Just bought a pioneer PL-200 what now?

[ChilledoutUK]

Ok i just won a PL-200 on ebay for £12.62 pluss postage

Pioneer Turntable on eBay, also Turntables, Turntables, Home Audio Hi Fi, Consumer Electronics (end time 09-Feb-08 22:15:00 GMT)

I plan to interface this with my onyx satellite so that i can make some 96khz 24bit vinyl rips for fun.

What i need now is a phono stage i think one of my integrated amps that i have loaned out probably has one built in but getting that back would be hard and from what i understand the phono stages in integrated amps are not particularly great.

I Have been reading around and people have mentioned the ART DJ PRE II as being a good sounding budget phono preamp.
I have heard good things in the past about ART's microphone preamps which makes me thing that this could well be what i am looking for.

Applied Research & Technology: ARTcessories™

Another thing is that I am new to vinyl and would appreciate any advice on a replacement cartridges that would work well on this turntable also any info or links to guides on setting up the alignment on pioneer turntables would be great.

 

[Lazarus Short]

In a receiver, integrated amp, or preamp, there are a few things to [hopefully] indicate a superior phono section:

gold-plated RCA inputs

MM and MC inputs

variable capacitance and/or resistance loading

even so, let your ears decide

 

[ChilledoutUK]

at the moment on the the subject of phono stages i am stuck between the ART DJ PRE II and the Cambridge Audio 540P.

The ART device has the ability to adjust gain which would be useful if i want to connect straight into the ADC of my Mackie bypassing its preamp stage for setting the recording levels.

The Cambridge Audio 540P is a simpler unit with no adjustments but a bunch of awards etc.

Apparently the 540p uses discrete transistors which aparently gives "less cross-talk and interference across the signal path"

The art is about £40 Inc delivery and the Cambridge I can always goto richer sounds to pick one up for £40 or get delivered for £47.

 

[memepool]

If you are transcribing vinyl to digital ( rips only applies to transfering digital data

) then a preamp with gain is very useful as records are recorded at very different levels and it's better to get the recording levels right initially to avoid hiss and digital artifacting. You don't say what your Mackie is so assuming it's a recorder of some sort if it has mic preamps it'll be ok with any source but if it's just line level then using another pre-amp with variable gain is useful.

I have an Art headphone amp and generally their stuff is pretty well regarded. However another thing to bear in mind is matching to the cart. The Pioneer you have has a pretty high mass tonearm and the best transcription cart to get would be a Denon DL 110/160/103 MC which you can order online from Williams Schallplattennadel Shop
The Cambridge 640p might be the best in this case as it has configuration for MC carts which the art might not have like capacitance settings.

 

[ChilledoutUK]

Hi memepool thanks for the advice.

The device i am using at the moment is a Mackie onyx satellite it does have the onyx mic preamps but i was planning to bypass them using the insert jack so that i can keep the path as clean as possible.
Also each peramp channel being adjustable separately makes getting an accurate stereo recording somewhat difficult as i might end up countering some intended pan effect to one side.

The Art has switchable capacitance either 100PF or 200PF i am not sure if that makes it suitable for MC Cartridges or not.

from what i read about the DL110 it can be used on MM Preamps as its a high output MC but it does however look interesting. I was looking at the Shure M97xe cartridge but i wonder if its too smooth for transcribing.

 

[memepool]

The Mackie looks good and should have enough gain therefore I'd just go for the Cambridge audio pre-amp. 100k and 200k in the Art are actually fine for MC's but a bit odd for MMs which are usually 47k !
The Shure would also be a great cart and should be ok with the higher mass Pioneer arm with the stabiliser guard down but I think the Denon will work better overall.

 

[ChilledoutUK]

well on arts site it says "47k Ohms in parallel with either 100pF or 200pF"

something does tell me however that the cambridge audio device should provide a better quality than the art djpre but i just need to make sure that the preamps on the mackie are not going to colour the music.
I will test this now with some cd source material and if the onyx preamps are clean enought to not be noticeably changing the audio then i will probably get the Cambridge audio device.

 

[ChilledoutUK]

I decided that i will wait for the turntable to arrive and mess about with my mackie peamps to get a good signal from it which i think should be possible.

Then I Will use a software riaa equalisation in audacity and see what it sounds like.

Its highly likely that i will not be happy with the sound and end up buying a preamp but tbh its better i do it this way round so that i actually test software equalisation properly otherwise I would probably just use the preamp and not bother trying.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChilledoutUK /img/forum/go_quote.gif well on arts site it says "47k Ohms in parallel with either 100pF or 200pF"

Sorry misread that. An MC stage would be more like 100Ohms with 30pf ie higher resistance and lower capacitance. Better quality ones allow you to vary these values to match different Cartridges via switches or else by little jumpers inside to physically alter the circuit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChilledoutUK /img/forum/go_quote.gif I decided that i will wait for the turntable to arrive and mess about with my mackie peamps to get a good signal from it which i think should be possible. Then I Will use a software riaa equalisation in audacity and see what it sounds like.

Sounds like a plan. The method of mic pre-amps and an eq either on a desk or in software is used professionally for transcribing non standard recording which pre-date the universal acceptance of the RIAA standard ( as late as the 1960s ).
If the music you want to transcribe is more recent then a conventional good quality hardware one like the Cambridge will probably be a more convenient solution.

 

[ChilledoutUK]

thats the cool thing about audacity's equalisation is that there are curves for all the different equalisation standards that were around back then.

seen as below


The input impedance on my mackie is 10k Ohms on normal unbalanced line in and 1M ohm on the instrument input.

I was wondering if you could recomend a cartridge that would work well with that sort of load although i would probably pickup a phono stage at some point anyways.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChilledoutUK /img/forum/go_quote.gif The input impedance on my mackie is 10k Ohms on normal unbalanced line in and 1M ohm on the instrument input. I was wondering if you could recomend a cartridge that would work well with that sort of load although i would probably pickup a phono stage at some point anyways.

The microphone stage should work, I can't find anything online about how much gain it provides, but it's not going to be as good as on a bigger desk, probably just a basic op amp, so I'm not sure whether it will sound very good.

You could try it out with a Shure M-44 which has a whopping (for a phono cart ) 9.5mv output. It's not the last word in refinement or detail but has a nice warm euphonic sound and a range of wider conical stylii which are useful to have in your arsenal for transcribing older records. Most DJ shops will have these for around 25 quid.

 

[ChilledoutUK]

I forgot to make an update a while ago i was looking at the specs of input impedance on my Mackie onyx satellite and noticed that the the instrument input was 1Mohm I though what if i were to put a 47k ohm or slightly higher resistor in parallel the seen input would be aproximatley 47k.

I sort of forgot about that idea until i came across a thread where they were asking about reverse RIAA in adobe audition.

Apparently one of the posters put a 47k resistor in parallel with the instrument inputs on his prosumer soundcard which would make the load seen by the turntable be about 47kish ohms. He then went on about how it was easier to remove crackle pre EQ and apply an reverse RIAA equalisation curve.

Being a bit of an electronics geek i knew that using an 47k in parallel with 1Mohm would not yield 47K but rather about 44.9K so i calculated and decided i would use 50kohm in parrallel with the input which to my calculations makes a input impedance of 47.6k ohms.

On the preamps on my mackie acording to makie they lifted them straight from there mixers and is the main reason i bought the device in the first place.

If you look at the fourth paragraph on this page it explains about the use of onyx preamp.

Mackie - Satellite FireWire Recording System

The line input gets about 40db of gain and the mic input about 60db of gain.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChilledoutUK /img/forum/go_quote.gif Being a bit of an electronics geek i knew that using an 47k in parallel with 1Mohm would not yield 47K but rather about 44.9K so i calculated and decided i would use 50kohm in parrallel with the input which to my calculations makes a input impedance of 47.6k ohms.

Surely then just getting a phono pre-amp in kit form like the Hagerman Bugle would be a piece of piss for you.

 

[Herandu]

What's the obsession with 47K? Many phono pre-amps input are not that stable, and minor variations need golden ears to detect. Things are even worse at the output. Some of these phono pre-amps murder the output signal fed to the following pre-amp stage, after they have so carefully processed the incoming signal.