What's the cut-off pricepoint to go from GREAT to SOTA, and it is worth it?

I've owned 8 or 9 high-end 'tables and imo, the synergy and set-up are much more imprortant than 'price' or pedigre.

fwiw, i heard the new VPI traveller with a soundsmith cartridge for $2000 and i was impressed. Matt Weisfeld said some people couldnt easily make out the HRX vs the traveller when both were spinning at the NB show. im considering a traveller as cost effective (cheap) way to keep a vinyl system available, my current set-up is a hodgepoge of roksan and rega bits.

Interesting, potentially provocative thread topic.

Assuming by analogue front-end you mean only turntable, arm and cartridge; then yes, $20k gets you almost all the way there.

After that, the biggest factors for improvement are
#1-10: Spot-on set up (free except for time investment),
#11 -tonearm
#12 -turntable isolation.

IME, at this price point, relative improvements by changing cartridges are less cost-effective and may result in a change in flavor rather than significant improvement.

Again, IME, the added enjoyment from marginal or average recordings is just as (?more?) important than wringing the last bit out of your sonic masterpieces. After all, if you are listening to music (versus equipment), the vast majority of vinyl will be technically average. If an analogue upgrade doesn't make you want to enjoy ALL of your records, you've wasted your money.

John72953 said:

It has been suggested that perhaps $20,000 for a complete Analogue front-end gets you a GREAT setup. Personally I think that figure sounds about right, but I got to thinking as to what it would take to get to a SOTA system from there. And is it indeed worth it? Or do people go there simply because they can afford to?

I can't help but think that such a step upwards only provides a marginal improvement and that one has to be extremely critical of every tiny detail to consider such a move. I suppose if every single LP I owned were in MINT condition and the absolute best example of a pressing, then (if I could afford it) it could be a consideration. None of us however can they that about their collection, so is the marginal improvement worth the expense when playing sub-par recordings?

When I say marginal I mean a 5%-10% improvement. I cannot believe that even a SOTA system would squeeze that much more out of a recording from a plain GREAT system. Those that have a SOTA system might say I'm just talking out of my a$$, but if so, please elaborate and correct me. Of course, all of this is subjective, but I'm interested to hear what the membership thinks.

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John, I think if you get out and hear more analog setups you will find that there are substantial gains to be had above the $20,000 price point. Especially if that 20k includes the phono stage and TT rack.

Another thing to consider is the rest of the system should to be up to the same quality as the front end to get the best results.

IME better analog front ends don't make lesser recordings less enjoyable in general. It is certainly easier to pick out the flaws of the recording but I can still enjoy them.

High end digital on the other hand can have more of a problem with making some recordings hard to listen to. I have not heard all the best digital front ends out there so there may be some that can mitigate that issue. I think it is mostly the earlier digital recordings were done poorly and some more recent recordings are compressed too much.

As too if it is worth it to spend over 20k? I say yes if you can afford it and you enjoy vinyl.

Sean

In a category for which there are no accepted metrics, what can SOTA possibly mean? The four letters that are likely to be more relevant are YOYO. My advice, and if you take it understand that you're taking advice about an analog front end from a dedicated digital guy , is pay no attention to price, pay no attention to brand or reputation or, particularly, what the designers/manufacturers claim. Listen. There's really nothing else you can do. Can't listen to more than a couple of turntables in any given store and they're hooked up to different systems, with different cartridges? Yeah, that's a problem.

Tim

With regards to SOTA analog we start at the cartridges. While there are many good performers the prices of the stand out carts start at around $5000. The SOTA carts are close or over $10,000. So I am inclined to think that the $20,000 total which should include the arm, table, and phonostage is actually on the low side. I'm thinking $30,000 to $40,000.

Digital however is quite the conundrum. There are just so many players in this segment and at wildly different price points. Add to that the fact that technology is moving so much faster on this front and that differences between top of the line models and their next in line is much smaller than that between a top of the line cartridge and it's next in line. I wouldn't know where to start when it comes to digital except my own limited experience. For stand alone DACs about $5,000, SOTA transports more than that, stand alone players that I would personally consider SOTA based on differentiable performance are above $10,000.

SOTA amps are hovering at or over $20,000. Loudspeakers at around $30,000. Preamps at about $5,000 just for a taste of SOTA, SOTA being more in the $15,000 range.

Looking at these numbers, it really looks crazy and perhaps it is. Now is it worth it? It's all relative. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I can live with stuff that is below the current levels. I've heard good but not SOTA equipment sound SOTA because the owners knew how to use them. As the saying goes "just because you can doesn't mean you should."

I think that applies here. It's only worth it if it's worth it. In my case while I could live with less, the learning process particularly when it comes to system integration is something I find almost as enjoyable as the music itself, sometimes more so. So it's worth it for me. For someone less "involved" with the process I'd think it wouldn't be worth it. Stick to what ya like and enjoy the music.

Hi

I was about to reply to this thread , thought a bit, thought longer and here I am....

Nowhere but in High End Audio talks would we see $20K as the threshold to SOTA, whatever the term truly means... Do we sit down a little bit and pnder what $20K is in term of Audio Performance?

I really would like a definition of the SOTA in vinyl playback. What I see now and again and I decry regularly is that a high cost is automatically equated with SOTA. Of course we, audiophiles oblige and gush on very expensive equipment (Guilty as charged) and gear ourselves not to judge an equipment by its sonic merit but rather by its pedigree or reputation (The more expensive, the higher the reputation , of course). It doesn't make for any impetus to truly create high performance design but rather high glitz and supremely fine-looking and of course ever more expensive contraptions. We sit with straight face and launch high prices as bearer of performances .. We even talked seriously about a $650,000 TT (!!!???!!!!!!!) and frankly it will be produced and a few will be sold and those will be declared the best ever ... Where does it end?

End of rant...

Once SOTA is defined , we will perhaps come up with a clearer discussion.. For the record I do have an excellent (both objectively and subjectively) vinyl rig.
Technics SP-10 MKii in for now a wood plinth, SME Type IV arm and Denon DL-A100 Cartridge ... Phono Stage is a Sutherland PH3d ...

I'll weigh in here, based on my experience, in my system. I had a Kuzma Reference, very good table which has built in suspension, with then brand new Triplanar (VII), set up by mike trei, who knows a thing or two about turntable set up, using a then brand new Lyra Titan i. It sounded marvelous. I then upgraded to the Kuzma XL, which is an altogether different design by the same manufacturer, using his Airline arm, and the same Lyra cartridge, over the same system. Isolating the bigger table took some work (and added expense, see note below). I can tell you that the difference was dramatic. Not in the particular sounds coming from the turntable through the system but in the complete absence of hearing something 'playing' as the source. Granted, you hear surface noise, the occasional pop or tick that comes with vinyl 'territory' but the lack of a sort of background 'halo'- some refer to this absence as 'blackness.' The bass was also profoundly deeper, not more pronounced, just deeper in reach, and had more instrument tone. My point: that upgrading from a pretty 'high end' turntable (can't remember what the Kuzma Reference was- probably 8k or so, with Triplanar, dunno, another 4 or 5k) to the bigger, badder table (I'm not even sure what the XL and Airline retails for these days, i think when I bought it, it was probably in the neighborhood of 28k?) was significant. I am not taking into account what a real good phono stage may do either- had a Steelhead, tweaked with NOS Teles, etc. well regarded, not cheap, phonostage. The Allnic dramatically changed how much spatial information I am getting. Again, the point: (i don't want to sound like an ass about this, throwing these numbers around): the well regarded state of the art phono stage was bettered to a considerable degree, at least in my system, by something else.
I think you can probably achieve great results with a VPI Classic 3. And the Andros, or perhaps the Chinook or the Fosgate, all of which are competitive, or so I gather, in the arguably more modest phono stage category. But, don't think that there aren't big improvements and little ones that come with the higher priced spread. Is it worth that kind of investment? I doubt it, for most people, given the PITA that vinyl is to begin with. But, to the extent this is about 'what is best,' I have to say that you can hear the differences among these tables and arms and phono stages and it is not all bling or hype that drives the higher reaches.
Note: i went back and checked, the retail price of all the Kuzma pieces was lower than I originally thought! Also, not including the additional cost of an HRS platform for the big Kuzma (the Reference didn't need one). On that point alone, the less expensive table makes more sense, and a conventional arm, without all the problems associated with an air pump, is far easier to live with.

Here is what I have found: as the quality of your analog rig goes up, the noise comes down. You can tell when your vinyl noise floor is getting really low when a song comes to an end and you hear the noise floor of the recording medium that made the LP (usually tape in my case) fade into the noise floor of the vinyl itself. These are two very distinct sounds and two very distinct noise floors. And for you digital diehards, digital has a noise floor as well (especially when the digital was sourced from tape) that fades to black between cuts.


As the quality of the table/arm/cartridge/phono stage goes up, the noise will come down. I have been attacking the noise floor of my system with a vengeance in order to reduce/eliminate hum and noise and I have come a long way in the last year. My SP-10 MKII is super quiet, my SME 312s arm is super quiet, my Dynavector XV-1s cartridge is super quiet, and last but not least, my Krell KPE Reference phono stage is super quiet. Less noise equals more music with analog and my LP front end has never sounded better than it does now.

Having said all of that John, I’m not sure in your case right now today that your best bang-for-buck would be investing in a better LP front end based on your current system. If you didn’t live in Canada and shipping and import fees were so high, I would send you my pair of Phase Linear 400 Series 2 amps (which I ran as monoblocks by only using one channel from each amp) and my Yamaha C2a preamp so you could get a chance to hear them in your system. While these components are not SOTA contenders obviously, they are mind-blowing good for the money and I do believe would be quite a step up in terms of sound quality and power compared to your Pioneer integrated amp. The phono section alone in the C2a sounded much better to me than the ARC PH-3SE that I owned and it cost $2595 when new. Having over 200 watts per channel will make your speakers stand at attention and give you a sense of ease that you don’t get from lower-powered amplifiers.

mep said:

Here is what I have found: as the quality of your analog rig goes up, the noise comes down. You can tell when your vinyl noise floor is getting really low when a song comes to an end and you hear the noise floor of the recording medium that made the LP (usually tape in my case) fade into the noise floor of the vinyl itself. These are two very distinct sounds and two very distinct noise floors. And for you digital diehards, digital has a noise floor as well (especially when the digital was sourced from tape) that fades to black between cuts.


As the quality of the table/arm/cartridge/phono stage goes up, the noise will come down. I have been attacking the noise floor of my system with a vengeance in order to reduce/eliminate hum and noise and I have come a long way in the last year. My SP-10 MKII is super quiet, my SME 312s arm is super quiet, my Dynavector XV-1s cartridge is super quiet, and last but not least, my Krell KPE Reference phono stage is super quiet. Less noise equals more music with analog and my LP front end has never sounded better than it does now.

Having said all of that John, I’m not sure in your case right now today that your best bang-for-buck would be investing in a better LP front end based on your current system. If you didn’t live in Canada and shipping and import fees were so high, I would send you my pair of Phase Linear 400 Series 2 amps (which I ran as monoblocks by only using one channel from each amp) and my Yamaha C2a preamp so you could get a chance to hear them in your system. While these components are not SOTA contenders obviously, they are mind-blowing good for the money and I do believe would be quite a step up in terms of sound quality and power compared to your Pioneer integrated amp. The phono section alone in the C2a sounded much better to me than the ARC PH-3SE that I owned and it cost $2595 when new. Having over 200 watts per channel will make your speakers stand at attention and give you a sense of ease that you don’t get from lower-powered amplifiers.

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MEP- you are a giving man, something to be applauded in the case of your offer to John.

FrantzM said:

Once SOTA is defined , we will perhaps come up with a clearer discussion.. For the record I do have an excellent (both objectively and subjectively) vinyl rig.
Technics SP-10 MKii in for now a wood plinth, SME Type IV arm and Denon DL-A100 Cartridge ... Phono Stage is a Sutherland PH3d ...

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That is definitely a killer rig Frantz. I don't see anybody here really equating things with price but rather performance though. If that were the case it would be six figures as we would have been looking at Goldmunds, top of the line Clearaudios, Caliburns, Rockports etc. The table itself seems to be easy part. Quiet with good speed can be had for a few thousand dollars. It's arms, carts and phonostages that cost a pretty penny. Just as speakers differ most so do carts. While the Denons are probably the best bang for the buck because they are so well balanced, there is quite the difference with the current cart flagships if the simple criteria is what retrieves more information from the grooves. Arms are easy to evaluate on a performance basis too. Tracking distortion is audible. However, there is a premium for ergonomics. Your SME is a good example. Slide it forward or back to get the right overhang. Wonderful engineering! Machining costs are going up and so are the prices. What current SOTA has in its favor over the classics is the extreme tolerances possible today and this shows in how quiet the SOTA equipment is. You really will hear more not just detail and recorded ambience but more importantly since this isn't detail for detail's sake, allow you to follow musical lines with greater ease.

I do maintain though that unless one dedicates himself to finding the very cleanest copies he can, going this length would be a waste. If all I can get is a VG, give me a CD of it instead.

I do think there is something to 12" arms as well in terms of lower distortion and purity akin to what you get with a linear tracking arm. The SME 312s is the first pivoted arm I have owned that didn't make me want to reinstall my ET-2.

Jack said, "Quiet with good speed can be had for a few thousand dollars."

True, but quiet with perfect speed and great dynamics can't. It is not as easy as one might think.

Then again, any piece you add can be easily offset by a single lesser piece in the chain. That gets to be both frustrating and expensive, at least for me. There are so many flavors out there to consider that it is almost impossible! My biggest problem is that I like a lot of different flavors.

I totally agree Win.

Hi

I am willing. Please do educate me in the art of turntable. Why is speed so difficult. i would have thought this has been conquered a few yeas ago. We do know how to have close to perfect speed and this has not cost an arm and a leg.. Direct Drives have been around and are stabilized to an astounding degree of accuracy. Please let me understand what is that should cost several thousand of dollars. I there is any sarcasm please disregard it because it seems there seem there is so much I don't understand. And why is that cartridges must be 10K and Phono stage 10 K too... Superb arm such as the Graham phantom or the Triplanar do not cost far from $5K... Is it the killer look that command such lofty prices

High End Audio seems to be the only technological area where technological progress in all other areas including the tools to make the gears result in continuously higher price.. What bothers is the incredible willingness of the audiophile public to accept this as a fait accompli.. 20K... People! with a little imagination $20K buys you an entire immensely analog and digital full range system ... And now it is the threshold for SOTA analog playback!!!???

Don't get me wrong Frantz, I think one can get very good analog for even 5 grand all in. My comments are premised around the SOTA. On the mechanical side of SOTA the implication is much tighter tolerances. As I've mentioned, ergonomic feature sets and the difficulty in engineering and building these add to the prices too like features that allow on the fly adjustability of parameters at very fine adjustments. Throw in vibration control be it by suspension, mass loading, constrained layer damping or combinations thereof employing finite element analysis. Then there are the motors themselves. Take the SP-10 or the JVCs, how much would it take to build similarly good motors today? These aren't like drivers, resistors or caps that a quick browse at Madisound can take care of. We can ask JT or the guys at GPA. Win is here to tell us how difficult it is to refurbish an idler drive, how about designing and building a completely new one? As for electronics, the difficulty is in the very small signals carts throw out. It is really a signal to noise ratio thing aside from being able to get the right tonal balance.

The reason I keep throwing in the importance of having really good software is that even if one has SOTA gear that is extremely quiet thereby increasing the dynamic range (what digi-centric folks find lacking in LP playback) it's for naught if the LPs themselves are noisy. What I can say is that I have played some of my prized LPs and have had people actually ask if it was an LP playing because of the absence of noises usually associated with LP play and it's not like I'm using the top of the line of my TT manufacturer. My arms aren't top of the line either, albeit most of my cartridges are.

In fact, I have a second table that mitigates or rounds out nasties like groove wear rumble and pops that I use for LPs that are noisier. It's got it's appealing characteristics but getting into finer nuances especially with classical music isn't one of them. Emotion yes, nuance not so much and this is the table I sell. I have no business affiliation with any of the manufacturers of my personal reference.

I think the tooling costs is part of a vicious cycle. Higher tooling costs - higher product costs - lower sales volume - repeat. It's sad indeed.

"Win is here to tell us how difficult it is to refurbish an idler drive, how about designing and building a completely new one?"

Jack, refurbishing isn't really my thing. I manufacture new turntables. Mine is a true idler design of my own making, and I believe the only totally new idler design currently being manufactured. I do have a bias just because of that, I suppose. Anyway, it's 12:30 AM here, so if you guys will hold on until I get a few hours of shuteye, I will return and give you my take on things without going into any sort of sales mode...for whatever that may be worth.

Hopefully, other turntable manufacturers will join in.

My bad. I just figured that if you could build one, you could fix another.

Frantz,

While I agree that prices are very high especially for carts, high end anything be it cars, hifi, or homes are gonna cost you. If that cost is not worth it to you then there is nothing wrong with that. It is a personal choice. You can certainly shop smarter and attain very good results. Usually that only works if you have been around the block a few times and already know what to buy or know someone who can guide you.

Regarding your SP10 mk2 (I own a mk2a and love it.) if it were to be manufactured today to the same quality it would cost more than a few thousand dollars and that's without an arm or plinth.

Sean

Jack and Audioarcher

Points are well taken and I do understand the cost involved in high tolerance items on a small scale now/ The reference however about cars is a bit misleading I would say. If you put aside the prestige associated with owning certain cars, you will find cars of extreme performance at more than good prices. i like to think of the Subaru WRX and other " pocket rockets" cars that would give many ultra-expensive cars a good spanking at the track or the street. 300 Bhp cars are legion and most manufacturers will have one or several in their stable.. Including Dodge or Kia ... And the performance surpasses what we had before ... At a lesser price at least adjusted for inflation and other financial parameters. SOTA in cars are a lot about prestige or pride of ownership the threshold of performance is attainable for much less than before SOTA performace is attained by many cars at less than crazy prices.
On the cartridge and arms side I do find the flight of prices suspect. As a businessperson, you price your wares according to your cost but also to what the market bears.. and our market is tolerant I would think. Case in point, I seem to be one of the few to object to the threshold of SOTA in this thread and this is telling... Now Cartridge are routinely over 10K. I have heard some and it seems to me more of a flavor thing than real performance. I have two different cartridges on the same TT but different arms (both circa or slightly over 10 K MSRP) and the differences were of flavor , they did sound very dffferent and to such an extent that I found the differences almost shocking .. At that level there should be a convergence similar to that we observe with electronics ... We audiophiles are fond of hyperbole and we go on the "Night and Day" thing but truly up there with the best the sound is subtly different.. With these cartridges I did find the differences too marked almost forcibly different. I would hope it weren't settings the owner knows a lot about setting tables...

I may have to bow out eventually. THe SOTA hasn't been define to me in a clear fashion. I do feel that there is an artificial threshold that now is applied on High End Audio, for example SOTA speakers are to be those at $50K or more... What that does is the tendency to think SOTA in term of price only. That leaves some speakers that perform at SOTA levels automatically out of the discussion example Sanders ESL, Magepan 3.7 and Magnepan MG 20.7 amongst many. I am not versed in analog enough to give you great examples but I would think the same applies to TTs .. I had a Graham arm and it did fare great and was one of the best around. It has been replaced by the Phantom. rarely in the discussion of SOTA arms .. Is it because it is "only" $6K? And we will find the reviewers using the condescending but so much repeated phrase "For the Price" followed by the gushing over the uber expensive or close to unobtainium gear ...

I will oppose these views and have not been convinced of the contrary so far. Having heard 100 K of TTs and such I did NOT find them overwhelmigly the way some speakers will. Fine but I wasn't floored the way the great speakers almost shame you when you come back to your lowly transducers ... ( that includes the Magnepan MG 3.7, after a serious audition one audiophile universe will be severely questioned your speakers may be better but would they have to cost at least 5 times more?????) ...So now >100K tables are routine and arms and cartridges are happily moving toward $50K. I have to wonder what will we see first: the $50K cartridge or the 100 K cables ... Are these SOTA? Do they provide more? Do they? Allow me to question such beliefs...