Thanks stops, that's an easy look. As it is, I basically "rescued" my needle and took what the VPI would give me in terms of height where it seemed it lacked. I don't think I can go any higher which is odd to me.
Well I must be high anyway.
I've been in this hobby for 45 years. Occasionally you hit on something and want to stop the presses, cease all tweaking and wonder what is was you did right. Usually that is but a fleeting moment as we (or I) march on because, "that other recording is effed up and I gotta fix it too syndrome". I digress.
My sub came back from JL Audio, and in one piece even though the palette was broken.. I won't go there, FedEx sucks IMO.
With default settings on the sub, off I went. Last night it sounded way too good without touching the subs volume control. I had changed the location and created what I call the catroffer. It's my Fathom F113 built into the cat tree. It's cat and baby proof to boot. It sits on two large 4" thick slabs of solid marble. This is a new "sub" location to the room. I was listening through my PS Audio PerfectWave DAC using Bridge, streaming FLAC and oh my was I missing the lower octaves. As I mentioned earlier the MBL's only perform to 50Hz. Changing to vinyl means changing cables and I knew my extremely fragile cables were getting flakey so today I re-terminated the Furutech RCA's on both cables. Back to the room to hear my vinyl rig now armed with a sub. (Last time I used the sub is when I introduced the phono preamp to the sub and the sub said "I'm dead now fix me". So this is a new setup if you will).
I was listening to Shiny Toy Guns "Season of Poison" on the DAC/Bridge, a well recorded and melodic album in a hardcore way with dynamics to die for. You could destroy a lessor set of speakers with this title. It was awesome sounding and the sub wasn't even "dialed in". So I performed the SRO, used my iPhone audio tools, made some minor adjustments after I had a good response curve, I replayed through the DAC. It was a bit more controlled, certainly more tuneful but how will it sound through the vinyl medium? Oh ya, I had found a copy of "Season of Poison" on vinyl. What I expected was diminished dynamics and lost resolution but that's not what I heard. It was bigger, airier and more dynamic, yet easier on the ears. We weren't as tense in some dramatic passages as we were driving digital through the DAC. Nothing was lost. Amazing. Next up was Neil Young "Chrome Dreams II". We played the cut "Ordinary People". We've listened to this tune 5 dozen times and more. It's a great tune on a great album and well recorded in Neil Young fashion. But I gotta tell you it was one of those moments. We were swept away in the music. It was awesome. There's a lot going on in this tune but everything had it's place, every instrument, every note. Neil's voice was placed center, just behind the plane of the speakers and so real. The micro-dynamics, the nuances and the sense of individual instruments were more displayed through the vinyl medium as well. The hard to capture background vocal, just a muffled sentence really, was captured clearly, distinctly and with body and texture that simply doesn't exist on my cutting edge digital setup. It was revelatory. I could only grin ear to ear and at the end of the song, both Dad and I stood up and clapped. It was one of those moments.
So I have to believe that my setup, however crude, isn't that bad after all. I'm pretty fussy overall and generally pay attention to detail. There's just so much to learn in audio, even after all these years I guess that's what keeps me coming back to trying new things. After rebuilding my cables I cleaned them with G5 then add some pretty specialized oil that enhances and protects connections between cables. The cleaning process is something I perform on occasion so I cannot attest to whether this enhanced or helped my cause, I doubt it hurt.
I would like to be certain I'm at least as close as I can get to proper tracking, then as others suggested, leave it alone and enjoy the music.