$650K Turntable?

[DaveyF]

If you are in the market for the TT, then you need a couple of these amps to go along with it:

They also retail for a paltry $1.3M a pair. Rumor has it that they were actually acquired for resale at a garage sale that a certain Tokyo Electric Co. was recently conducting...

BTW, the same High end store that will sell you these, will also sell you the Derainer TT...along with numerous other $1M systems.....I believe that they have a line of customer's out the door...You have to take a number to get service

 

[mep]

I personally have never met anyone in this hobby who thinks their system can somehow be better than what's in the recording (except probably Frank). Whatever the master recording didn't capture and left on the table, it's still on the table. If the recording was poorly made, it will sound poorly made.

 

[DaveyF]

Mark, rumor has it that Frank actually re-wired the amps in my post above and that they are now completely transparent, so much so that they have become, to all intents and purposes, completely invisible....

 

[mep]

What the hell is that thing Davey?

 

[DaveyF]

Mark, this is the..'PIVETTA Opera'-- according to the manufacturer it is the worlds ultimate and most expensive amp. Hand made in Italy, 20,000 watts, 220 volt AC, 6 feet tall, mutli channel capability, will power any speaker.

BTW, if 20,000 watts won't power your speaker, you must be the owner of an Apogee Scintilla

 

[microstrip]

It's not a jab, Mark, it's a reality. There are quite a few in this hobby who believe they can, in playback, exceed what exists in the recording. Maybe they're right and I'm wrong, but either way, arguing that it is pointless for the turntable to exceed the precision of the cutting runs counter to that belief, and I believe that's all I said.

Tim

Now I agree with you - stating "quite a few" is very different from "many".

But, although I am not one of those few, I still do not understand the relation of this with the vinyl cutter and the turntable postulate - after all I still do not know what it is the precision of the turntable.

 

[garylkoh]

I wonder....... while we've read numerous evaluations of the ADC, and we do compare the analog to the digital...... has there ever been comparisons of the lathe? How transparent is the cutter head? Has anyone heard the master tape and compared it to the lacquer? How about listening to the lacquer and the pressing? I would have thought that the lacquer to mother to LP might be even less transparent than digital master file to CD.

Just food for thought on a lazy Sunday afternoon

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Now I agree with you - stating "quite a few" is very different from "many".

Semantics, or perhaps math. But I'm referring to the audiophiles who firmly believe that their sources, amps and preamps, while demonstrably less accurate than they need to be, are subjectively more natural or musical. It's an old argument; no need to re-hash it.

I still do not understand the relation of this with the vinyl cutter and the turntable postulate

A bit of a stretch, perhaps, but the cutter creates the groove the TT must track. Assuming (and I understand this is a dangerous assumption) that every dollar spent in the development and build of the cutter is put into cutting the most accurate groove possible, and every dollar put into the turntable is spent on the same goal in tracking that groove, I fail to understand how the machine that rides the groove can be many times more accurate than the groove itself. They are not such different tasks and, logically, the cutting would be the more demanding one.

Tim

 

[FrantzM]

Mark, this is the..'PIVETTA Opera'-- according to the manufacturer it is the worlds ultimate and most expensive amp. Hand made in Italy, 20,000 watts, 220 volt AC, 6 feet tall, mutli channel capability, will power any speaker.

BTW, if 20,000 watts won't power your speaker, you must be the owner of an Apogee Scintilla

WIll wonder ever cease? I am sure that if we open a thread on this very amplifer it will find its ardent defendrs as well ... All kinds of rationale will be unearth to explain how it redefines the possible ... (Fill in you boatload of audiophil cliche here) .. In conclusion a $650 K ? Why not? 750? Why not a million? WHere do we stop and declare the thing a nonsense? I am off the thread

 

[microstrip]

(...) A bit of a stretch, perhaps, but the cutter creates the groove the TT must track. Assuming (and I understand this is a dangerous assumption) that every dollar spent in the development and build of the cutter is put into cutting the most accurate groove possible, and every dollar put into the turntable is spent on the same goal in tracking that groove, I fail to understand how the machine that rides the groove can be many times more accurate than the groove itself. They are not such different tasks and, logically, the cutting would be the more demanding one.

Tim

The only similarity in these two tasks is that they should be carried at the same angular velocity - and there are even some records cut at half-speed - and they are complementary.

The cutter mission is to make the groove in the lacquer - it will destroy something, imposing its movement. It can be strong and can use significant forces (although limited - I have read some were cooled using helium!). It works in a studio, in a low vibration environment.

The mission of the turntable should be carried in a delicate way. First, it can not damage the vinyl - forces should be minimal. Second, although the forces are minimal the grooves are modulated and the variation of the small forces that are imposed on the platter will affect sound. The system formed by the cartridge, tonearm and turntable has resonances and they also affect sound. Acoustic feedback in the turntable system is really a problem.

I have owned a SME30 and a SME20 with the same arm - the SMEV - they have similar specifications but the sound quality can not be compared - the 30 is much better.

BTW, I have dreamed for sometime about buying an old Neuman cutter to build the best turntable in the world - but never could find one for sale at a decent price. But later realized that this was not a so good idea - a turntable is much more than a platter.

Anyway, my point is only that there is no strong basis to compare the costs of the vinyl cutting lathe with the turntable. May be producing the equivalent of the best Neuman's today in small quantities would cost more than 6 figures. As usual, prices would be dominated by the quantities. But we have another thread for this subject.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Point well made. I yield to your superior knowledge of vinyl production.

Tim

 

[fas42]

But I'm referring to the audiophiles who firmly believe that their sources, amps and preamps, while demonstrably less accurate than they need to be, are subjectively more natural or musical. It's an old argument; no need to re-hash it.

The reason for this approach, and of course it works to a very good degree, is that playback is a balance between revealing everything that is on the recording, and preventing distortion and noise from the recording itself, plus that contributed by the playback mechanism, from being overly disturbing and intrusive in the listening experience. This is a precarious tightrope, devillishly hard to negotiate, so people make choices on how to proceed: the approach here is to jettison some of the information, hopefully containing much of the more unpleasant, spurious sound, allowing the listener to focus more clearly on what's important: the musical event.

The debate has turned to discussing whether the playback can exceed the recording: this is of course a nonsense, but what a good system can and should do is to not exaggerate or emphasis the undesirable elements of sound embedded in the recording. Live music always has this "problem": spurious sounds are constant participants in the soundscape, but your mind has no difficulty disregarding them, pushing them into a non-troubling place in the background, because the message from the main, musical event is overpowering, or should be!! This in fact is a reasonable analogy, because if you were forced to go to a classical performance after just having a fight with a spouse, and you just don't like Brahms, the event would be a total turn off: every fluff of a note by a musician would irritate, the person behind you shuffling their feet would drive you crazy and the slightest screetchiness of violins would grate in your ears. But all the information of the musical event is still there as it always is, so the person sitting next to you, who is in a good mood and loves Brahms, is totally enthralled.

The analogy here is that a system not up to scratch is like the out of sorts audience member: all that is negative about the situation is emphasised, that which is positive fails to override the impact of these characteristics.

Frank

 

[fas42]

... just loves to pontificate and poke people in the eye every chance he gets

I will own up to this. I am poking and jabbing people here to some degree, quite intentionally I will have to say, because I am trying to shake people out of the lethargy of a certain mindset. At the moment I am reading letters to the editor in 25 year old copies of HiFi News and in many ways it is quite depressing: the comments, point of views and attitudes have shown the people in the audiophile game have not moved one iota forward since then -- compare that to the personal computing environment!

What mindset? That audio through speakers is intrinsically limited in terms of what is capable of being achieved, that the only way to realise satisfying results is to throw large sums of money at the problem, that the current manufacturers of equipment have all the necessary answers and that you have to accept what they produce and how they specify that it should be hooked together as being the sole means for achieving good results, etc, etc. The key thing is that so much more can be realised on everyone's equipment, and the way to achieve this is not mumbo-jumbo as Mark calls it, but the realisation that you have to be meticulous in how you go about trying to improve the performance. Quality of attention to detail, not quantity of money or sizes of pieces of equipment ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Tim just loves to pontificate and poke people in the eye every chance he gets.

No, Mark, I have a point of view, that the objective of a reproduction system is to reproduce the recording as accurately as possible and that a less accurate reproduction cannot, as many audiophiles have said many times, be more "natural," or more "musical," it can only be more wrong. It's my point of view. No one has to agree, and if those who disagree feel that by expressing my point of view I have poked them in their eye, I apologize, and wish them greater confidence in their own opinions.

Tim

 

[mep]

No, Mark, I have a point of view, that the objective of a reproduction system is to reproduce the recording as accurately as possible and that a less accurate reproduction cannot, as many audiophiles have said many times, be more "natural," or more "musical," it can only be more wrong. It's my point of view. No one has to agree, and if those who disagree feel that by expressing my point of view I have poked them in their eye, I apologize, and wish them greater confidence in their own opinions.

Tim

Tim-It just seems to me that you miss no chance to climb on your soapbox and say negative things about the industry in general and the people who buy products that you don't agree with. And now today you are talking about how people are delusional in what they think their systems can accomplish. The post I was referring to in your response was where you got out a broad brush and painted lots of people as saying that their systems can exceed the quality of the source recording. My point is that I really don't know anyone who holds that view so we travel in different circles.

Mark

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Tim-It just seems to me that you miss no chance to climb on your soapbox and say negative things about the industry in general and the people who buy products that you don't agree with. And now today you are talking about how people are delusional in what they think their systems can accomplish. The post I was referring to in your response was where you got out a broad brush and painted lots of people as saying that their systems can exceed the quality of the source recording. My point is that I really don't know anyone who holds that view so we travel in different circles.

Mark

Mark, I pass on far more opportunities to criticize the industry and the hobby than you can possibly imagine. Honestly, I let most of the stuff that strikes me as absurd slide on by unmolested. Regarding the rather benign comment that seems to be bothering you currently, my assertion that many people in the hobby seem to think their systems can exceed the quality of the source recording, we've seen it here many times. When the absolute performance of a prize component/system doesn't have lower distortion, lower noise, flatter frequency response, etc., it is simply more natural or more musical than those components which do. Or my personal favorite. It is further from the recording (less accurate response), but it is closer to the "original event."

What else can that mean, Mark, if it doesn't mean they believe their system is capable of exceeding the quality of the recording? PM me with that if you don't mind. We're way off topic here.

Tim

 

[JackD201]

Jack

The point I am trying to make is that a TT has to extract information from a record. A record is cut by a lathe and the lathe limits the amount of information in the record/LP ... When the turntable cost more than the lathe then there is a disconnect... One can always argue that the TT has to be as neutral as possible ..It remains that the price is more than extreme IMO ..
We can continue to debate on the merits of the TT and I am sure the numbers can be great .. I am not too sure they will surpass what can be obtained with a direct drive ....The rest wil be lost in the fog of "subjectivity" .. I try as much as possible not to offend but $650K for a TT is pushing the audiophile tolerance too far .. There is such a thing as too much a euphemism for exaggeration...

Listening right now to the wonderful rendition of Mahler #2 by Zubin Mehta on Decca Legend ... A superb , masterful reading . On Amazon .. and on CD

I see that part Frantz, I also see why Mark agrees in part because both lathes and his arms of choice are linear trackers. My perspective is that while a blank or a finished master go on a platter, a cutter head and a pickup do different things. If you dig up pics of the most famous lathes you'll find that for playback, there is a wholly separate arm and cartridge. Probably to save cost, these are standard arms. They aren't mounted on the cutter's arm.

Now hypothetically, lets say the lathe had speed variations leading to wow and flutter on the master. Having the same degree of speed variations on a turntable will compound the problem since the variations are not in synch with the lathes. If it were possible to have perfect speed stability, yes you would still have what was on the master but you wouldn't be adding to it. In Tim's words, yo would be more faithful to the signal. For that matter, the separate arm and pick up running on the same lathe would not be any truer to the master since again the wow and flutter would not cancel out because of the almost impossible odds of getting them synched or inversely synched.

Just my 2 cents on the technical side. On the value side, well, like I said I'm not interested in a $650,000 turntable even if the camera and built in screen for stylus rake angle are pretty darned cool. Part of the creator's formula for cost/price however did include the number of hours he put into it. As far as I am concerned, every human has a right to determine what his time costs. To me that makes his price "fair" even if we do not as individuals agree with the value of the product.

If we look at his motor specs it wouldn't be too far fetched to see that these motors could be developed as OEM supplied units and this is an area where he could find commercial success. Earlier in this thread there were references to the Mercedes Benz SLS. I drive a C63, the "cheapest" of the AMG family and the recipient of years of trickle down technology from MB's race and research programs. The typical cost of development for F1 cars in a single season is in the area of 300 MILLION dollars not the price of an SLR as per Tim or an SLS as per Steve.

So at the end of this all and say Derainier makes and markets a tonearm superior to the Rockport's, the Forsell's, the ET's at a price, performance and utility that is practical, I do see myself interested in at the very least investigating it even if I will never be that $650,000 TT, one a year, buyer.

 

[mep]

Jack-If I can ever get a plinth built for my Technics SP-10 MII, I will be moving away from linear tracking arms. I bought a brand new SME 312S arm to go on the Technics. I think Frantz's original point was that the quality of the pressing can't be any better than the quality of the lathe used to make the recording. I'm sure the wow and flutter specs as well as the speed stability of a cutting lathe are outstanding. Do you gain anything by being more outstanding at home? To me you are confusing the matter when you bring up statements like you can't listen to a cutter head. That's not the point. The point is the specs I mentioned earlier which are going to be common to both a cutting lathe and a home TT. They both have to drive a platter with great speed stability and low wow and flutter.

 

[JackD201]

The ET2 is a fantastic arm and I hope that you won't miss it too much when and not if you get the SP working Mark. That's how certain I am that you will get the job done.

You definitely can not gain anything by being more outstanding at home, but you definitely can be worse if you aren't. That's my point. All we can do is get as close to the pressing as we can but as you and Frantz say, no further. To do that we must exceed the lathe's own speed stability and wow and flutter outstanding as they might be. Well, that and getting our hands on the metal or acetate masters too. Ahhhh, we can dream

I brought out the cutter head statement because that's the lathe's reason for being, not playback. If one were to look at this TT in question, at first glance it does look a whole lot like a cutting lathe because of its size, the industrial looking linear tracking arm and the microscope. This might have even caused the comparison, purposely or subliminally, but I'd be assuming too much. Come to think of it perhaps I did. It's just that the arm is not supporting a cutter head and the scope is looking at the stylus and not grooves. That is what makes it an Apple and Oranges comparison to me but what makes the analogy really shaky in my mind is that if we accept the analogy fully we are in effect saying that the cutting lathe is the ultimate playback device, which for reasons stated in a prior post it isn't. It isn't because that's not what it was optimized for in the first place.

 

[tony ky ma]

In matching the turning condition between repro system to cutter lathe, the best way is cut a test tone (1 K) before music signal in processing then when doing repro adjust the repro to same frequency by showing from a frequency counter first, this will be perfectly match, I don't think every cutter lathe in exactly same condition, best to adjust by each vinyl if looking for that kind of high request in repro
tony ma