I need turntable advice!

I'm thinking how the aluminum alloy subplatter upgrade for the Rega is superior to the stock plastic one. The belt around the platter arrangement avoids all of that entirely.

 

Isn't the reason to have a belt drive is to isolate motor vibration from the platter. Some of those multi$K turntable don't even have the motor attached to the turntable.
When thinking about motor vibrations in a turntable, have you considered the recording lathes that cut the master lacquers and how they are driven? Have you considered the tape drives that the session tapes were recorded on, mixed on and played back on to cut the lacquers.
The reason I bring this up is that I often hear a rumble in between tracks on an LP that isn't coming from my entry level turntables. When ripping vinyl to computer, I am often amazed that I can often hear the tape start up just before the track starts.
Noise and vibration starts long before a record is played. You can get the quietest turntable in the world, but you still have to contend with the anomalies present on the recorded disc.

 

You can't isolate the platter from the motor unless you use some kind of non-contact drive like some kind of magnetic induction or something, otherwise the motor has to be in contact with the platter to drive it. The motor is either directly in contact with the platter as in a direct drive table, or indirectly in contact coupled through the belt and subplatter or belt itself when it directly drives the platter.

Keeping the motor separate from the plinth reduces any motor vibration transmitted by the plinth to the arm and/or platter, but it doesn't address noise coupled by the belt to the platter.

Mechanical noises and spurious resonances are the bane of vinyl playback. You can never get away from them entirely, you just have to design around them.

Direct drive tables get away from some of the motor vibration issues -- yes the motor is directly coupled to the platter and there IS motor vibration but it's very low frequency vibration; there are still potential motor regulation artifacts, particularly if you're using a strong motor and a very lightweight platter. There also can be electromagnetically induced noise by having the motor right under the pickup, some DC motors can whine.

And of course there are things you can do to minimize motor noise on a belt driven table -- electronic regulation plays a role, decoupling the motor from the plinth is one of 'em (though that doesn't address belt transmission), in my old Merrill table, a sprung subchassis type, the motor is in a lead pod to minimize EMI, attached to the plinth of course and not the subchassis, and submerged in damping fluid, and the platter includes heavy peripheral ring that can be used for peripheral clamping but also help with a flywheel effect, and the subplatter is damped with lead. But there's not zero vibration transmitted to the subchassis through the belt.

Also, rumble can have sources other than motors -- platter bearing noise often plays a big role -- and belt drive turntables can have extremely low measured rumble (as can DD's), but motor artifacts can still sometimes cause a image blurry and a loss of detail without being able to be perceived as audible noise or rumble because of vibrations being transmitted to the platter or arm.

Of course there are anomalies on discs -- imperfect centering, surface flaws, the whole RIAA eq scheme, in the old days the common attempts to roll off highs and sum lows, noisy vinyl forumlations, etc. But those are fixed, you can't do anything about those except not listen to vinyl -- which most people don't, and it's perfectly understandable. Those of use who like vinyl or who are older and have huge collections of vinyl, need some solution that minimizes the added motor vibration, bearing noise, record flexing and friction, tonearm ringing, etc.

Personally I don't run into cutting noise rumble all that much -- there's some kind of continuous rumble I hear on say the old Reiner/Heifetz Tchikovsky Violin Concerto, but that on all copies from the original RCA to newer audiophile reissues, and they weren't cut with the same lathe, so I assume its something on the master tape (and of course tape decks are motor driven affairs and tape itself flexes so the problems of wow, flutter, and other kinds of pitch instability, and motor related problems can also effect master tape both during tracking and playback).

I think if you're encountering relatively high levels of mechanical noise between tracks regularly, turntable and noise arm resonances (and issues with tonearm/cart compliance matching), may well be a factor -- platter bearing noise and tone arm tube ringing in particular. I mean, you can have some noisy-ass vinyl, no doubt. But turntables are cockamamie Rube Goldberg contraptions subject to all kinds of vibration when what you're trying to isolate is the tiny movement of the stylus and cantilever in response to the groove wall modulations. It's crazy to think that it works even as well as it does!

 

Well, maybe you get better speed regulation with the aluminum vs. the lightweight plastic one, or more resistance to movement in response to motor vibration (it might just be harder for the motor to get the heavier subchassis moving). I dunno. I also have often wondered if there are different belt materials that could do a better or worse job of reducing transmission of motor vibration, and I know Rega sells some kind of upgraded belt, and some designers have used very thin belts, etc.

 

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Pretty much what I was getting at, records have inherent anomalies which can't be overcome, whether created when the lacquers were cut or from the source material. If the source is magnetic recording tape, before it gets to the cutting lathe it usually goes through generations: Session, mixdown , album master and possibly duplicates. This amounts to, at the minimum, tape hiss+tape hiss + tape hiss. Years ago, my hearing was acute enough that I could actually hear tape hiss. I'd say the Santana "Abraxas" LP might have been among the worst for tape hiss. I still can hear rumble and other low frequency sounds. I hear the anomalies especially in the newer audiophile heavyweight vinyl pressings. The cutting lathes, as well as the cutting heads, are pretty much the same ones they used for decades and including the blank lacquers. It's the same story with the record presses, although modernized ones are being developed. The vinyl has changed over the years and some, like Classic Records, used a proprietary vinyl mix.

 

Sure, but all that has nothing to do with the caliber of turntable playback (and tape hiss on old recordings often is plenty audible, whatever the playback source).

On top of all that a turntable -- which is almost like a sensitive seismic measuring device trying to track just the miniscule movement of the stylus and cantilever assembly -- adds all kinds of noise and resonances of its own, the record itself flexes and can be a source of spurious vibration too, tonearm tubes ring, bearings make noise, etc.

The differences between adequate turntables and better ones, among other things, relate to how well the tables terminate vinyl resonances, isolate from environment and motor noise and don't add ringing or chatter of their own, etc. In many ways I think the resonance signatures of tonearms go a long way to defining how a turntable sounds -- all those SL1200 and related Technics to me have a kind of bloated upper bass lower midrange to me which I think is down to tonearm resonances -- and the ability of a table to terminate vinyl resonances and isolate from motor and environmental resonances go a long way to making one more dynamic, more revealing of inner detail and more tonally neutral than another. There are better and worse turntables and tonearms.

 

This is a good TT and a good price, other dealers may be matching this price.

Rega RP1 Turntable »

 

No sh1t !!

 

One on Audiogon now. Also Needle Doc is discounting theirs with the advent of the new Rega tables

 

I have experimented with different turntables over the years. In one thread, someone suggested putting "o" rings on tubular tone arms to dampen resonances. With 4 of my turntables having removable headshells, this was easy to try. I didn't notice any difference. I tried putting extra rubber dampening material in various places on my 6 turntables with aluminum platters(1 is an idler drive on a heavy cast aluminum plattered QRK ) . No difference in sound. None of the aluminum platters "rang" when tapped with a mat on them. Of the types of mats I used: felt slip mats, felt glued to the TT, rubber mat, felt slip mat on rubber mat, felt glued to rubber mat and cork mat. Of all the different mats, the only difference I have noticed is with the cork mat. When playing a record on a cork mat turntable, I noticed very little, if any, static electricity being created. I have found that turntables with plastic platters have a tendency to charge a record with static electricity from playing it. Acrylic materials are known to create static electricity in clothing, so I would assume the same would go for anything made of acrylic.

 

Well, we have different opinions and experiences.

 

Used Rega Planar 3.

 

Yep. And that's what a forum is all about.
When we were testing the different turntables, the output was also attached to an oscilloscope and we were playing silent groove and tone test records. Interestingly, tapping the aluminum platters while playing the test records at most resulted in a thud, but nothing in the ring range. Even with just the record(180g & 200g) in contact with the platter and no mat.

 

Rubber mats are vibration killers, the best. I don't think it's just my opinion.

 

Actaully rubber bounces. Depending on the frequency of the energy and the hardness of the rubber, rubber mats can reflect a lot of energy instead or deadening it.

 

Guys, Mats are really tricky business. Which mat (or no mat) works best depends on just about everything (except maybe moon phase ). All of these things can effect how a mat performs: The TT platter weight , density and material, the tonearm resonance, the compliance of the cartridge. How the TT is supported (super ridged or flexible springs and everything in between). The record clamping methods if any. And as has already been mentioned the material, density and flexibility mat itself. On the positive side, most mats are cheap so yo can afford to try several different types without going broke. YMMV

 

We're kind of getting afield of the OP's question and the topic of this thread, but to go back you your earlier comment about tonearms, I've spend a lot of time playing around with the Rega arm and I've found physical damping of the arm tube can make enormous differences -- in eliminated the audible ringing on black grooves, and in improving retrieval of inner detail by minimizing other vibrations. But not every method of damping works. I've never tried anything like o-rings a tonearm, but I have tried them as tube dampers, and I've found them to be useless. With the Rega I also tried different common tweaks --arm wraps, latex coatings -- nothing. What really eliminated audible ringing at the right frequency was smushed down rings of adhesive putty at 1/3rd points on the arm tube. Of course that added mass which needed to be adjusted for. Also at one point I put the Rega on a turntable where I could feel motor vibration up through the arm. I didn't hear audible hum when I listened to music, but I knew there was motor vibration being transmitted through the arm. Some of the putty in the back of the arm tube, beyond the pivot and counterweight, eliminated any ability to feel any vibration and sonically resulted in much more low level detail being audible, and obviously much less low level noise as I could now hear much deeper into the fade outs on records. Now, that's all anecdotal, experiential, non-scientific testing with an arm that has better measured ringing performance than something like this, the SL1700 MKII (which I think is the same arms as the ubiquitous SL1200, IIRC):




That's an incredibly broad band of ringing between around 220 Hz, the A below middle C, up through around 3kHz, and then a lot of ringing up in the top octave. And that huge, 30 dB spike at 220 probably goes a long way to explaining why all those table sound to me like they have a bloated, exaggerated kind of upper bass/lower midrange that kind of hangs over detail. (And of course a big spike at 220 Hz, is going to be further exaggerated by RIAA equalization that's going to boost sound at that frequency.) Compare that with the resonances of a Rega -- lower in level, narrower in bandwidth, pushed up to higher frequencies where you might be getting a little help from an RIAA eq cut and which might be easier to damp in amplitude (or push even higher up into the ultrasonic range and out of the audio's way).



It's no surprised that one arm sounds like of warm and wooly, and one sounds kind of bright an lively, or that both can be made to sound more inert.

I have less experience with different platter materials -- I've had tables of lightweight aluminum, glass, acrylic, mats of rubber, felt, lead, cork, sorbothane, all kinds of stuff over the decades -- but haven't done much in the way of direct comparison between 'em. I currently am using a mat of some kind of silicone compound that I swear is so quiet and dead that I no longer even use the full clamping system my turntable was designed with because I hear no advantage, but my personal work on all that is not very considered.

 

This explains a lot. Very useful, thank you.

This also helps explain why I prefer my Pioneer PLX-1000 to the Technics. It just sounds far more neutral to me. The Pioneer is the only Hanpin built turntable to include damping inside the tonearm. I've owned Rega arms in the past, both regular and hotrodded, and I'd agree with your assessment.

 

Those resonance plots are so valuable because they indicate highly audible tendencies. I wish they were more available.
Aren't the frequency and amplitude values partly dependent on cartridge / tonearm system mass as well as cartridge compliance?
I am hoping that because I have stayed in the sweet spot of the Ortofon resonance frequency chart (9Hz) that my turntable does not have any audible effects from tonearm resonance.

 

I'm not sure of the methodology on these old mag tests but I don't think they have anything to do with mass/compliance resonances relating to a cart, those typically fall in the subsonic range. More arm resonances themselves. In my experience all tonearms have resonances and they have an impact on the sound in some way or another, coloring frequency response or masking detail and raising the noise floor or something. Funkfirm is the only company I know these days making tonearms with specific focus on reducing the effect of these as a major design focus, but I haven't heard their arms.

 

Usually I agree with the "source and speakers are most important" camp, but in the OPs situation I'd get rid of the Lepai transistor radio amp, and quick.
What a piece of junk this thing is! That darned CNET review sure made a sucker outta me, and lots of others, by the looks of it.
You will not regret getting a real amplifier.