Hum/buzz from VM740ML cartridge


Good Morning.

I am new to Audiogon and got back into vinyl again (it's been a while since the mid-1990s).  I purchased myself a mid-range turntable ($399 before taxes)—the Audio-Technica LP-120XBT-USB.  I have it connected to a Schiit Mani phono preamp (once the phono switch is selected, it bypasses the built-in preamp), and my phono preamp is connected to the U-PHORIA UMC204HD analog-to-digital converter. 

My turntable has a static balanced S-shaped tonearm with an effective length of 230.5mm (9-inches), with an overhang of 16mm.  It came with the VM95E cartridge attached to an AT-HS6 headshell, weighing 9-grams with lead wires included.  I wanted a better cartridge so purchased the VM740ML cartridge and had it attached to an AT-HS10 headshell (10-grams in weight).

I’ve been digitizing my vinyl using Audacity with the recording settings at 192000Hz, 32-bit float, and so far the quality has been excellent.  For a while, everything was fine.  Then a problem started with a buzzing/humming sound coming out of the cartridge.  I came to this conclusion after taking steps to isolate the cause of the problem.

At first, I thought it might be a problem with the particular headshell wiring to which the VM740ML cartridge was attached. The reason why I thought this was because when I swapped the headshell that the VM740ML was attached for the headshell that the VM95E was attached, there was dead silence on the VM95E: no noise, buzz, or hiss at all. 

But then when I swapped back in the VM740ML cartridge and headshell, the noise appeared again. 

So my first thought was it was likely a faulty problem with the wiring inside the AT-HS10 headshell. However, after attaching the VM740ML cartridge to a new headshell, the problem still persisted—which led me to conclude that it is the cartridge itself.

I recorded a sample of the buzz/noise, but I don’t think there’s a way to upload that here.

Based on your professional expertise and know-how as audiophiles, what steps or procedures do you recommend I take to resolve this matter?

Any and all thoughts, suggestions, insights, and potential solutions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Respectfully,

Shaun B.

 

smb1978

Showing 1 response by fuzztone

Sorry, foreign to me.

As an aside, why digitize vinyl?  2 wrongs don't make a right. I used to do it before lossless streaming. Now if it's not available that is a good excuse to cue it up.