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Listening Tests
A kind soul donated a Music Hall mmf-2.2 with the stock Music Hall tracker cartridge. I had to rewire the cartridge which I managed to do after a bunch of cursing. Had to use every bit of my skills in fishing wires to get the darn wires through the arm. Anyway, it is done and I am thankful for having the unit.
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Subjective testing showed there is no magic to LP as a format and the combo as a musical experience. Other than groove noise possibly having a side-effect of giving one at times the impression of wider stage, the experience is definitely inferior to digital. Nothing was done in the MX-VYNL to bring more reality to music.
I fear that for getting a bit of the magic of LP one needs a much better turntable.
- Many problems with surface noise, clicks and pops are much reduced using a sharp needle cut like on my Van den Hul MC-One Special.
- Good bass needs a very good drive.
If you ask me I would always recommend to stick with a company haveing a long and reputable history of making good turntables, and not one of those companies which try to ride on the current wave, throwing in turntables made from scratch without any former experience.
Unfortunately there are not many left of those recommended companies and their products are not cheap. Linn, Technics, Pioneer (DJ), Clearaudio, Transrotor, SME come to mind. Going cheap I would try a Pioneer DJ tt, with a higher budget a Linn LP12 in one of its various versions. Anyway, I do
not recommend newcomers to invest into vinyl at all - it makes no sense if you don't already own a large collection of vinyl. The costs of getting good vinyl playback are prohibitively high.
I have a few more LPs coming in this weekend for which I have matching digital so I will continue this testing and report then.
Try to get a mint vinyl of the original
Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits and the first version of the corresponding CD (the remastered versions are compressed). I own both and on my tt CD and LP sound almost identical - the CD is somewhat cleaner but also a tiny little bit sterile. The LP sounds somewhat more convincing, there is more flow and the bass has more drive - lets name it more PRaT - here, I said it
.
This year I bought this for a test:
The package contained both LP and CD. The mastering is different which I saw when I ripped the LP and compared the tracks to the CD, so I don't know how much of the difference in sound results from mastering and how much depends on the format. The difference is also evident in the rip, of course (done with an old Edirol UA25).
However, the LP image sound is broader and not very deep, while the CD sound is a bit more narrow, but deeper and cleaner - and much louder. But the LP is more like a wall of sound (2D) than the CD (3D).