Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

No bargains but a good excuse to go for a walk

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Bath?

Yup, I used to play basketball at Riverside (as signed). London roads changed man.

After discussing a bunch of options they recommend the craply named Dali Oberon 5 as the best all rounder with a sound that won't weird me out coming from Ditton 15s (I'm looking at you Bower 606).

Tell me about it, used to have some sketchy nights in there when it was a pub!!

Hi!

Hoping for some advice/knowledge from the hive mind.....

I'm new to vinyl, got setup over Christmas and have started listening.
I'm not "audiophile", just starting out.

Most of the time we love the sound, but have noticed some aspect of recording at the top end are more "present" than their digital counterparts. Occasionally on busy/loud bits of tracks, the top end can get quite distorted (e.g. snares, kazoo, choral cresendos etc).

Any ideas if this is normal/expected when starting out, and any suggestions on how I might dial it in?
Anything I might be missing in terms of basics for setup and maintainance?

Technics SL-7 > Spartan 5 > Audio Pro A10 (pair)

Go easy on me as I'm new at this!

Cartridge is the original 202 with new tonar stylus fitted by previous owner.

It’s likely a combination of things, but a cheap mm cartridge through a quality phono stage that reveals it’s shortcomings probably has a fair bit to do with it.

Cheers @Mr_Smyth.

Any recommendation for t4p cart? (and reliable place to source one?)

I've experienced similar when I changed cartridge type and I didn't have the settings on the phono stage dialed in correctly. However, my phono stage has a bunch of DIP switches (to adjust for Cartridge Loading Capacitance, Cartridge Load Resistance and Gain) that the Spartan 5 seems to lack, so the Spartan 5 should just 'work' correctly with any MM cartridge.

Are the speakers located near to the turntable? They could be causing feedback by vibrating the lid of the turntable if they are too close. In fact, that could be even more of a problem with the SL-7, where the linear tracking mechanism is built-in to the lid.

Sounds like it could be sibilance. Worn stylus, poor cartridge setup, bad records, bad gain staging could all be contributing to it.
Considering your turntable is fully auto I'd replace the stylus first.