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turntable reviews?

JSmith

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JSmith
 

Phorize

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But there's no 'arm in talking about it ...... sorry :rolleyes:

One thing’s for sure, measured performance has no bearing on my enjoyment of turntables:p
 

Midwest Blade

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Nothing wrong to add a look at the turntable testing even with the numerous variables. The OP might be better served to check out the "Vinyl Engine" on line forum, they have several well seasoned "Jedi" turntable masters with a deep well of knowledge and are good guys in general, interesting, they also cover digital audio as well in one of their forums. I personally do not see myself investing any money in turntables or lp's but fully understand the current trends.
 

Tom C

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I’m thinking the turntable itself is pretty much a solved problem. Whatever errors in rotational stability and accuracy turntables have may be greatly overwhelmed by eccentricity, warp and other errors in the vinyl. The differences between tonearms may be greater due to angular errors, but then again, maybe not so much. The greatest differences may be in the frequency response of cartridges. Damping and isolation from extrinsic vibration affects the whole system and may be harder to pinpoint, but again, how important is it?
 

Martin

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I think the biggest differentiator between well setup turntables is the phono preamp and Amir has tested a few of them. Next up is the cartridge. I feel there are far too many uncontrollable variables to properly objectively test turntables. Heck, it can take hours just to get one properly setup what with azimuth, tracking force, anti-skating, cartridge and arm geometry, VTA, etc. it is a very fiddly system.

I love my vinyl rig but I know the limitations of the format. I just think Amir has far too many other things to occupy his precious time to spend it testing turntables. That said I would love to see someone take up objective measured reviews for turntables.

Martin
 

rdenney

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For wow and flutter, I would install some sort of visual target on the rim of the platter (that does not use the spindle) and measure it optically.

I would also measure noise transmitted to the cartridge through the tone arm, which might require some lightweight transducer on the arm.

But those would need enough measures to create a baseline of performance for comparison purposes--I'm not sure the raw measurements would be that useful by themselves.

Any frequency response would measure the cartridge more than the turntable. Perhaps a reference cartridge could be thoroughly measured in an acknowledged reference turntable, and then the same signal measured on other tables could be compared to it. That would be reported as "frequency response for Turntable X (under test) changes in Y ways as a compared to the same cartridge mounted on Turntable Z". My suspicions is that the differences would not be as great as people think.

I would love to see frequency-response, transient response, and maximum signal measurements for cartridges one might buy these days, with graphs showing how those change with tracking force, tracking error, and maybe even VTA (which might be a myth-busting exercise).

I would add, though, that one doesn't need particularly special test equipment to get a sense of cartridges. Just run them through any decent recent ADC into a 24/96 FLAC file and analyze it. Any aspect of that digital chain will be "instrument-grade" compared to even the best turntables.

Rick "who has plans to do a few comparisons of his own stuff" Denney
 

BDWoody

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Phorize

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JeffS7444

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Cartridges alone could be quite the rabbit-hole, and simply testing all variations of Audio Techica's VM95 series or Ortofon's 2M lineup could make for hours of entertainment(?)
 

amirm

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Cartridges alone could be quite the rabbit-hole, and simply testing all variations of Audio Techica's VM95 series or Ortofon's 2M lineup could make for hours of entertainment(?)
Cartridge measurements was the original motivation for me to start thinking about this project.
 

Frank Dernie

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One of the first jobs I was given when I joined Garrard as an engineer with 5 years noise and vibration research experience was to measure the rumble on a turntable using the Bruel and Kjaer analyser I was familiar with.
I really struggled and couldn't get a consistent result but that was what they wanted me to learn.
The TT was on a solid workbench on the 4th floor of the office building which had a carpark between it and the main road yet, as they pointed out, the inconsistent result was because the TT was picking up traffic vibration from that road.
When put on a heavy concrete block suspended from a big frame by an isolation system I got consistent results.
The point they, and now I, was making is that the cartridge output contains a lot of signal from environmental vibration as well as the groove so what a record player actually sounds like depends strongly on where in the listening room it is sited and what sort of support, plus the effectiveness of any built in isolation - a lot of turntables don't have any.
I experimented at home siting my own TT in different places, including in a different room and confirmed both that it makes a difference to the sound and that I preferred the sound with a bit of pickup over total isolation, probably because of the extra reverb it is effectively adding.

What I am getting around to is that the setup and environment the TT will be in make such a big difference - and effective isolation may not be preferred - that any measurements will only eliminate TTs with problems but in no way tell you which will sound to one's liking in use at home.

The only benefit of TTs IME is the ability to tune the sound to taste by choice of cartridge FR and location and isolation to alter the added reverb. I am not sure how universal any test could be for this.

My advice to @amirm would be not to bother since it will raise more questions than it will answer.

Much as I enjoy my record player I consider it a hobby I have decades of experience fiddling with rather than a hifi source.
I have hundreds of LPs but I don't play one often.
 

sergeauckland

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As much as I enjoy my turntables, I don't think it's worth doing measurements and reviews in the time-honoured ASR manner.

1) There are far too many variables that affect any one measurement. Just as one example, for belt-drive turntables the belt tension affects speed stability, and that varies with the age of the belt, the condition of the belt, and the distance between the pulley and the platter, which is infinitely adjustable on some turntables with an external motor pod.

2) Parameters like Wow and Flutter can only be meaningfully measured using a test record, and there's no standard of accuracy for test records, especially with things like accuracy of the centre hole and concentricity of the grooves with the centre hole. Warp also affects wow, and no record is perfectly flat. Warp wow is also affected by the height of the arm vertical pivots relative to the record surface, and is therefore dependant on the arm fitted.

3) Rumble can be measured using a bridge, but this will give different results to using a test LP, although will be more consistent.

4) Any measurement of frequency response will depend on the cartridge being used, and the loading of the cartridge by the phono stage. Fortunately, RIAA accuracy is very easy these days so at least that's not a cause for concern.

5) Bass performance depends strongly on the arm/cartridge compliance resonance, and on the environment / mounting details of the specific turntable installation.

Unlike a DAC, say, where the performance is pretty much independent of the user, turntables are strongly dependent on set-up and conditions of use, and so any review would only be properly valid for the one installation and may not translate to another, especially taking into account possible differences in arm and cartridge.

Testing a complete turntable package including an arm and a factory-fitted cartridge may be reasonably OK, but that doesn't apply to the majority of 'enthusiasts' turntables which come without arm or cartridge and with a number of possible set-up options.

Finally, with all the other things that we want to see reviewed on ASR, turntables are very time consuming, and I think it pointless to take up valuable time that could be used for reviewing loudspeakers or amplifiers for something that very few would ever buy based on measurements.

S.
 

Robin L

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Phorize

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One of the first jobs I was given when I joined Garrard as an engineer with 5 years noise and vibration research experience was to measure the rumble on a turntable using the Bruel and Kjaer analyser I was familiar with.
I really struggled and couldn't get a consistent result but that was what they wanted me to learn.
The TT was on a solid workbench on the 4th floor of the office building which had a carpark between it and the main road yet, as they pointed out, the inconsistent result was because the TT was picking up traffic vibration from that road.
When put on a heavy concrete block suspended from a big frame by an isolation system I got consistent results.
The point they, and now I, was making is that the cartridge output contains a lot of signal from environmental vibration as well as the groove so what a record player actually sounds like depends strongly on where in the listening room it is sited and what sort of support, plus the effectiveness of any built in isolation - a lot of turntables don't have any.
I experimented at home siting my own TT in different places, including in a different room and confirmed both that it makes a difference to the sound and that I preferred the sound with a bit of pickup over total isolation, probably because of the extra reverb it is effectively adding.

What I am getting around to is that the setup and environment the TT will be in make such a big difference - and effective isolation may not be preferred - that any measurements will only eliminate TTs with problems but in no way tell you which will sound to one's liking in use at home.

The only benefit of TTs IME is the ability to tune the sound to taste by choice of cartridge FR and location and isolation to alter the added reverb. I am not sure how universal any test could be for this.

My advice to @amirm would be not to bother since it will raise more questions than it will answer.

Much as I enjoy my record player I consider it a hobby I have decades of experience fiddling with rather than a hifi source.
I have hundreds of LPs but I don't play one often.
A friend of mine is dying to ask whether during your time with Garrard any discoveries were made on the hugely important issue of which plinth design/material most effectively mitigated rumble in 301/401s. It’s not me you understand, definitely a friend:facepalm:
 

rdenney

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Maybe instead of an ongoing series of product tests, Amir could test certain features and their relationship to outcomes. There are lots of myths, but we don't know for all of them 1.) is the effect real? or 2.) is the effect important?

Examples:
  • A comparison of performance across a range of VTA adjustments.
  • The effect of cartridge alignment error for a few common cartridges, and how much difference it really makes using the supplied alignment jig versus protractor tools (and the variations between those).
  • For common cartridges, the effect of capacitance loading. Here is where basic test data is useful: What is the capacitance of supplied phono cables? I use the cables that are installed on my Thorens, and my Adcom preamp imposes 100 pF loading. I have to guess at the capacitance of the arm wiring (which is stock) and the supplied cable. Some cartridges may be more sensitive to that than others.
  • The difference between conical, elliptical, Shibata, and microline styluses on the same cartridge.
  • The effect of tracking force on things other than wear and tracking reliability.
  • The effects of different resonant frequencies. Much Internet lore is devoted to coordinating the compliance of the cartridge to the effective mass of the tonearm. How important is this in the real world?
  • Really how does one estimate compliance in the terms needed by the formulas in use (which are often at a different frequency than what the manufacturers report)
Some of these are already discussed on the Internet with lots of words and the occasional calculation but very few real measurements.

Given that many folks will continue to sustain a vinyl playback capability, where is the Pareto front? What things requiring 20% of the effort attain 80% of any resulting improvement? That is not at all easy to learn from the Internet without having to filter out whole fog-banks of FUD.

Rick "recognizing that I know too little to understand most of the real issues" Denney
 

JeffS7444

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I'd love to know whether a good, relatively inexpensive setup can deliver "good as it gets" sonics, and to what extent we can color it to sound like very costly, audiophile-approved setup via DSP and maybe by introducing harmonics.
 
OP
D

dpturner

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interesting discussion, thanks everyone. to be clear, i am not *requesting* Amir perform turntable testing; i agree, the results would probably not be worth the significant effort required to obtain, and would be difficult to apply/reproduce in any typical home setting.

dt
 

DSJR

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Please chaps/Amir - DON'T!!!!! That way leads to despair and on a site like this many many purely subjective arguments and emotional outbursts ;)

Turntable 'systems' are all about what the owner/user *thinks* is a good sound! It is possible to get a fairly neutral tone from records, but the discs themselves, with band limiting and processing when the vinyl was cut, is going to prevent proper high fidelity to the original source far more than many better turntables out there. End users and the dealers selling the effing things usually don't have a clue what 'correct' sound is and a few UK types still don't accept digital as being a valid sourse, let alone a better one - maybe that's changed as Linn and Naim now sell a lot of streaming solutions, but it would have taken these two brands to make them even look that way in my experience.

I like the German Lowbeats site for cartridge tests, as they usually measure them properly and provide soundbites too. Deck used was a Rega 9 which is pretty inert as a player I remember.

Nah, leave vinyl for us masochists to enjoy or love/hate. Best format of all for chopping, changing, w@nking over and so on..

P.S. Frank's comments regarding rumble tests reminds me from a tale once told me that apparently, the early and rather feedback prone Technics direct drives had their rumble figures measured and confirmed by suspending them on cotton threads from the ceiling - or something similar... Not sure which Garrards Frank was trying to measure, but in a Hi Fi Sound test of the 401, it was found the deck was mounting board sensitive, but the main 'rumble' was tuned very low in frequency, low enough to be filtered out by broadcast electronics and also, the then ubiquitous and much misunderstood/maligned Quad 33 preamp ;) which removed everything below 35Hz, ostansibly to prevent the matching 303 power amp going apesh*t into their 57 electrostatic speakers (I cite an HFN article as evidence).

P.S. Please excuse my UK-centric experiences here.
 
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