Bang & Olufsen Cartridges

[Man with the Golden Arm]

I have a twenty five year old B&O beogram RX-2 that came with a mid-line MMC 3 cartridge.

After a decade or so I picked up an MMC2 (a so-called quantum leap over the stock cartridge supplied w/ the table originally) replacement and played that for just a year. That went idle for about five years and the canteliver went kaflooey on one side (age and storage possibly). Now this MMC2 leans outward w/ centrifugal force of the spin, seems to grind high on the outer groove as the needle points inward.

I've recently perused and spoke with the chief at Sound Smith. They will rebuild with no charge for failure - and nearly 3 bills for a successful rehash.

Upon recently diving into my old blues lps etc I was wondering what you folks with vinyl on the fingertips might recommend. A new table is probably about the same price, don't feel like making a huge investment and I do like that little Beogram. All things considered I could probably sell that rebuilt MM2 after I got it back for the price of the service.

Any thoughts appreciated.

[wolff]

When I saw, "3 bills to rebuild the cartidge" I thought, "get a new $300 TT that will sound better anyway".

What's the deal with the arm/cartridge combo? Can't other brand cartridges fit on the arm? This is really weird, but I do not know B&O TT's.

Now, if you like what you have, keep it.

But....I'd like to see you audition, in home, a $300-$500(Rega or Project) TT set-up and then decide.

And...should you quit vinyl, I'll take your old blues LP's.

I just took a quick look at the B&O arm/cartidges, and it does not look like you could pop a nice sounding, budget Grado on there.

Edited May 17, 2005 by wolff

[porcy62]

What Wolff said.

Consider also some good used TT, you can have them at good price. Obiously TTs are more expensive, need more care and maintenance and you have to replace the stylus/cartrige ... but you know it

BTW upgrading my old Thorens to a better TT, Linn LP12, was such a musical pleasure that I started to buy tons of used vinyls, from Mahler to Hendrix, from Miles Davis to Neil Young. I think it was my best move in audio market of my life of buyer.

[sidewinder]

I had a similar experience. Used to concentrate on buying CDs and had a Linn Axis to play the 'legacy' vinyl. After getting hold of an upgraded LP12 and upgrading the pre-amp the difference was so astonishing that I started going for the vinyl wherever possible.

[SEK]

I have an old RX2 with the original (!) MMC2 cartridge in my closet. I don't usually do vinyl anymore, but that low-mass combo served me quite well for almost 15 years. It still sounded fine, tracked almost anything, warps and all, and treated my records very gently. The RX2 also has an exceptional suspension.

I gave up vinyl for various reasons that I've discussed in other threads, but I'd stick with B&O for that purpose.

I've never heard any magic from Grado cartridges, and the budget Grados, at least (based on the experiences of friends who kept gettting them), don't last very long, even with much more expensive turntables.

[wolff]

I've never heard any magic from Grado cartridges, and the budget Grados, at least (based on the experiences of friends who kept gettting them), don't last very long, even with much more expensive turntables.

It was just a cheap, short term solution to get him up and running again. Moot, since arm will not accept standard cartridges.

[StormP]

I have a twenty five year old B&O beogram RX-2 that came with a mid-line MMC 3 cartridge.

After a decade or so I picked up an MMC2 (a so-called quantum leap over the stock cartridge supplied w/ the table originally) replacement and played that for just a year.  That went idle for about five years and the canteliver went kaflooey on one side (age and storage possibly).  Now this MMC2 leans outward w/ centrifugal force of the spin, seems to grind high on the outer groove as the needle points inward. 

I've recently perused and spoke with the chief at Sound Smith.  They will rebuild with no charge for failure - and nearly 3 bills for a successful rehash. 

Upon recently diving into my old blues lps etc I was wondering what you folks with vinyl on the fingertips might recommend.  A new table is probably about the same price, don't feel like making a huge investment and I do like that little Beogram.  All things considered I could probably sell that rebuilt MM2 after I got it back for the price of the service.

Any thoughts appreciated.

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[StormP]

Why don't you try

www.bang-olufsen.com

make sure you select the Danish Customer service, don't accept no for an answer,

persist, ask for somebody knowledgeable, i.e. old technician.

I would like to hear from somebody having used 24bit tranfer and mastering software. I have currently used Goldwave but it's really too cumbersome and time consuming to get at all the clicks and stuff.

[Guest]

What's the deal with the arm/cartridge combo?  Can't other brand cartridges fit on the arm? This is really weird, but I do not know B&O TT's.

Bang & Olufsen' decks and tonearms are custom designs that require individually designed components - including all their cartridges/stylii. As far as I can tell there are no B&O decks that can house a 'normal' cartridge.

If memory serves (doubtful these days) there are/were a few companies making replacement/upgrade cartridges for B&O but I don't know anything about them.

Basically a B&O deck is always going to be rather more troublesome to get replacements for. As for upgrading? It would probably be better to look towards a new deck - one that can be upgraded itself rather easier - and that would be almost ANY other deck.

SeeWhyAudio

[Guest]

I would like to hear from somebody having used 24bit tranfer and mastering software. I have currently used Goldwave but it's really too cumbersome and time consuming to get at all the clicks and stuff.

Hi there,

I have been doing 24 bit transfers for some years now and have written many time-saving and specialist scripts for making the click removal process a little easier - anyone out there using Cooledit, I can supply them. But nothing replaces good old attention to detail and spending the right amount of time on a project.

For recording, I recommend Cooledit Pro. This has now been discontinued but I gather that Adobe have upgraded the program to include all sorts of things like 5.1 mixing, video mixing etc. It's called Adobe Audition. I'm told it's now the best in the business.

For editing and click removal I also use Cooledit - and the scripts I've written - to first of all record, normalize and sequence songs. I then work on the noise factors and declicking where possible. My philosophy on noise reduction is simple: don't use any if you can help it (it can remove some wanted as well as unwanted material.)

Declicking - be very careful to leave the clicks IN that are supposed to be there (sax and trombone clicks, drumstick taps, electrical and mic clicks, vocal chord ticks, guitar string plucks, finger-snapping etc. ALL automatic declickers are susceptible to removing HF events that are actual programme material. When something really important is simply missing from the material, it all sounds crap.

All this work is impossible without a soundcard that handles high bit rates. I use the ESI Juli@ and can't fault it for the price - you'd have to be very serious indeed to need better.

Most important points they won't necessarily tell you in the manuals:

Always turn off or shield non-involved electrical devices while recording.

Always use high quality shielded interconnects between sound-source and sound-card. (or even better, use an outboard A/D and feed the soundcard with a digital stream)

Always record and work in the 24 bit or 32 bit domain. The reasons for this are simply sound quality. Computer programs produce higher quality results (if slower) when dealing with more audio data. If you need to go down to 16 bit, make sure all the rest of your work on the file has been done first.

Always use back-ups and keep your 'undo' option ON. I can't stress this enough - losing a project is an emotionally challenging life-event!!

Always explore less intrusive levels of declicking/noise reduction.

Never use tone altering or band-pass filters (such as a 'loudness' preset) with the exception of inaudible low-frequencies (usually everything below 9Hz) unless it is to 'equalize' songs in a compilation. It is so often tempting to do so but that sort of thing is best left to the original producers of the material. There will always be exceptions to this but the bias should be towards zero tone processing.

Never try to replace something that is missing (just don't get rid of it in the first place) and never try to remove something that should be there.

Everything else is just details - if you follow these basic principles you will get good results.

Colin AKA SeeWhyAudio

[J.A.W.]

Colin,

I may have missed it, and I'm not an engineer, but what about: never maximize sound levels to the point of clipping and never use compression. Many modern (re)masters are so LOUD that it hurts my ears.

[Guest]

Colin,

I may have missed it, and I'm not an engineer, but what about: never maximize sound levels to the point of clipping and never use compression. Many modern (re)masters are so LOUD that it hurts my ears.

←

You're dead right there my friend. Over zealous engineers with volume addictions are messing with upwards of 50% of all the recorded music available on CD (that's a rough guess)

Handily, I'm building a website for my audio restoration business so I happen to have a prime example of this lunacy to show you all. I want you all to bear in mind that these are fully considered, deliberate decisions taken by highly qualified sound engineers. Makes you weep:

From Herbie hancock's Headhunters album, track 01 Chameleon.

Here is the waveform of the whole track with no clipping, taken from vinyl and normalized to 100% :

Now here is the same tune ripped directly from the SuperBitMapped 20 bit remastered Columbia/Legacy CD issue:

Spot the difference? The natural ebb and flow of the peak energy of the song is non-existent on the official cd release. How mad is that? It seems to me 90% of modern CD releases are the same way afflicted.

I've seen discs that are at least 10db over-saturated. They sound loud, but they also sound crap. No dynamics, just constantly loud. Who wants that? What I'm doing here is basically proving that CD is usually worse.

Here is the very first (and by no means the loudest) kick drum impact from the same tune on the vinyl transfer:

and now the CD version of exactly the same drum impact: (I've had to increase the amplitude range visible to show you the deformation of the waveform, the 'flat' bit I'm pointing to is at maximum amplitude!)

I mean what are they thinking? Look at that flattening of the impact area!!!! What this all boils down to is most CDs do not reproduce accurately the song's energy. This can be a very subtle effect but the fact is that you are not being sold the real mcCoy sometimes when you buy a CD.

Take a good long look at your CD collection and tremble...

Colin AKA SeeWhyAudio

[J.A.W.]

Thanks for the explanation, Colin. You're right, the sound of a lot of remasters and new CDs is crap, maximized/compressed like hell; it harms the music beyond repair

[couw]

Thanks for the explanation, Colin. You're right, the sound of a lot of remasters and new CDs is crap, maximized/compressed like hell; it harms the music beyond repair 

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oh yes, I have seen quite some similar wave forms off late and it sounds like a boombox on whichever system it is played. Which can be really tiresome and headachey too.

[Peter Johnson]

Fascinating! Thanks for the info--glad I've kept/am keeping my wax!