Truth to be told, the reason I post the thread wasn't the price as much as whether its features do represent the state-of-the-art and once established, then figure out if it would up to that high retail cost.
Admittedly, I set it up wrong with the price in the title and everything went in that direction.
In that sense, I appreciated your explanations. Would love to know the best approaches for each area. You mentioned one but not the others. Is direct drive preferred to belt for example?
You should send e-mails/PM's to Wardsweb and SoundofVoid, they both seem to pull off incredible things and may have some good advice for you.I'm back to square one.
All this discussion reminds me of some tests we did in the thread on the demagnetizer where we attempted to determine the difference between two digital recordings of an LP. There was a slow variation in speed between two plays that made impossible to accurately compare the files. The period of variation was far too long to be measured for wow/flutter - but it sure messed up Audio DiffMaker.
Mike, that's the challenge that we all have - you solve one problem, and unveil other problems. Unfortunately, sometimes the problem revealed is larger than the problem just solved, and I think that's the biggest challenge in vinyl playback. Even I am constantly shocked by the amount of difference a power cord makes in a turntable - even one with a regenerating power supply. It should make no difference, but it does - and then it shows up that the tone arm is distorting, or the stylus is "jittering" in the grooves.
A never-ending battle, which may be why so many on this forum prefer digital..... but I still prefer to listen to vinyl over digital any day.
Balance set up whole system is a kind of art of work, too much money in one point is not for sure in best result, like I use direct drive TT as the driving motor to drive a belt drive TT with a elastic thread, just change the balance weight of the platters and the tension of the thread can make the sound quality change. I wonder to pay $650K can have the same result
tony ma
A never-ending battle, which may be why so many on this forum prefer digital..... but I still prefer to listen to vinyl over digital any day.
i'll have to strongly disagree with your inference (intended ot not) that somehow vinyl is flawed because it has such an upside as the hardware is optimized thru technical advances and design maturation. it's really that since vinyl is a mechanical process it's like a race car. every year the cars go faster and faster as the competitors find more speed. they need to keep making rules to slow them down. racing is analog. it's real. just because 10 years ago race car designers did not know as much as they do now; but that does not mean that racing was not valid then or worth doing.
and vinyl playback is still pretty damn good even when it is not perfect.....like anything mechanical it can always be a little better. it's exciting to discover that a 60+ year old mechanical format is still discovering improvements. there is an amazing amount of information in those grooves to be discovered.
and some people do prefer a video game to real racing.
But I can understand that for people accepting only "one truth" this situation is a nightmare.
Agreed. A good friend of mine, who also prefers analog, has several phono cartridges that have different sounds and enjoys all of them, but can not choose which is the better. But I can understand that for people accepting only "one truth" this situation is a nightmare. (...)
My apologies, amir, for running counter to your last post, but I would just like to throw in here a resounding "hear, hear" to the thrust of Gary's post, and to comment very, very strongly that, most certainly, "retreating" to digital does NOT solve the need to attempt to solve system problems; they are there just as much, the unfortunate thing is that they are more deeply embedded, it is much harder to use intuition and commonsense approaches to locating and resolving areas of weaknesses.Mike, that's the challenge that we all have - you solve one problem, and unveil other problems. Unfortunately, sometimes the problem revealed is larger than the problem just solved, and I think that's the biggest challenge in vinyl playback. Even I am constantly shocked by the amount of difference a power cord makes in a turntable - even one with a regenerating power supply. It should make no difference, but it does - and then it shows up that the tone arm is distorting, or the stylus is "jittering" in the grooves.
A never-ending battle, which may be why so many on this forum prefer digital..... but I still prefer to listen to vinyl over digital any day.
Let's stay focused on turntable features please. No digital vs analog debate or others like it.
You get around it in the same way as you do in the world of actual musical instruments. Some poorly designed or made instruments are just not pleasant to listen to; better instruments will sound different but will still be musical, especially in the hands of a competent muso. So your aim is to have your system always be musical. This does not mean hiding detail, or adding sweetening distortion. Our disagreement lies in that my experience and belief is that a competent system is able to extract sufficient musical detail from any recording to be able to dominate residual distortion and noise to the point that the listening always becomes a convincing, realistic experience ...If there is an audible difference between two components one is further from the truth than the other. I don't know how we get around that.
Steve Williams Site Founder | Site Owner | Administrator | Ron Resnick Site Co-Owner | Administrator | Julian (The Fixer) Website Build | Marketing Managersing |