What to expect from really good or high end turntables?

have you ever owned a good lomc? totally different playing field in several ways.

 

Like I said, I've heard several & agree they can sound great but never owned any MCs. I'm still very happy with what I have - it's a compromise I'm OK with.

 

Nice to know that. I just ordered a SL-1210GR, the European black one. Should be here in a few days. It was a deal I just couldn't miss, I've never seen one for sale here before, it was a very reasonable price and I have a week to return it if I'm not satisfied. I'm very curious about how it compares to my PLX-1000 soundwise.

 

Wow. Well said...that’s it exactly! It isn’t easy getting there but you know it when you do!

 

I'm curious what you call "a reasonable price" for a 1210GR

 

About USD 2,300 including import taxes and shipping.

 

SL-1210GR playing now!
Listening now to the first songs in a noisy World Cup afternoon with a Brazilian game about to begin: fireworks, dogs barking, people walking around. Impossible to have an accurate listening. Anyway, first overall impression is very good. I have a 7 day trial if I want to return it but so far it's a keeper.

 

I was hoping for a bargain. I find around 1,500 EUR online, of course no taxes and shipping with those.

 

The more you spend on a TT the more it sounds like a crappy CD? This makes zero sense. Why would that be the case?

I've heard a top of the line Basis turntable played through TOTL Wilsons. And I can tell you there was nothing "CD-like" about that experience. It was astonishing.

 

Yes, that is one of the silliest, inaccurate posts I have ever read in these parts, and we’ve read plenty! The whole point is to move away from it, which a decent table certainly does. But you need the other pieces of the puzzle as well. I would say the less you spend, the more you should just stay with your CDs.

 

I've heard some astonishing CD based set ups as well..The more you spend on a turntable the more accurate,transparent,detailed and stable the sound tends to become..Attributes that CD excel in..Once you remove the hint of pleasant warm distortion that is normally inherent in less exotic analogue set-ups,people tend to crave a bit of coloring in order to make long term listening easier.So tend to add it through very expensive tube amplification.

 

Because more precise reproduction is closer to the master tape, where CD already is.

 

I agree with this. Not the "craving coloring" part. But the better one's vinyl and CD rigs are, the more alike the should and do sound. And the better a vinyl rig is, the lower the mechanical noise and the coloring from additive resonances of vinyl playback, which makes the backgrounds quieter, images more stable, the detail better revealed, the dynamics wider especially at the ppp to p end of the spectrum, all things that even mediocre CD does out of the box, but which you need to step up the chain in vinyl playback to approach.

 

I disagree. I think @enfield is exactly right. CD playback out of the box is free from all the additive coloration and mechanical noise that are inherent in vinyl playback -- signal modulations and noise from the sidebands of subsonic resonances from the arm/cart mass spring system and from flaws in the record surfaces themselves that result in subsonic resonances, motor vibration breakthrough, acoustic breakthrough, bearing rumble, HF distortion from mistracking, etc. All that stuff that goes into the sound of vinyl whoosh, that high noise floor you can hear when you drop a needle in a groove, that masks detail and limits dynamics at the quiet end of the dynamic range and makes busy dynamic peaks sound congested. On top of that you have relatively poor channel separation of a phono cart vs. a CD player. The better and better your vinyl playback rig gets, the more those things are mitigated -- the noise floor is lower, the resonances are better damped, the motor is isolated from the arm, the table is better isolated from the environment, the cart and arm track better with less distortion, the cart has better channel separation and better channel balance, etc. The result is more low level detail, the proverbial blacker blacks, better more "sudden" sounding dynamics, greater image stability and focus, more realistic instrumental scale, more freedom from congestion on tutti dynamic peaks, etc. These are things CD playback does pretty much out of the box, and that vinyl black can do better and better the better one's vinyl playback rig is. In this way, the better your vinyl rig is, the more it is like CD.

 

First impressions of the GR if you're interested:
Technics SL-1210GR & Pioneer PLX-1000

 

Oh...I quite agree!! I think I was trying to, in essence, say that. CD is a better way to go if you don’t want to spend a lot on a table, and everything else, that is necessary TO improve the sound over CD, which is still something many would disagree with and of course we’ve had that discussion a million times around here. However, as one that has a high end table and cartridge after slowly moving up the chain over the years, when you get there you do eliminate a lot of the issues you correctly described. And what’s left, if all the stars are lined up correctly, is a gorgeous sound you feel like really cranking up and it won’t kill your ears. Bar that, digital is by far the better way to go for very good sound on a budget. It takes a real commitment, and a genuine love for the very best in sound, to make the journey worth it. It isn’t for most people.

 

I think he means in the aspect of less flaws during playback. Different masterings will always make it sound different.

 

I don't think you need to tell Steve Hoffman how different masterings would sound. He surely knows that better than all of us working with that for so many years.

 

Not kidding. The entire point, to me anyway, of getting a high-end turntable (vs. a low end turntable), is to mitigate the effects of the mechanical noise of vinyl playback so you can hear less of the playback mechanism and hear more into the music. That mechanical noise that is absent in CD playback. The more of that noise that is eliminated from a vinyl playback rig, the more like CD, in that way, that vinyl rig will sound.

The better the record playing rig -- table, arm & cart -- the closer it gets to the quieter the backgrounds, the better the channel balance, the better the channel separation, and the sharp focused imaging that CD starts with.

There may be other things CD lacks -- depth, for example. But that's separate from what I'm talking about.

 

Im aware. I just included that to flesh out my statement but its not like it was my main point, which was just understood above.

 

You may get busted by the Hoff..but if he’s wrong the hoff will lay off. Good show

 

Mmm... not so much, actually. In my experience anyway.

I mean, yeah, there are some ‘tables out there that sound very digital/‘CD-like’... some SOTAs come to mind. Which is why I don’t really like SOTAs much.

But, so many good ‘tables that I’ve heard - Linns, Goldmunds, Michells, Regas, Systemdeks - decidedly did NOT have that kind of sound.

Instead, they combined digital’s level of detail with a musicality and drive and naturalness that digital just did not quite have.

It’s a different sound altogether, really, and one that does not require tube amplification... unless that’s what you’re into already.

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