Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum

[VinylScratch]

I recently got a german Polydor pressing of "Musik aus Zeit und Raum".
After cleaning it plays fine for the most part, except for the last track on side 2 where I get inner-groove-distortion in the high-pitched section of the song.
I'm currently using an Ortofon OM5e - nothing fancy, really.
Does anyone know if some of the compatible OM10/20/30/40 styli can handle this without distortion?

Edit:
Same song, same location, same problem, only this time on a Norwegian "Magnetic Fields" LP.
It seems the Rumba doesn't like being placed at the very end... - the live version from "The Concerts in China" has zero distortion.

[VinylScratch]

So, to answer my own question: the OM30 stylus sadly does not suffice to completely get rid of inner groove distortion, it does reduce it to a bearable level, however.

On the plus side ... oh my, does Oxygene V (Disques Motors green label) sound a-m-a-z-i-n-g with this one!
The amount of treble detail (without sounding fatiguing or edgy) totally destroys the 1980s CD version (or the OM5e for that matter).

[Ziggy]

Then you must have exceptional hearing, because between the 10 20 and 30 are not that much difference.
I would totally look into a Audio Technica 440mlb. So much more clearance and more room.

[Velodynamic]

I'm more into the Grado's as I think the AT's sounds a bit on the thin side. I've never tried Ortofons though.
It maybe depends on my floor speakers playing more correctly rather than fat.
We all have our own perspective of equipments depending on how they matches the rest of our hifi systems I think.
The inner grooves of an LP is the hardest to translate by the cartridge because the speed of the grooves gradually slows down
the closer the tone arm travels towards the center of the plate/disc hence the small L/R-channel "waves" inside the groove has to be printed tighter and tighter.
One critical issue is to have the correct tracking force of the needle in your stylus.
In the case of OM30 somewhere between 1,25 - 1,75 gram.

[VinylScratch]

Mea culpa - I was letting my enthusiasm get the better of me on this one.
While the difference between OM5e and OM30 is very obvious (to my ears at least), I did some direct back-and-forth comparison with the CD and the OM30 and found it to be more of a subtle difference between those after all.
I guess that's what you get with digital media ... you just don't pay as much attention to the music than when listening to vinyl.
That being said, the OM30 still does a great job.

[VinylScratch]

I actually managed to get rid of the distortion by swapping the phono preamp of all things ... to a cheap taiwanese DJ mixer - yes, really.
Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) that thing has a ton of drawbacks compared to the Rega so I'll not be keeping it in my setup. Most notably the upper registers tend to sound really piercing.
Maybe I'll find another higher-quality preamp that does the trick without sounding nasty on other songs.