Of course it’s obsolete technology, in the sense that record playback itself reached it’s zenith in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Since that era, most of the advances made have been more about how much money people can be convinced to spend on a turntable.
I've seen that claim a number of times here (and elsewhere) about turntable performance reaching it's peak back when vinyl was in it's heyday.
But I'm not aware if there is good evidence for this claim.
I certainly understand that the prices charged for turntables these days, especially flagships that can cost as much as a car or cheap house, are fertile grounds for cynicism. On the other hand, many of those designing turntables were around back to the vinyl era - in other words not necessarily being some newbie starting from scratch company. Transrotor, for instance, the German company that makes my high mass turntable, has been producing turntables since 1976. There have been people putting their nose to the grindstone trying to improve turntable performance for many decades, whether it's younger engineers, or those going back to the vinyl era. I don't think it's a given that clever people would not have advanced the engineering.
I understand that of course in the vinyl era there was a fair amount of man-power put toward manufacturing turntables. On the other hand, I find it somewhat implausible that, given the great number of companies, from small to large (like Project) who have been working at turntables since, that no one has managed to advance vinyl playback equipment at all.
I certainly don't know the answer as I don't have the technical chops to vet the claims. But anecdotally, I started off with an old Technics turntable, then moved to a Micro Seiki DD-40 Turntable with an Ortofon MC 20 Cartridge, and a MA-505 Dynamic Balance Tonearm, which were as I understand it, highly rated from the peak of the vinyl era.
When I replaced it with the high mass Transrotor Fat Bob S turntable/Acoustic Solid Arm/Benz Micro Ebony L cartridge, the sound improvement did not seem subtle. It went from performance that was 'obviously vinyl' in a nostalgic way with the micro seiki to "whoah!" nipping at the heels of my digital set up in terms of the clarity, lower noise and detail. I've played records to the astonishment of many guests. In particular my father-in-law and brother-in-law were audiophiles, grew up with a great sound system (I inherited the Micro Seiki turntable from them). They ditched records for CDs immediately because they found CDs just immediately superior. Yet they could not believe records could sound like they heard from my system with the Transrotor table.
As well, a reviewer pal of mine uses a VPI Prime Signature turntable, a DS audio optical cartridge and special phono stage, and it sounds nuts! While it will of course never have as utterly clean a noise floor as digital, in all other respects - clarity, detail, dynamics, vividness...all the audiophile sonic goodies - it seems to easily compete with his digital set up to both our ears (and to some other skeptics who have heard it). In fact I find I prefer the sound to his digital set up.
So, while ultimately I don't feel in a position to settle the issue either way, I do hold some skepticism about the proposal vinyl playback has not really progressed at all from way back in the day.
