Turntables?

[scott wurcer]

As I understand it, he was not using a phono preamp per se, but rather the FET controller for his strain gauge cartridge.

A strain gauge (or optical cart) is constant amplitude and the rest constant velocity, the difference is large saying the RIAA is constant amplitude is just wrong. The old piezo carts of the past simply plowed right through the middle of the RIAA.

A friend spent months trying to get the revered Pioneer one even remotely flat.

 

[sergeauckland]

From Sao Win's data, what is most pronounced are dB channel variations at 10KHz and greater. This sort of thing would never be tolerated in the world of digits.

I think the difference is that in digital audio, it doesn't have to be tolerated. With analogue audio, it was part of the challenge. Whether tape or vinyl, things that we now take for granted or completely ignore, like flat frequency response, wow and flutter, noise and distortion were real problems to be reduced if never quite eliminated. In a way, it's what made the hobby (or pro audio) fun and a real challenge then, whereas now, even the worse of equipment is transparent (unless deliberately not so to make it stand out) so we have to invent things to worry about.

S.

 

[anmpr1]

A strain gauge (or optical cart) is constant amplitude and the rest constant velocity, the difference is large saying the RIAA is constant amplitude is just wrong.,.

Starting from a not very reliable memory I miscatigorized the Win FET-10. It was not a strain gauge design (that was the earlier SDT-10). Mea culpa. From Aczel's description:

The idea is to translate the motion of the stylus directly into [an] electrical signal through a FET input stage, without the intervening agency of a generator. This [stage] is contained entirely within the cartridge body, the gate being physically separated from the semiconductor substrate and attached to the stylus canilever, while the substrate containing the source and the drain remains fixed. A power supply is part of the system; the latter incorporates a voltage gain stage and special RIAA equalization network for each channel. Like the strain gauge transducer it is an amplitude sensor, in contrast to MM, MC and other magnetic cartridges which are velocity sensors.

However it was, Sao Win was more of an hobbyist than an established manufacturer. He always thought 'outside the box' but you paid (in more ways than one) for that kind of interesting thinking.

 

[Robin L]

Starting from a not very reliable memory I miscatigorized the Win FET-10. It was not a strain gauge design (that was the earlier SDT-10). Mea culpa. From Aczel's description:

The idea is to translate the motion of the stylus directly into [an] electrical signal through a FET input stage, without the intervening agency of a generator. This [stage] is contained entirely within the cartridge body, the gate being physically separated from the semiconductor substrate and attached to the stylus canilever, while the substrate containing the source and the drain remains fixed. A power supply is part of the system; the latter incorporates a voltage gain stage and special RIAA equalization network for each channel. Like the strain gauge transducer it is an amplitude sensor, in contrast to MM, MC and other magnetic cartridges which are velocity sensors.

However it was, Sao Win was more of an hobbyist than an established manufacturer. He always thought 'outside the box' but you paid (in more ways than one) for that kind of interesting thinking.

Back in the mid-seventies was working at the Wherehouse Records near Cal Tech, we got some brainy sorts shopping for classical LPs, my area of expertise at the time. One worked for JPL, was very interested in high-end audio, such as it was in the mid seventies. He had me come over to his place, had a winlabs cartridge in his system. it sounded, as I recall, more "digital" in its clarity, separation of voices within the soundstage. It wasn't that the cartridge sounded "brighter", it sounded better.

 

[scott wurcer]

Starting from a not very reliable memory I miscatigorized the Win FET-10. It was not a strain gauge design (that was the earlier SDT-10). Mea culpa. From Aczel's description:

However it was, Sao Win was more of an hobbyist than an established manufacturer. He always thought 'outside the box' but you paid (in more ways than one) for that kind of interesting thinking.

Possibly I over react to what I felt are somewhat exaggerated claims, I have not listened to the Winn but I have listened to the Pioneer. It's still vinyl, which BTW I still enjoy for the content mainly. In the 80's I had a $2000 vinyl setup, actually the TAS review copy of the VPI-HW19 and Jelco arm with a Grado Reference or Monster Alpha 1 cart. One of my kids destroyed this in a move and I had a cheap $300 TT/cart and frankly I can not say any of the even 40yr. old LP's sound substantially worse (from the enjoying the content aspect for sure).

 

[Wes]

Of you can just stick to digital formats and say the hell with it.

that works as long as everything you want is in a digital format and accessible to you

and it is well mastered/recorded relatie to vinyl

Those conditions do not always hold. I no longer own a TT but sometimes wish I did.

 

[ezra_s]

What I did is go for an entry-level which decent performance one. The Rega Planar 1. My vinyl library is small (probably 20 or less LP), if I become more of a vinyl enthusiast, I will upgrade to something of higher degree.

 

[amadeuswus]

Of course LP's are not always made well, why do you think Nakamichi made a $$ TT that was self centering?

I recently put on a Classic Records 180-gram reissue of a RCA Living Stereo LP. (There was a brief period when I bought such things....) Ironically, out of several records I played that day, including some budget pressings, it was the only one seriously off-center. Go figure...

Nakamichi (if it still exists) should license its mechanism to other companies. But there's probably no serious interest from consumers.

 

[Robin L]

I recently put on a Classic Records 180-gram reissue of a RCA Living Stereo LP. (There was a brief period when I bought such things....) Ironically, out of several records I played that day, including some budget pressings, it was the only one seriously off-center. Go figure...

Nakamichi (if it still exists) should license its mechanism to other companies. But there's probably no serious interest from consumers.

Some of us are more sensitive to disc eccentricity than others. The original "Shaded Dogs" usually were decent as regards disc eccentricity, but they were nowhere near perfect. Budget releases [Victrola, odyssey, even DGG budget items] usually were worse, not to mention mastering errors too numerous to mention. But, as amadeuswus notes, even high-priced remastering is no guarantee of a perfectly centered LP. One of the reasons I finally gave up on the format.

 

[scott wurcer]

I recently put on a Classic Records 180-gram reissue of a RCA Living Stereo LP. (There was a brief period when I bought such things....) Ironically, out of several records I played that day, including some budget pressings, it was the only one seriously off-center. Go figure...

Nakamichi (if it still exists) should license its mechanism to other companies. But there's probably no serious interest from consumers.

If it's worth a little fuss I said you can center an LP by hand. A tiny dot of white out on the top of the cart imaged with a USB microscope (pretty cheap) rotating the LP by hand you split the difference in the back and forth wander a couple of times (by shifting the LP, you might have to ream out the hole) and you can reduce it dramatically.

 

[0bs3rv3r]

Having spent a lot of time listening to and tweaking big idler drives, my comment on wow & flutter is that it only needs to be better than a certain amount. That amount for me is somewhere under 0.2%. By measuring the speed variations directly, rather than the pitch variations in playback sound from a test record, I believe that when it's less than that, wow from non-centred grooves, off-centre holes, flutter from non-flat surfaces and warps and cartridge tonearm resonance fluctuations, and original recording lathe wow&flutter, all combine to contribute more than the turntable itself, to the listening experience. Even the venerated 301 had wow specs of "under 0.2%". Of course good belt and direct drive tables do better, but I don't believe you can easily hear the difference above the actual record imperfections, except maybe in the case of a very few records that probably need to be hand-picked.

 

[amadeuswus]

If it's worth a little fuss I said you can center an LP by hand. A tiny dot of white out on the top of the cart imaged with a USB microscope (pretty cheap) rotating the LP by hand you split the difference in the back and forth wander a couple of times (by shifting the LP, you might have to ream out the hole) and you can reduce it dramatically.

Thanks for this reminder about how to center an LP by hand.

Put on an old Columbia "Six Eyes" LP this morning (Stravinsky conducting his Le Rossignol in 1962, in Washington D.C.). Center hole a very tight fit... but the pressing was quiet and the sound was fine, easily good enough for me to enjoy the music. I realize that vinyl's variability drives many crazy, but sometimes I am surprised how well it can work.