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Trying to understand the turntable/vinyl world...

Newman

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Just commenting on what I’ve read on this thread. To get anything worthwhile out of vinyl reproduction costs! As DWI said precision engineering is needed, you can spout on as much as you want about cheap DACs being all you need for a decent result whether for streaming or CDs and I won’t put up much of an argument. Precision mechanical engineering can’t be done on the cheap.
Fell for all the BS spouted about how good cheap turntables are, the ones I bought went straight to EBAY. In the end realised if I wanted good vinyl sound it would cost, bit the bullet and it worked. For the first time no snap, crackle and pop when playing vinyl.
As a rider most of my listening is streaming based for convenience and very enjoyable too !
See my expanded post #837. Are you saying @IPunchCholla ’s story about modest TT sounding very close to digital is part of “all the BS sprouted about how good cheap TTs are” (your words)? Or does the “precision engineered TT” leap ahead of digital for sound quality? You know, the thing that nobody ever claims here…
 
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DWI

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Common sense at last! Many posting on this thread have never heard a precision engineered turntable, preferring to sneer at the thought of vinyl being worth listening too. There are others who post pictures of turntables that weren’t any good 40 years ago when they were new. Then going on about how good automatic stacking multi disc turntables were? One further thought on the turntable / digital discussion is the mechanical inertia in a turntable ensures it can’t track the distortions inherent in digital reproduction.
The science is mainly vibration control and materials science, so you get the ultra-lightweight Rega P10 that the designers basically called an anti-vibration device, huge high mass units from the likes of Clearaudio, and companies like SoundSmith developing aluminium alloys for cantilevers that are effectively as good as much more expensive ruby boron types, so you can replace the cantilever for every couple of years for the very modest sum of $250 rather than $thousands.

The Rega P3/Elys2 (my son has one) is probably the biggest bargain in audio, almost 40 years of refinement for £700. No need for vintage.
 

DWI

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Just commenting on what I’ve read on this thread. To get anything worthwhile out of vinyl reproduction costs! As DWI said precision engineering is needed, you can spout on as much as you want about cheap DACs being all you need for a decent result whether for streaming or CDs and I won’t put up much of an argument. Precision mechanical engineering can’t be done on the cheap.
Fell for all the BS spouted about how good cheap turntables are, the ones I bought went straight to EBAY. In the end realised if I wanted good vinyl sound it would cost, bit the bullet and it worked. For the first time no snap, crackle and pop when playing vinyl.
As a rider most of my listening is streaming based for convenience and very enjoyable too !
Rega manage to make great products at great prices because they manufacture locally in large volumes with a brilliant supply chain developed over decades, making thousands of turntables per week.

The phono stage is of course critical and even for MC there are some fabulous machines for £1,000 or less. At one point I had a Vertere Phono Mk2 that cost £600 second hand that is dead quiet and super revealing. For MM the Schiit Mani for £150/$150 seems the pick of the bunch.

My set-up did cost a lot more, but I've had most of it 10 years already.

I would only buy from someone who manufactures themselves as the cost of subcontract machining adds dramatically to the price.
 

Cote Dazur

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I'm curious how these hold up to controlled testing.
So am I, back in the late 80’s, when I did most of my TT exploration, comparing high end TT to lower end TT, the conclusion was fairly easy to reach on which had superior performance both with music and records noise.
Controlled testing would be fascinating to see.
Are those beloved high precision TT over build and there fore over price, it is possible, mutt point when you have been the owner for almost 40 years and still enjoy them, but crucial point for anyone considering acquiring one now.
Finding a test that is representative of what we hear and related to measured mechanical precision in arms and TT will be a challenge. I suspect new comers will have to trust their ears for a little while longer.:)
 

Suffolkhifinut

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Does it? I've mind (but no time) to setup some experiments to vet this. Similar to the proclamations how sensitive line-type styli are to alignment, I'm curious how these hold up to controlled testing.
Yes it does! When you‘re trying to get a stylus tracking a groove in vinyl, mechanical play in the mechanism must be minimaL Try pricing machine tools capable of such precision and you might understand it better?
 

Suffolkhifinut

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Rega manage to make great products at great prices because they manufacture locally in large volumes with a brilliant supply chain developed over decades, making thousands of turntables per week.

The phono stage is of course critical and even for MC there are some fabulous machines for £1,000 or less. At one point I had a Vertere Phono Mk2 that cost £600 second hand that is dead quiet and super revealing. For MM the Schiit Mani for £150/$150 seems the pick of the bunch.

My set-up did cost a lot more, but I've had most of it 10 years already.

I would only buy from someone who manufactures themselves as the cost of subcontract machining adds dramatically to the price.
When Rega first started out Mr. Gandy got a precision mechanical engineering plant in Tiptree, Essex interested. They were going through a slack period and were interested in his project. Later on he took the factory over and transferred it to Southend. They are so successful manufacturing tone arms, new models are brought out when the machine tools need renewing. This way manufacturing costs are kept down, making their products superb value for money.
My vinyl set up is:
Project Xtension 10 turntable, the arm was rewired by Audio Origami in Scotland.
Shelter 301Mk II MC cartridge, alternating with a Sumiko Blue Point Special EVO III
Preamp Primaire R15
 

Sal1950

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For the first time no snap, crackle and pop when playing vinyl.
Would you please explain to me how the relative quality of any turntable can remove the defects in a LP's groove? I'd love to be enlightened.
 

IPunchCholla

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See my expanded post #837. Are you saying @IPunchCholla ’s story about modest TT sounding very close to digital is part of “all the BS sprouted about how good cheap TTs are” (your words)? Or does the “precision engineered TT” leap ahead of digital for sound quality? You know, the thing that nobody ever claims here…
Yep. There they are. The evidence free vinyl is better claims. For those that are making those claims, there are threads in this very sub-forum that measure different TTS. You might want to throw the data for your one offs in there, as that could actually be useful, rather than making evidence free claims.
 

DWI

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I've never understood how anyone can align those round bodied cartridges. Mine have to have straight sides and an easily visible stylus, unlike Koetsu's where you can hardly see it. Then with a protractor and acrylic alignment gauge it's pretty straightforward. An arm with VTA on the fly helps, but I have a little usb magnifier to check the rake. I use a dual pivot so there is not azimuth issue, there are some arms with a knife edge bearing that is another approach.

I'm not sure how much fun it was getting to do cartridge stuff properly, it was a long time ago, but now I find it pretty routine.
 

Sal1950

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Perhaps your "bedside manner" could use some refinement. Put in electronic terms - a little feedback (reconsideration) does wonders for an amplifiers (brain) output (spoken or written words).
Not trying to start a "food fight", just an observation from my viewpoint,
Ah, you poor thing, such delicate sensibilities.
 

DWI

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Would you please explain to me how the relative quality of any turntable can remove the defects in a LP's groove? I'd love to be enlightened.
It can't, but a good turntable properly set up will track even fairly warped records.

Snap and crackle comes from dirt and static. This is best removed with wet cleaning. I once bought a box set where the foam filler had been placed directly on a record and decomposed. I scrubbed it off with a kitchen sponge, put it through my cleaner and got it back like new.

Both my son and I get records from second hand dealers that they cannot sell because of dirt and grime, we clean them up and they play fine.
 

JP

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Yes it does! When you‘re trying to get a stylus tracking a groove in vinyl, mechanical play in the mechanism must be minimaL Try pricing machine tools capable of such precision and you might understand it better?

I understand your point, I'm asking if you've any actual evidence that it holds water?
 

JeremyFife

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Just commenting on what I’ve read on this thread. To get anything worthwhile out of vinyl reproduction costs! As DWI said precision engineering is needed ...
Genuinely interested in this (slightly worried too)

I get tremendous enjoyment from a very modest set-up of around £700;
Pro-ject Debut III for £320
Mechanical upgrades: aluminium sub-platter, Acrylic platter and Pro-ject clamp for £150
Ortofon OM20 (Moving magnet, nude elliptical stylus) for £120
iFi Zen Phono phono-amp for £130

Compares quite well with good digital via my Bluesound Node streamer (£300, eBay) ... which I'll probably replace with a WiiM Mini streamer (£100). The DAC is integrated with my pre-amp but if that was stand-alone it would be something like a Topping D10 (£110)

New vinyl is £25 a pop (delivered), second-hand varies wildly (should be cheaper, but good releases tend to cost) ... my streaming subscription is £16 per month (Amazon Ultra HD family subscription). CDs are given away (let's say £5) and when I buy these I rip them as FLAC to the NAS and stream.

These numbers always make me smile (at myself!) but I'm happy with the value for money - in a purely personal assessment.

For all that is holy, please do not make me think I need to drop £10k (entry level SME?) to really hear vinyl

... or do I?

Genuinely interested, as I said - especially on an ASR forum where there will be something to back up the claims
 
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Sal1950

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Balle Clorin

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Would you please explain to me how the relative quality of any turntable can remove the defects in a LP's groove? I'd love to be enlightened.
Take care of your records, mine are pristine quality and no pops or clicks 50 years after I bought my first
 
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Sal1950

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IPunchCholla

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Genuinely interested in this (slightly worried too)

I get tremendous enjoyment from a very modest set-up of around £700;
Pro-ject Debut III for £320
Mechanical upgrades: aluminium sub-platter, Acrylic platter and Pro-ject clamp for £150
Ortofon OM20 (Moving magnet, nude elliptical stylus) for £120
iFi Zen Phono phono-amp for £130

Compares quite well with good digital via my Bluesound Node streamer (£300, eBay) ... which I'll probably replace with a WiiM Mini streamer (£100). The DAC is integrated with my pre-amp but if that was stand-alone it would be something like a Topping D10 (£110)

New vinyl is £25 a pop (delivered), second-hand varies wildly (should be cheaper, but good releases tend to cost) ... my streaming subscription is £16 per month (Amazon Ultra HD family subscription). CDs are given away (let's say £5) and when I buy these I rip them as FLAC to the NAS and stream.

These numbers always make me smile (at myself!) but I'm happy with the value for money - in a purely personal assessment.

For all that is holy, please do not make me think I need to drop £10k (entry level SME?) to really hear vinyl

... or do I?

Genuinely interested, as I said - especially on an ASR forum where there will be something to back up the claims
The answer is no, you do not need to spend a lot of money to get good audio off of a TT. The defects in the record will swamp any issues in most reasonably well running TTs. Below are my measurements from my SL-QD33. I purchased it for $70. Besides a light cleaning, I've done nothing to it. For all the blather about MM vs MC vs ... tone arms, and styli, vibrations I haven't seen any reasonable A/B comparisons that show a difference that would be reasonably audible. Certainly nothing that compares to the massive amount of out of phase reflections our brains deal with with absolutely no problem.

IMG_0154.PNG
 

rdenney

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If we are going to have a serious discussion about the mechanical requirements of a turntable, we need @Frank Dernie in here.

I've never owned at turntable with any claim to the state of the art. But even the lowly TP-11 tonearm on my TD-166 plays surface noise less loudly than the visibly sloppy tonearm on my Technics SL-20.

Back in the deeps of time, say a little over 30 years ago, I listened to a comparison made using the same speakers and cartridge models between a Rega, a Linn Axis, and a Linn LP-12 of the day (which I seem to recall had the Valhalla power supply, though I doubt that makes any real difference). There was a difference in the way the turntables were made, to be sure. I don't recall much about the Rega, except that the price given to it at the time was around $500 (the Axis was somewhat more; the Sondek something around $2500 as I recall). The Axis is an unsuspended table, maybe with some damping mounts (I don't remember), using the Basik tonearm--not a tonearm that gets a lot of respect outside of LinnWorld. The difference between the three, played into the same speakers (Magneplanars) and using the same model cartridges was noticeable. We were listening to Dmitri Sgouros, as a child prodigy, playing Rachmaninoff as I recall. The difference at the time was that loud attacks tended to persist with the cheaper tables, and it sounded to me like the system was adding reverberation. The LP-12 did so noticeably less. Was that how it was placed in the room to minimize acoustic feedback? Was it something superior about the suspension? Was it a different in tonearms? (Not unlikely.) Was it the secret insertion of a capacitor by an unscrupulous sales guy? No clue. (Doubtful on the last one--he had already demonstrated a willingness to keep me from spending money unnecessarily). But my engineering brain thinks it's plausible that vibration and rattling in an acoustic system will have audible consequences, and eliminating those would prevent sharp transients from smearing mechanically in the system. To me, that's a mechanism by which surface noise might be reduced in its audible impact.

I've looked at waveforms of clicks and pops often in order to remove them after making a needledrop, and I have to say I've never seen evidence that the transient was persisting or ringing in the time domain with my current setup. The tail of the waveform is as sharp as the head. I have not compared same between my two tables, but that would perhaps be interesting. It would be difficult, however, to compare using the same cartridge, which would be a confounding element.

My turntable uses an AC synchronous motor with 16 (or is it 24?) poles. The sine wave coming out of the wall at my house is not super well-formed, if I'm to believe my oscilloscope. The sine wave coming out of the Music Hall Cruise Control power supply I'm using (for fine speed control), however, is quite clean and well-formed. Music Hall claims better than 1% distortion and I believe them. Does that have an audible effect? Not in the least. But I do like being able to fine-tune the speed of recordings so I can play along.

I will say that I exercised due care in mounting the cartridge, but even with that had a 1-dB channel imbalance that changing the anti-skate amount to something different from Thorens's recommendation resolved. I have also carefully checked the center bearing and adjusted the suspension. And though it was gross overkill, I was pleased to have an excuse to level it with an SPI precision machinist's level. I also checked the runout on the bearing and relubricated it. None of that made any difference I could hear, except for the channel imbalance, and that mostly had the effect of moving the phantom center a bit to the mid-point between the speakers.

For lots of my old records, I get low-frequency noise in "silent" grooves as high as -40 or -35 dB in the bottom octave, and the fact that the needle is running in a groove is plainly audible even when there is supposed to be no signal. That has been true for every demonstration of turntables I've ever heard no matter what the price point--every single one. Rarely does it intrude on the music unless the LP is particularly bad--if it's cranked up enough for that background noise to be obvious in my residential environment, music at close to full scale will cause damage.

(Fremer did an online YouTube comparing an LP to a digital source, using some fancy binaural microphone setup he claimed revealed the differences. To me, I heard a bit more of that reverberation in the low frequencies plus it was plainly obvious when the needle dropped into the groove, even after the landing impact. Maybe he thinks that reverberation is an improvement.)

It is also true that digital needledrops are identical in sound to listening to the LP directly--this has been observed many times. For me it's true no matter what the digital resolution (meaning: 16/44 sounds the same to me as 24/96). There is no need for blind testing if one cannot hear a difference sighted--blind testing is a method to demonstrate that a perceived difference is real. There are those who would say that my system is insufficiently revealing, but I rather think that's BS. Others will say my ears are insufficiently revealing, and they might have a point. What it tells me is that if I want to copy an LP exactly, digital is good enough, even when it is capped at 22 KHz and 96 dB S/N. (And that's theoretical--the real world won't be as good.) There's no question of going the other way, of course. I think we all realize that.

Would a much more finely made turntable make an audible difference? I have heard such improvements in my life and the memory of that experience is unfaded. But the difference was subtle enough. I rather think my Thorens, as adjusted by me, is somewhere between that Linn Axis and the Linn Sondek, but of course that is a comparison I have not made.

None of that matters a whit when I'm playing a favorite record. And whatever high frequencies the stylus has peeled off the LP I can't hear anyway.

Rick "who does measure good system response at 15 KHz, despite not being able to hear it" Denney
 
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IPunchCholla

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It can't, but a good turntable properly set up will track even fairly warped records.

Snap and crackle comes from dirt and static. This is best removed with wet cleaning. I once bought a box set where the foam filler had been placed directly on a record and decomposed. I scrubbed it off with a kitchen sponge, put it through my cleaner and got it back like new.

Both my son and I get records from second hand dealers that they cannot sell because of dirt and grime, we clean them up and they play fine.
What cleaner do you use?
 
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