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Why are the vocals on some records hidden behind the music on my system?

Help! I am new to this forum, but have been into audio for over 45 years and have never had this problem before. I was lucky enough to come into some money and decided to use some of it to up grade my system for the first time in almost 30 yrs. The system consists of McIntosh MC-402, McIntosh C-100, McIntosh MCD-500, VPI HW19 MKIII, Soundsmith Aida, Furutech Ag-12 phono cable, Furutech silver head shell wires, Furutech interconnects and Furutech speaker cables (yes I like Furutech) and Raidho XT-3 speakers. Now on some albums the vocals are buried behind the music and you have a really hard time hearing the singer? Not all albums are voiced in this manner but enough that it is bothersome. I have a large dedicated man room (24 x 27) with minimum treatment. CDs sound just fine so I feel that it is with the phono preamp in the C-100? I have moved the speakers 100s of times and have them at 5' 8" apart and 8' 1" to the focal point and the soundstage is good and the vocals are better, but you still have to really listen hard to hear certain vocals on some albums. Most of my albums are 30 to 50 years old and have been cleaned with a sonic cleaner (best thing ever imho). Even some of my new heavy vinyl has this problem.
scooby2do
kalali's avatar
kalali
1,977 posts
 

You say the CDs sound fine and the vocals are recessed only on certain albums. The (only) obvious explanations are either those albums are defective or that's how the vocals are recorded on those songs. My suggestion is to play those albums on another turntable to isolate the issue.

scooby2do OP
13 posts
 
The cart. is new with only 100-150 hours on it and I used a Pro-ject cart. alignment tool and spent several hours aligning it and getting the azimuth set and used a digital stylus force gauge to set it at 1.3 grams. I just finished playing Fleetwood Mac's Heroes are Hard to Find and there it was , yet earlier this morning I played Billy Joels I am an Innocent Man and it almost sounded 3d with the finger snap 3 ft in front of his voice? I'm not 100% sure what the gain is on the McIntosh C-100 is but it is about 10 yrs old and the 1st owner just used the MC input.
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cleeds
5,646 posts
 
scooby2do
The cart. is new with only 100-150 hours on it and I used a Pro-ject cart. alignment tool
I suspect the alignment is off, and suggest you use a gauge which aligns the actual stylus and cantilever using a mirror, such as the WallyTractor.
hdm
1,055 posts
 
czarivey nailed it as far as I'm concerned.

Assuming everything is connected properly and the MM input is functional, gain is approximately 35 dB on the MM input which is considerably light for a 2.1 mV cartridge, which would probably be optimized with around 44-45 dB of gain.

On the other hand, 68 dB on the MC side is way too high, and more suited to very low output MC's, certainly below .25 mV and more likely to be effective with .1 to .2 mV cartridges.

Get a new cartridge, get a new phono stage, or modify the gain on the existing phono stage.

Most records would probably sound like they were being played through a wet blanket.
scooby2do OP
13 posts
 
Cleeds- the Pro-ject does use a mirror as part of the alignment process.hdm that sounds more likely as czarivey stated it must be a mismatch between cart.and phono stage of the C-100 as nothing else has had any real effect on the problem. Moving to a fairly high end system has shone me that even albums are recorded at different volume levels as are CDs and that the ones that are recorded at those lower levels seem to be the ones that have more of those issues. I want to thank everyone who has chimed in to help and don't stop if you have any other ideas. It may take awhile to find a new phono stage ( under $2000 ) suggestions will be acepted and looked at
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