Turntable blind testing

[sergeauckland]

I agree. That's a much more practical (and easier) way to do it. And if you're just comparing/evaluating the turntable I would use the same cartridge in both turntables. As well as eliminating the cartridge as a variable that would automatically give you level matching.

But you have to be a "rational-scientific audiophile". A lot of audiophools think digital is flawed.

Although, being a pedant, I would have to point out that's only valid if the arm masses are close. A cartridge's low frequency response depends greatly on the arm/cartridge resonance, so these have to be very close or the bass will be different. It also assumes identical phono stages, as with a MM cartridge, the capacitative load affects the HF response. Then there's the question of arm resonances if the arms are different...

See where I'm going?

That's why I have never trusted even the technical reviews of turntables back in the 1970s when these things were done.

As far as I'm concerned, all a turntable has to do is to go round at the right speed without too much rumble, wow and flutter. Everything else is due to the local conditions of arm, cartridge, mounting and positioning.

S.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

I've spent hours, or most of a weekend cleaning-up a digitized record. But I wouldn't be willing to pay someone for all those hours.

It takes me about ten minutes to use Vinyl Studio to process a record once it's been transferred (remove pops and clicks, name the tracks, add the cover art, and import the results into my playback software). I find it's good enough for my purposes. I'm not willing to spend hours - I'd just buy a cd or a download if available.

As for the "professional" part, nobody is going to hire me to transfer vinyl, but there are recordings out there where the only copies are the vinyl (or acetate if old enough) and if a record company wants to issue them, somebody has to do the transfer and I don't begrudge them for whatever time and expense they are willing to throw at the process.