What am I hearing?

[JAD]

Hello all! This is really my first post/question/topic. I have a Well Tempered Lab Versalex with an EMT Tsd15 cartridge (with an A23 HommageT2 into a Leben Phono with a Leben cs600 integrated and Devore nines). I have noticed in quiet passages and in between LP cuts that you noticeably hear the next music passage a partial rotation ahead of its full volume rightful place? Is this a azimuth or alignment issue? I have experienced this before in vinyl, but as I am listening closer and have better equipment and cleaner LP's it seems more exaggerated! Any ideas anyone? I hope I asked this question in the right place (tonearms)?



Thanks!

[jdandy]

JAD.......This phenomenon is known as tape print-through and is found on some master tapes. It doesn't always happen, but on some master tapes the magnetic flux on one layer of tape oxide is strong enough to bleed through to the next layer of tape as it wraps onto the takeup reel and actually impart its recorded signal through the tape polymer onto the next layer of tape oxide coating, albeit much weaker in strength so it becomes faintly audible when the tape is played back. When this happens it cannot be removed in the analog domain and thus remains and gets cut into the lacquer masters from which vinyl albums are ultimately processed. One recording I hear tape print-through on quite noticeably is the title track on Shelby Lynne - Just a Little Lovin' which Shelby recorded on analog reel to reel tape. If this analog tape were digitized, the tape print-through could be digitally removed but then the original analog recording would not remain in the analog domain from recording to pressing.

[jimtranr]

One other possibility besides tape print-through for the pre-echo is that you're hearing a faint impression of the adjacent record groove that has "bled over" (perhaps due to a thin groove wall) to the groove being played.

[JAD]

Thanks. I really noticed it on the new 33 1/3 Kenny Burrell 'Midnight Blue' on Music Matters that just came out. I was thinking that it was operator error from me and not the vinyl or source!