What to expect from really good or high end turntables?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by punkmusick, Mar 4, 2018.

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  1. ANALOGUE OR DEATH

    ANALOGUE OR DEATH Forum Resident

    Location:
    HULL ENGLAND
    The turntable is the single most important part of a hi-fi set up.Not the arm,not the cartridge,not the amplification and definately not the speakers.It's the deck,always.
    The deck is responsible for so much more than just being a platform to spin records on.It should provide the most stable platform to allow the arm and cartridge to do their jobs.It has to limit outside noise/reverberation.It should provide excellent pitch control.
    The old adage still applies 'garbage in,garbage out.The initial signal that starts in your system should not have it's basic characteristics altered down the line.These are determined by the stability offered by the deck.
    Cartridges offer different 'colourations' to the listener.The best amplification in the world will only accurately pass on the original signal sent to it by the cartridge/phono set up to the loudspeaker.This is all it should do,anything else is colouration added by the amp.Likewise the speakers.Different speakers sound different due to the different colouration and differences in timbre they offer to the listener.Internal build quality,the crossovers used and types of wood or other compounds used for the cabinates will obviously result in different sounds.
    A better deck with a cheaper(but good value arm/cartridge)combination coupled with good value well made amp and speakers will always out perform(musically speaking) a similar priced system that has had the money weighted towards the amp/speakers at the expense of the record deck.
    A well set up high end deck should give a sense of depth and detail,good imaging and soundstaging properties.Low end notes will have what you could describe as a 'heft' to them and not just a dull 'thud'.You should be able to tell that a bass guitar is being played by a human with their fingers or that a cello is being bowed.The start and decay of notes should be easily heard.The better the deck the lower the 'noise floor'.This is 'heard' if that isn't a contradiction in terms as a silence/blackness around instruments and a sense of air around them.
    Dynamics is also important.You should be able to easily follow both the 'loud' and 'quiet' instruments if they are being played at the same time.Always assuming of course that the recording is good enough.You should be able to listen to your records for long periods without getting a headache!
    A good deck will have a musicality to it and not sound like a piece of hi-fi.
    For me a good test is if you can hold a quiet conversation over the music and do not need to raise your voice.
    If you can demo two turntables,one cheaper in price to the other with the same arm/cartridge combo then some or all of these difference should become apparent.Always take along your own favourite records.It's much easier to hear subtleties if you are familiar with the music.
     
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  2. Leonthepro

    Leonthepro Skeptically Optimistic

    Location:
    Sweden
    Sounds better than the SL1200 in the video still. But it also enhances surface noise/crackles more too.
     
  3. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    I find one's result with turntables of whatever price range, are directly related to:

    a) the first time you post on a board you spend $500 on a turntable, and your shi**y record sounds just the same;

    2) once you are chastised by an "expert" because you either didn't pony-up for the $600 turntable, as well as a record washer, quality cartridge and stylus, lemon-scented plinth, and platter cut by the same laser that cut the leses for the Hubbel;

    3) and the guy who sold you the turntable suggests replacing the power cord, purchasing interconnects that say, "Shumyata" on them, letting the vinyl "breathe" a few minutes when you take it out, or re-orienting the turntable so it faces Mecca.
    3- 1/2 ) Oh, I'm sorry, this is the Hoffman board - I meant, "faces Macca". :edthumbs:
     
  4. Mister Pig

    Mister Pig I didn't Choose Farm Life It Chose Me

    Location:
    Olympia, WA
    While this all makes sense in a theoretical way, it runs off the rails when you find out that all the money you put into the table means that you sacrificed the quality of downstream components to the point where you loose the majority of the gains made in that highest quality table. It really is a balancing act at all stages. Sure I agree having quality source components is critical, and that downstream components cannot make up for what is lost at the earliest stages. However the flip side is also true, that cheaping out on downstream components may mean you do not realize the full benefits of a quality source component.
     
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  5. Thomas_A

    Thomas_A Forum Resident

    Location:
    Uppsala, Sweden
    Can you describe in what way?
     
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  6. Leonthepro

    Leonthepro Skeptically Optimistic

    Location:
    Sweden
    Well on the RP8 the crackles are more defined and crisper (louder?). On the SL1200 its less so.

    When comparing music I had to A and B between points, mainly 3:08 and 9:18 I believe. The RP8 is better at separating the mid range from the bottom end, giving a clearer soundstage. Would not notice it if I just listened one after another though.
     
  7. Robert C

    Robert C Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    Unacceptable level of hum from the Rega.
     
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  8. Leonthepro

    Leonthepro Skeptically Optimistic

    Location:
    Sweden
    There is no hum, at least not when the cartridge is in the air.
     
  9. ANALOGUE OR DEATH

    ANALOGUE OR DEATH Forum Resident

    Location:
    HULL ENGLAND
    In my post I probably should have emphasized that you still need to use good quality components throughout the chain.There are excellent budget amps and speakers that can be partnered with a fine deck.My point is that you should always obtain the best results if you weigh your spend on the front end,and within this the highest percentage spent on the front end should be on the deck itself,then the arm,then the cartridge.

    The upgrade path is then straightforward and will not lead to confusion.Upgrade the arm,then cartridge.Next amp then speakers.When your signal is as good as it can be for your budget you can rest assured that upgrades in the items further down the chain will allow these benefits to shine.Obviously you still need good but affordable amp/speakers at the start but going in the opposite direction with upgrades, in my experience only leads to disappointment and unnecessary expense.

    Basically,start with the best front end you can afford(I would suggest using 60% of your budget).With good budget amp/speakers(the other 40% together with cables etc) you will have a great sounding set up which will only get better as you upgrade the amp/speakers.

    Done the other way you will only amplify(pardon the pun) the shortcomings in the signal.Remember,the best amplifier is basically just a wire with a gain control.It should add as little as possible of it's own character to the sound that comes out of the speakers.
     
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  10. I think that the most important job of a turntable is to isolate the motor from adding it's noises and vibrations from the platter. Another important consideration is to be able to keep a constant and correct speed. The tone arm should have enough mass to aid in tracking and not vibrating, keeping the sounds from the record at the cartridge. The actual sound from the record is tailored by the choice of cartridge/stylus and pre-amp. There are no standards for pre-amps and one will tailor the sound differently than another. What you are not going to be able to do is to affect the vibrations of the lathe used to cut the masters, correct the tracking mistakes cutting the masters, correct the flaws in the sources used for cutting or the quality of the vinyl used for pressing the record. Remember, those companies who make the records we buy don't use high-end equipment to evaluate their work.
    Some key features for a good turntable to have and reasons for them:
    1). Variable speed pitch control--not all records are cut at the correct speed and you may need to fine tune it for playback.
    2). An interchangeable headshell--this convenience is a must because not all records may sound the best played by a single cartridge/stylus. It is easier to swap out a headshell with a pre-mounted cartridge than it is to have to remount cartridges.
    3). An adjustable anti-skate control--not all cartridges track at the same weight and for some record which may not track correctly, skipping or sticking, adjusting the ant-skate may help.
    4). Internal wiring and pre-amps should be capable of passing through a wider spectrum of frequencies so as not to cut any off.
     
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  11. missan

    missan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Stockholm
    This is not a good way to compare TTs.
     
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  12. Leonthepro

    Leonthepro Skeptically Optimistic

    Location:
    Sweden
    Why?
     
  13. thxphotog

    thxphotog Camera Nerd Cycling Nerd Guitar Nerd Dietary Nerd

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    If I have to 'Google' a word, you get a 'like' from me. :)
     
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  14. Davey

    Davey NP: CLARAGUILAR ~ Figura (2024)

    Location:
    SF Bay Area, USA
    Yea, what is a shelp anyway?
     
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  15. chili555

    chili555 Forum Resident

    LOL! A typo shelp.
     
  16. swvahokie

    swvahokie Forum Resident

    That is an older design Ortofon MC that is probably a poor compliance match for the Rega. I'm on my second Rega, and I have no rumble and/or hum. Some folks seem to have an agenda against certain brands.
    Thankfully, I don't have to use a 30 year old Technics table. I would definitely (and did) buy a 2016 P3 over the older 1200. Now, a 1200GR is a different animal. It will walk a P3, and is pretty much a wash with a P6 (not an RP6). The older 6 does not have the speed stability to play with the new Technics, the new 6 is close enough, and does other things better than the Technics. Like I said, a wash.

    Now the Technics G I would buy over an RP8 Rega, the speed will be dead on for the Technics, maybe on the Rega. I think the new P8 will be a better competitor, it will come with the new speed controller that is shipping with the P6. I wouldnt kick a G out of my system. I would take an RP10 over one though. :D
     
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  17. Davey

    Davey NP: CLARAGUILAR ~ Figura (2024)

    Location:
    SF Bay Area, USA
    I did like your post, and would tend to agree with most (if not all) of what you said, but I think you would probably also agree that the number of tables fitting all your criteria is very very small, and I surely don't have one yet, but I do surely have some tables that are still extremely fun to use :)
     
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  18. Thomas_A

    Thomas_A Forum Resident

    Location:
    Uppsala, Sweden
    A REGA arm has something around 11 g mass. The Ortofon weighs 4.1, compliance 13 cu at 10 Hz. This gives around 11 Hz resonance. Perfect!
     
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  19. Leonthepro

    Leonthepro Skeptically Optimistic

    Location:
    Sweden
    I dont think it would be very different for the Technics, and Im not sure why that would affect surface noise.
     
  20. Davey

    Davey NP: CLARAGUILAR ~ Figura (2024)

    Location:
    SF Bay Area, USA
    I don't really want to wade into the Technics vs Rega wars, but I am curious why you think the 1200GR is so much better than the older model? They seem to be almost the same when you look at the features and compare the masses and build quality. I'd be curious to read or hear about some real life comparisons, just for fun, I'm not really in the market but like to keep up with some of the new models and trends.
     
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  21. swvahokie

    swvahokie Forum Resident

    Leon, you are just going to have to take our word on it until you actually hear some really good vinyl setups. A very good table has a lower noise floor and part of that is it does not accentuate surface noise. Same for some cartridges and phono stages. You get a good match across the whole setup, and the rice krispies kind of slip into the background and once unlistenable records have your feet tapping.
     
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  22. swvahokie

    swvahokie Forum Resident

    Coreless motor and much better drive system to start. A DC servo motor is never exactly at the right speed. Older designs used far too aggressive correction to try for lower measurable specs. Looked good on paper, but some folks (I am one of them) could hear the drive system hunting (this is the cogging sound that us old farts used to ramble on about). Pitch was great, but the tables never had the resolution of belt drives. The new Technics don't have these issues. The new motor is much more expensive and smoother (Kind of like the SL10), and we have learned a great deal on how to make a dc motor run smoother since the original SL1200 was designed.
     
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  23. swvahokie

    swvahokie Forum Resident

    Whats the phono stage in use? It does matter. A poor phono stage can make the higher resolution table sound worse. Records that are almost unlistenable using my inboard phono stage are quite enjoyable using my Sutherland.
     
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  24. Guth

    Guth Music Lover

    Location:
    Oregon
    It's apparent to me that what's "really good" or what's "high-end" can potentially vary quite a bit from one person to the next.

    I've got a couple thousand LPs. In general, I have not focused on whether or not these are first pressings or how they were manufactured for that matter (I never even thought about that sort of thing when I was buying albums in my teens, 20's or even through my 30's for the most part). Very few of my albums are considered audiophile grade recordings. Yet to me, my vinyl collection the single most important "component" of my analog playback system. When buying used I have made sure that they looked reasonably clean. I do have a variety of cleaning related items that I use so all of my albums are in good to excellent physical condition and I try to take care of keeping my stylus clean. I'll admit that there have been a few albums over the years that I've dumped simply because they sounded horrible either due to flaws in the recording process, the mastering process, or the manufacturing process (or perhaps some combination of all of these things).

    With that said, what I expect from any turntable, regardless of the price or how "good" it is considered to be, is that it provides me with a way to enjoy the entirety of my vinyl collection with few exceptions. Yes, I can hear a number of the things that you guys mention in this thread, but I have to admit that I really don't notice listen for this stuff all that much. I'm aware that it all makes a difference, even if just at a subconscious level. But in the past when I've noticed that I was only listening to a select subset of my albums because I was chasing some model of perfection, then that's when I felt like I had made a mistake and was headed down the wrong track (no pun intended). I remember watching a video on youtube a while back (the guy shooting the video apparently does this as a living) from one of the various audio shows. In the video a shop owner was playing some records for people gathered in the hotel suite where the system he was demonstrating was located. One of the comments that followed was knocking the owner's choice in music, deeming them horrible "test tracks" or something to that effect. The owner was playing a variety of music that he enjoyed (including an album by The Pretenders album that I happen to have). It only seemed natural to me that someone would play music that they enjoy listening (or that others in the room had picked out). That's the perfect test in my mind, listening to what you like. When the gear starts to define the music to be played then that's just not the path that I want to head down.

    As long as I could still enjoy my vinyl collection on any of the turntables mentioned above in their respective setups, then I'm guessing that I would get a pretty big kick out it. If I had the chance to take some of my records to someone else's house and hear how they sounded in a really top notch system in a room built around sounding good, I think that would be cool. But if for some reason my vinyl wouldn't somehow be considered appropriate, then to me that would seem like the tail wagging the dog.
     
  25. blakep

    blakep Senior Member

    I struggled a bit with this over the years (I've been playing vinyl for about 43 years now) but found in particular in about the past 10-15 years as my vinyl front end has really improved that ALL records sound better. That is not to say that all records sound like Sheffield Lab Direct to Discs, but rather that the overall sound of them has improved when the vinyl front end has improved. And generally, I would say the poorly recorded records in my collection have been improved more in their playback than the audiophile stuff, as I said earlier.

    Bear in mind that I have owned the same table, a Michell Gyrodec, for about 33 years now, but the Gyro has been modified in that time period by the manufacturer and most of the improvements are modular in nature so can be fitted to an older model. So my table has the current main bearing, suspension posts and platter, all of which were improved over the years to enhance performance. These were replaced about 12-14 years ago as I recall.

    On the other hand, I've also improved my tonearms, cartridges and phono preamp as well as my ability to set up the table to really get the full potential out of it in the past 15 years.

    Others have addressed this, but a good table deserves good ancillaries and matching of both cartridge to arm and cartridge to phono stage is extremely critical.

    This is getting off track a little but I think cartridges in particular are one area which is very polarizing in terms of subjective listener preference and this may play even more of a role in how a system performs and whether it improves the performance of all the records in one's collection as opposed to doing well with some and poorly with others. It also may explain why some audiophiles use multiple arms and cartridges.

    It is a broad generalization, but I tend to think at this stage that cartridges fall into essentially 3 categories sonically (of course it is much more complex than that): those that push boundaries in terms of detail retrieval and tend more toward a front row in the hall presentation, those that do almost exactly the opposite tending toward the more lush and warm side of things and finally, those that try to bridge the gap somewhere in the middle.

    As I've aged I've moved out of the high detail, edge of your seat camp into something of a compromise in the middle. The lower end Koetsus (ie. the Black, which I have owned in the past, and the Rosewoods for example-I have never heard the stone bodies) are just a bit too warm for my taste.

    Steve Hoffman made a comment in the past week or so in a high end cartridge thread about choosing a cartridge that will sound the best with your collection (99% of my collection is all analog recorded between 1955 and 1982) and there is a great deal of truth in that, but it also needs to be chosen to work sympathetically with the rest of the vinyl front end and even amplification and speakers. It is a well worn cliche but it really is about synergy, but it is also about subjective listening preferences which is why there will never be universal agreement about many things on audiophile forums.

    In an event, I think having a relatively neutral, mid hall presentation type of cartridge, is a big part of having all records sound better but it definitely needs to have a super table, arm and phono pre (or at least ones that are well matched) to perform its best and improve all records, regardless of initial recording quality. So that may be a reason I've been able to achieve the results I've had in that area.

    One of the previous posters, though, posted about a Mike New bearing on his Technics table vs. the stock bearing and that is an excellent post to consider and an excellent example of what improving the table will do. Main bearings aren't particularly sexy but they are very important and show dramatically what improving the table as the "base" from which everything is pulled from is all about. I made a very slight and inexpensive change to the bearing on my table about a year ago that offered a surprising improvement in sound quality (again on all records) at a ridiculously low cost (ie. under $10).
     
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