What to expect from really good or high end turntables?

I LOVE your really well said "startling sense of surprise and suddenness to dynamic swings" line. You said it much better than I did; that's exactly what I have been enjoying since upgrading. I have literally been started a few times listening to recordings I know very well, and then suddently something just jumps out that I never noticed before. Generally it is something that was buried pretty far back in the mix and now moves to the front of the pack, or in a different place in the soundstage. Sorry if I seem dramatic, but I've only had my Prime table a few months so it's still full of surprise and wonderment to me.

 

That video is just to show you my father's old turntable, the first "real" turntable I had experienced back in the 80's and early 90's. It's not with me anymore. Yes it was made in Brazil back then, with JVC or Matsushita motors. It's still regarded as a very good vintage turntable. Buy since I haven't listened to one since the 90's I can't tell about sound quality.

My current turntable is a Pioneer PLX-1000.

 

I think what we are able to hear (with better front ends), is how the record possibly can sound, with less vibrations working against the needle´s movements. Even if TTs maybe don´t work the same, the arm and cartridges still will have a somewhat signature; what we are getting is likely more and more of the correct modulations from the record.

Often this can manifest itself with a lower noise floor, more silence between tones, a somewhat, as a whole, softer and a more quiet sound.

 

My personal opinion is that this TT isn´t that easy to better.

 

Then you seriously need to broaden the basis of your experiences.

 

Perhaps. Ive only really been to a few hifi stores with setups like the Project Classic table and 4000$ speakers.

 

I remember back in the 80's, through a newspaper ad, going to purchase a used Revox 791. The seller had an impressive system and when I told him what I had (Pioneer separates and Ohm spkrs), he told me that the unit was 'too much' turntable for my system! Well, I bought the unit, it sounded great in my system and as I upgraded other items over time the sound only improved. This experience helped form a personal viewpoint, when going for new gear, swing for the fences, buy the best you can afford, even if it feels like overkill!

 

No aspect of the turntable, arm and cartridge combination should call even the slightest attention to itself. The speed should be perfectly accurate from a cold start or after several hours of use. At no time should the listener wonder if the piano is a bit flat.

The rumble should be far, far below audibility. The bearings, both platter and tonearm, must be of such high quality as to be, essentially, frictionless, insofar as engineering and manufacturing are capable in 2018. Therefore, there should be the very least possible hindrance to the smooth transition of the arm and cartridge across the record. Sorry, dried out bearings from a 30-year-old turntable from Goodwill don’t qualify.

The arm material and mass must be engineered for the lowest possible resonance but yet accommodate a wide variety of cartridges, both low- and high-compliance. Manufacturers are motivated to explore exotic materials, carbon fiber, titanium and the like. The exploration will be time-consuming and therefore expensive.

The suspension must isolate the stylus/record junction from all external forces including footfalls and acoustic feedback from the music being pumped out of the speakers at high volume. Many suspended turntables fail the footfall test badly. Isn’t it a bit telling that some turntable manufacturers sell wall mounts to ameliorate their own shortcomings?

The plinth and/or feet must effectively transfer resonances from the turntable to the shelp it sits upon but none from the shelf to the turntable.

There must be no compromise based on costs. Does the $5 platter bearing sound better than the $1 bearing? How about the $25 bearing? Again, the exploration will be time-consuming and therefore expensive.

Finally, it must look the part. We all like our gear to look cool, so, If you are going to sell me a $10,000 rig, it had better look cool.

The end result should be that we are not listening to a recording; we are listening to the musicians that have magically appeared in the room. It should be hair-raising; it should be spooky.

 

The better Table/Arm/Cartridge/Phono Pre combinations (they must all match up properly and work together as a unit, including the phono pre, which IMO should be considered an integral part of the front end) do all the things described earlier in this thread.

But more importantly, they will bridge and narrow the gap in terms of reproduction in one's record collection between the one and two dollar records (kind of a thing of the past but I have lots of them) and the audiophile stuff. Over the years I've come to the conclusion that the audiophile stuff tends to sound good on even budget front ends; while they will improve on a better front end, increases in sound quality are more dramatic on typically "run of the mill" recordings with a great table/arm/cartridge and phono pre.

It's what your table does with those recordings that really defines its ability.

Don't buy into the idea that a great front end makes great recordings sound better and lesser ones sound worse. That is not the sign of a great table-it is, in fact, a sign of exactly the opposite or a setup problem.

 

Please consider this video:



When the stylus drops in the empty groove before songs starts, you hear that "vinyl whoosh".

This is a very good turntable but not the best or the most expensive VPI available as we know.

When you say "blacker blacks", do you mean this "whoosh" decreases so we can hear more detail? But exactly what would reduce this "whoosh"? I believe it comes from the friction between stylus and groove, so it will be there, more or less, in any table, right? To make it less audible, what a better turntable should have? Less noise from platter, plinth or motor? More or less torque? Or torque doesn't matter? Or all of this?

Mats would help?

 

A great turntable does a couple of things more than simply spin in a circle and hold a cartridge.
It has absolute rock solid speed with no wobble or smear. If the record is well centered (not ALL of them ARE) the speed stability should be just as solid as a CD!
Many rubber band driven "belt drive" turntables will WOBBLE and DRAG the speed down during thick passages.
Especially IF the needle is a very heavy tracking stiff compliance cartridge such as the famous old Denon DL103.
I paid a fortune for a "wedding cake chrome plated impressive" turntable and it absolutely would wobble on piano passages and drove me nuts. Even AFTER I paid another fortune for a "speed control upgrade."
What an insult!
I replaced it with an at that time cheapo Technics SL1210M5g which sounded PERFECT on my $40,000 system.
The arm on the Technics is good enough once modified to use with a LOT of carts running up to around a grand.
And THAT is the type of thing you should look out for when you pay some serious money for a turntable.
In other words: will it WORK?
Some expensive ones are absolute ****.
Any fool can go into business making a rubber band driven turntable.
All you need are some bearings, a platter and a stick for an arm.
It takes a small fortune to pay for actual engineers who know stuff and then design a direct drive machine that is well made (not ALL are well made).
Be advised.

 

It helps with low friction of stylus and a mono-coupling of the bass below 150 Hz.

 

You mean a mat?

 

You would never hear that here for several reasons:

• I'd never cue a record with the gain up;
• that record is noisy; the music masks some of the noise, but you can hear it even through what I assume is an MP3 file and I'm on a small laptop, nothing fancy- maybe a cleaning would help or maybe that's as good as that copy is going to get, but I will rarely play something with that level of crackle (sometimes, some ancient 78 transcription to LP);
• I posted at least at #5 in this thread, the difference in sound I experienced when going from a high end table to an even better model within the same manufacturer's line.

 

A truly high end turntable, properly isolated and performing properly with other components and speakers in the signal path of equivalent quality, should provide with a good recording and proper VTA setting:

Extraordinary detail, including a wide and deep soundstage and "air" around the voices and instruments (you should be able to hear the charcteristics of the space in which the recording was made)
Extraordinary macro and micro dynamics
Solid and unwavering pitch
Realistically fast transients and "slam"
Deep and well-enunciated bass
Extended highs
An extraordinary and palpable sense of realism to the music

 

Can´t say I have any whoosh sound that bothers me. A little tape hiss maybe with some older records, this is from -61.
Dropbox - oberon.wav.wav

 

That "whoosh" is typically a product of the recording and/or record manufacturing process. I have pressings that have ink black backgrounds, others have a quite prominent "whoosh." Turntable induced rumble is less of a white noise and will be audible regardless of the disc in play. Mats can help to mitigate rumble but will do nothing for "whoosh."

 

It should give you a much lower noise floor, and that makes you want to turn it up.
Power Supply makes or breaks a good TT

 

What do you mean by noise floor?

 

[QUOTE="Ski Bum, post: 18487705, member: 3633"
Solid and unwavering pitch
[/QUOTE]

this is so underrated, and it's something very few TTs get right, well recorded solo piano gives the game away

 

@Leonthepro Background noise, that you probably never noticed before, is gone or much lower, reviewers use terms like "inky black background"
Noise floor - Wikipedia

 

I genuinely don't believe I have a particularly high end table but after owning a succession of very nice Linns', Clearaudios', Michells' & Regas', I now realise I have something special that I will enjoy for the rest of my life.

SL1200G

 

Did your PLX have any or much of this?

 

This is my dream turntable.

 

Not much. Rumble is transmitted via platter or arm, and in the case of the PLX, it was more likely the latter. It's a fairly quiet table overall.