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I just came home from visiting a friend who is using a VPI Prime turntable with the relatively new DS Audio DS 003 "optical" cartridge (and accompanying proprietary phono stage). He was using a giant Hegel SS amp and preamp with Aurelia XO Cerica XL speakers.
He spun me some records and I brought a few of my own (not sonic spectaculars per se, just some records I've been listening to recently).
Crikey! The speakers just "weren't there" as apparent sound sources. Palpable instruments and voices just appeared all around the speakers (depending on recording placement of course). Utterly clean and clear from top to bottom. Super vivid detail, delicate timbral nuance, amazingly lively dynamics, pitch perfect bass in track after track. Yet another experience that re-enforces for me I don't need a digital source to experience spectacular sound quality.
He has a big pair of Estelon speakers in another system, Hegel amps I think, and streaming from a raspberry Pi set up. I find his vinyl system produces more "holy cow!" sense of palpability and vividness. Of course there are some more variables between the systems than just the turntable. But on the turntable set up here was no sense of softened or truncated highs - acoustic guitar, drum cymbals, were reproduced with an almost life-like clarity and vividness/airiness, and sense of dynamics in terms of the plucking of the strings. No problem with the bass - lots of distinct character whether it was stand up bass, synth bass or a variety of electric bass. And some bass was room vibrating.
I have a feeling that if the OP had heard this set up, he would understand some of the appeal of turntables
He spun me some records and I brought a few of my own (not sonic spectaculars per se, just some records I've been listening to recently).
Crikey! The speakers just "weren't there" as apparent sound sources. Palpable instruments and voices just appeared all around the speakers (depending on recording placement of course). Utterly clean and clear from top to bottom. Super vivid detail, delicate timbral nuance, amazingly lively dynamics, pitch perfect bass in track after track. Yet another experience that re-enforces for me I don't need a digital source to experience spectacular sound quality.
He has a big pair of Estelon speakers in another system, Hegel amps I think, and streaming from a raspberry Pi set up. I find his vinyl system produces more "holy cow!" sense of palpability and vividness. Of course there are some more variables between the systems than just the turntable. But on the turntable set up here was no sense of softened or truncated highs - acoustic guitar, drum cymbals, were reproduced with an almost life-like clarity and vividness/airiness, and sense of dynamics in terms of the plucking of the strings. No problem with the bass - lots of distinct character whether it was stand up bass, synth bass or a variety of electric bass. And some bass was room vibrating.
I have a feeling that if the OP had heard this set up, he would understand some of the appeal of turntables