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$575,000 (Spare Arm Tube Included)

MCH

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What amazes me the most is, how many people is going to read that review? How can it be worth to send two technicians to spend 3 days assembling it and then one more time two days to disassemble it? These guys need to travel, eat, sleep somewhere and get a salary.... But then I realize, they are going to make 40 units at half a million each, it is a 20 million USD business!!
Somewhere I have read that the relevant business in hi-fi is in the very cheap end and in the super expensive end, the middle chunk is irrelevant peanuts. I didn't believe that was true, but seeing this... maybe it is
 

peniku8

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I'm interested in how good the SINAD of a Vinyl can actually be in a perfect scenario (like how accurately the medium/pressing itself is before it has been damaged by a needle once).
Theres this comment under the article:
It's now necessary to spend $575,000 to raise the crappy vinyl medium to the same level of resolution and accuracy and noise-free performance (except when there's dust on your LP) as a $700 Topping DS90SE DAC. Congratulations on your conservatism.
iirc the Topping DAC has a SINAD of around 120db. I'm not sure if vinyl approaches anywhere near 100db even. Any data/measurements on this? I've searched for it but couldn't find anything
 

daftcombo

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I'm interested in how good the SINAD of a Vinyl can actually be in a perfect scenario (like how accurately the medium/pressing itself is before it has been damaged by a needle once).
Theres this comment under the article:

iirc the Topping DAC has a SINAD of around 120db. I'm not sure if vinyl approaches anywhere near 100db even. Any data/measurements on this? I've searched for it but couldn't find anything
IIRC, the medium "vinyl" has 60dB of dynamic range, and under that you have surface noise.
 

DVDdoug

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Yeah, crazy!!! But to me, no crazier than a $5000 record player.* I paid less than $100 for my CD/DVD/Blu-Ray player. No (audible) noise, no (audible) distortion, and flat frequency response.

I wonder how many they've sold. I wonder if they've sold any...

I'm sure TechDAS founder Hideaki Nishikawa has heard more turntables than I have, and I've heard a lot of them.
You're not supposed to hear the record player, you're supposed to hear the record. :p




* Sometimes I like to call it a "record player" because it's funnier... to be condescending. ;)
 

Robin L

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I'm interested in how good the SINAD of a Vinyl can actually be in a perfect scenario (like how accurately the medium/pressing itself is before it has been damaged by a needle once).
Theres this comment under the article:

iirc the Topping DAC has a SINAD of around 120db. I'm not sure if vinyl approaches anywhere near 100db even. Any data/measurements on this? I've searched for it but couldn't find anything
My understanding is that the inner groove of an LP is at 3% distortion, no matter what. That's the IGD that's baked in---linear tracking arms won't help with this.
 

dfuller

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Vinyl is quite a bit worse than tape in terms of fidelity. Tape is far inferior to digital. So... Why?

That said I did enjoy reading about the engineering and construction of this behemoth. All kinds of interesting design work. Whether or not it matters, I have no idea, but... I dunno. I'd rather listen to a CD or lossless streaming through my active speakers.

You're not supposed to hear the record player, you're supposed to hear the record.

This is my view as well, but vinyl as a medium (both the player and the record itself) is so hilariously nonlinear it's far from unrealistic to expect different turntables to sound different from one another.
 

DVDdoug

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IIRC, the medium "vinyl" has 60dB of dynamic range, and under that you have surface noise.
I believe that's the "theoretical best" and/or it depends on how it's measured. The average noise can be very-low before you get that one loud click. Otherwise -60dB could be acceptable, and I would have been very happy with that in the analog days.
 

Sal1950

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You just can't fix stupid!

$575,000 for this ???
snap-crackle-pop.jpg
 
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