy and frustration. Storing it, playing it properly, ripping it properly, all of it has been a real slow, gradual, trial-and-error process for me. With all the intricacies surrounding it, it's no wonder there's such a cult around the vinyl experience.

As far as my own experience goes, one of the downsides of getting my first decent stereo system some seven years ago was how it seemed to highlight all the weaknesses of the old, cheap turntable setup that I had. Every record seemed to pick up this unusual quality where the song at the start of the record would sound great. As the needle tracked inward, each song would sound progressively worse, until the song at the very end of the side would sound so harsh and muddy, it was almost unlistenable at times. I would later find out that the term for this was called "inner groove distortion." Even though different types of cartridges, tinkering with elements of your turntable setup (tonearm, alignment, tracking force etc..), along with different factors in the mastering process of each record are all factors in it's severity, it's nevertheless something that's inherent to all vinyl, in varying degrees...

Three years ago, with my cheap $5.00 Sears brand garage sale turntable on it's last legs, I had broke down (literally, I was nearly broke afterwards) and bought myself a much better turntable - a Technics SL-1600. Still an oldie, but a major improvement over my previous turntable (not the one pictured above, FYI). Along with the turntable, I purchased a new Shure M97xE cartridge, which I paid around $100 US on eBay for, thinking that would solve the inner groove distortion issue. The M97xE came highly, even universally recommended as a close second to the discontinued Shure V15VxMR, apparently the tracking granddaddy of moving magnet cartridges. Although the M97xE was an improvement, it never really solved the problem completely.

Eventually, I had just come to accept it as analogue annoyance. A chronic listening fatigue, if you will. Recently, after listening through my old Soulseek downloads, I had become discouraged hearing other user's rips of albums that I had also ripped for myself. I'd get frustrated wondering why other user's rips often had little to no distortion, where mine seemed to have tons of it. At that point, I decided to take a chance on the Audio-Technica AT440MLa cartridge based largely on a review I had come across of it's earlier model (the AT440ML). I've had it now for about a week an a half and I can't believe how much the distortion has been reduced. To my amateur ears, it seems nearly non-existent now on most of my records, many of which the old Shure cart had a hard time tracking. Let's just say that because of this, I've lost many hours of sleep from luxuriating in my vinyl these past couple of weeks... I don't think listening to my records has ever been this pleasurable, or even this much of a revelation.

At this point, I will be re-ripping the previous Disco Delivery post along with some of the others in the archives if/when I have some time. The awful distortion on my origial rips of the Cissy Houston album on the last Disco Delivery installment was one reason why I had held off a little bit before posting it.

I paid around the same price for the Audio-Technica as I did for the Shure ($100 US), so consider the AT440MLa a relatively low cost alternative for anyone out there looking for a solution.

LINKS:
STEVE HOFFMAN FORUMS - INNER GROOVE DISTORTION
BBC - ONEMUSIC HOW TO.. PRESS VINYL (PAGE 7 - INNER GROOVE DISTORTION) (WEB ARCHIVE)
AUDIOREVIEW.COM - AUDIO-TECHNICA AT440MLa
AMAZON.COM - AUDIO-TECHNICA AT440ML DUAL MOVING MAGNET CARTRIDGE
LP GEAR - AUDIO-TECHNICA AT440MLa CARTRIDGE
AUDIO-TECHNICA: AT440MLa DUAL MOVING MAGNET CARTRIDGE

CATEGORIES: CONSUMER ADVISORY, ARTICLES & RAMBLINGS