[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeff Wong I think of turntables as having made great advances in the last 20 years, but, I'm thinking of "turntable" as the umbrella description of the entire rig including the other parts necessary for a working front end.

Thats exactly what I'm trying to get accross. If you think of all the elements separately which is how the high end stuff was sold until the late 70's you can cherry pick and mix and match the best components from any era and in so doing save yourself money.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeff Wong From a more technical and correct standpoint regarding just the base and platter (where you're coming from, and I suppose rightly so) there probably have been fewer advances in that time, although platters and plinths have made some progress; tonearms and cartridges have definitely made greater strides in improvement.

Agreed. Tonearms have improved as have cartridges because these are pretty easy things to make and don't require large scale manufacturing.

Motorboards do. One of the main reasons belt drives have taken over is that they can be made by small companies without large industrial plant. Check out some of the stunning turntables which came out of Japan in the 1980's and you'll see what I mean. Nobody makes turntables like the Marantz TT100, Kenwood LD07, Sony Biotracer, Nakamichi Dragon or Luxman PD555 anymore or the Garrard 301 or Thorens TD124 for that matter...

 

[peter braun]

On the topic of whether analog technology has made significant improvements in the last few decades, I would have to say both yes and no. I think that many of the inexpensive cartridges are far better than what was available at comparable price points from years past. On the other hand, I think that the TT technology has not been significantly improved on. I think that the superior build of the 70s and earlier 80s TTs makes the tables themselves better than the affordable options now available (say from Rega, Music Hall, Goldring, or Project). I believe that the best bang for the buck really comes from combining the heavy build of a vintage table with a quality arm (either new or old...from the likes of SME, Rega, or AQ) and a newer cartridge.

 

[Tomcat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot Late 1979 was right around the time when the "hoodoo" started creeping into audiophilia. Digital recording was on the horizon, and analogue manufacturers had to do something to save their shrinking market the early articles on "why digital isn't as good as analogue" are downright share. They created publicity campaigns distributed through carefully veiled advertorials in various stereo magazines trying to discredit measurable quality benchmarks and replace them with purely subjective ones. Some of the early articles on "why digital isn't as good as analogue" are downright laughable.

bigshot,

That has to be one of the most absurd comments about the dawn of the digital era I ever read. Have you been there? Did you listen to early digital reproduction? It was awful. Bad beyond belief. Screeching Guarnieris, every soprano with a cold, brass piercing one's eardrums. A two-hour visit at the dentist's was more fun than listening to an early-eighties CDP for five minutes. The only thing truly laughable about that era was how artificial, unnatural and horrible the new technology sounded and how readily it was embraced by the media. "Perfect sound forever", the official Sony/Philips slogan -- magazines were full of it. And the best thing: they couldn't find any sonic differences between CDPs, they all sounded identical: perfect. Measuring frequency response, rumble, wow and flutter or THD seemed somewhat futile, hence: they were all great, they were all perfect. Magazines willing to forsake adertising money and to call it like they heard it were few and far between. "Carefully veiled advertorials" in favor of the vinyl record, bigshot? Yeah, right. With all those completely unveiled advertorials in favor of CD technology, they must have been very carefully veiled, indeed.

Having vented some anger about digital music reproduction, I'd like to add that I have never heard a better and more musical turntable as a the idler-wheel-driven Garrard 301, refurbished and in a proper wooden plinth. Add an old 12 inch tonearm like the SME 3012 and use an old cartridge design like the Ortofon SPU, and it will be almost impossible to find any modern table/arm/cartridge combination that's capable of doing a better job at faithfully reproducing what's musically important. During the history of music reproduction, technology has taken quite a few turns in the wrong direction, and turntable technology is no exception, I'm afraid. It's sad really.

 

[Publius]

Come on. If it was really that bad I'd expect to see positive DBTs of old CDPs against modern ones based on distortion metrics alone, as well as recordings of the old CDPs just to show how bad it really was. (I'd also expect the same hyperbole to be levelled against modern NOS DACs too, which actually is true to a certain degree.) I mean, millions of people buying them and not returning them is kind of a big statement of approval in and of itself, right?

Has anybody located measurement results showing improvements in sound due to more rigid tonearms?

 

[Tomcat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Publius I'd also expect the same hyperbole to be levelled against modern NOS DACs too, which actually is true to a certain degree.

Publius,

If it wasn't for NOS DACs, I'd given up on digital music reproduction. I have been saved by NOS DACs. To my ears, NOS DACs are much more organic and musical and than any upsampling approach (or SACD, for that matter).

But back to early eighties digital sound: one doesn't have to be a genius to figure out that the industry and the audio press are obviously measuring the wrong criteria, when a system sounds flat out painful. I honestly couldn't stand it. It was like needles into the head. It was absurd just how bad it was. And I don't need any DBT test to tell me when I'm feeling pain, trust me.

What made CDs successful was a great marketing effort, superior convenience, and playback without surface noise and without clicks or pops from dust on the record. When a CD recording is silent, it's really silent. It's just the music part on the recordings that wasn't all that great. You know, in the pain and stress inducing sense of not all that great.

Since you're a DBT man who doesn't trust his perception (and right you are), I guess you want scientific proof, a psychological study about it? Read this: God is in the Nuances, by Markus Sauer, Stereophile January 2000.

 

[Publius]

That's one thing I never really understood about NOS. By and large, as I understand things, the primary reason for the poor purported quality of early CDPs was due to NOS, and only NOS. The analog filter circuitry, jitter, output amps and power supplies were more or less unimpeachable. And the entire point of NOS was that earlier CDPs seemed to sound better than contemporary CDPs.

Thanks for the link, I actually had never seen it yet, but I really do not want this to turn into a dbt/skepticism/subjectivism debate. All I'm saying is that your impressions of 80s CDPs seem rather hyperbolic.

EDIT: Actually IIRC, the jitter was not so unimpeachable, and it is possible that early CDPs could have some crappy clock circuitry jazz going on. But it would have stuck out like a sore thumb on the distortion numbers so I doubt that's what was happening.

 

[bigshot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by memepool So at first you said subjective reviews were where the "hoodoo" crept in and now you are saying that the specs don't mean anything either? you can't have it both ways Steve.

I'm not making absolute theoretical statements... I'm just trying to point to simple common sense. Specs are very useful if they are measured consistently, and the results are put into context. The context of the difference between -72db and -78db is that for all intents and purposes, there is no difference. If you have a turntable with specs like that, and there's a problem with the sound, it certainly isn't a result of that particular aspect of sound reproduction. Striving to improve that aspect further and further beyond that would be an exercise in futility.

Specs aren't a contest of numbers... those numbers are supposed to represent something tangible.

See ya
Steve

 

[bigshot]

The problem with early CDs was the masters they were using for reissues of analogue recordings. They were using tapes that had been mastered with EQ tweaks to suit LP cutting lathes, rather than the original session tape. This resulted in the shrill sound compared to the same recording on LP.

See ya
Steve

 

[bigshot]

The problem with early CDs was primarily in analogue reissues. Listeners compared the LP release to the new CD and realized the CDs sounded shrill and harsh. This was because the early CDs were mastered from tapes that had been EQed to suit the peculiarities of LP cutting lathes. Once they started using session masters, the differences between the mediums dwindled.

See ya
Steve

 

[bigshot]

I can't tell if my posts are getting through. The board is kicking up "thread not specified" error messages.

Thanks
Steve

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Publius That's one thing I never really understood about NOS. By and large, as I understand things, the primary reason for the poor purported quality of early CDPs was due to NOS, and only NOS. The analog filter circuitry, jitter, output amps and power supplies were more or less unimpeachable. And the entire point of NOS was that earlier CDPs seemed to sound better than contemporary CDPs.

As I understand it, it was more a matter of poor recordings in the beginning. I don't think dithering was well understood or used properly.

 

[zowie]

I don't think dithering could have been a factor. They were only using 16 bits, at best, so there was nothing to dither.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tomcat Did you listen to early digital reproduction? It was awful. Bad beyond belief. Screeching Guarnieris, every soprano with a cold, brass piercing one's eardrums. A two-hour visit at the dentist's was more fun than listening to an early-eighties CDP for five minutes. The only thing truly laughable about that era was how artificial, unnatural and horrible the new technology sounded and how readily it was embraced by the media. "Perfect sound forever", the official Sony/Philips slogan -- magazines were full of it. And the best thing: they couldn't find any sonic differences between CDPs, they all sounded identical: perfect. Measuring frequency response, rumble, wow and flutter or THD seemed somewhat futile, hence: they were all great, they were all perfect.

At the time I totally agreed with you, although I was hardly an early adopter I got my first CDP in 1987/8, a Marantz CD65IISE with the famed TDA1541 chipset. I got it through someone at work so I didn't bother to audition it first (all CD players sounded the same anyway remember!)

When I plugged it into my Cyrus One amp it sounded bloody awful, with that chrome plated upper register which made it impossible to listen to for long periods without a bottle of aspirin.

I persevered with it for several years believing the hype and thinking it was a worthwhile trade off compared to the ever more crappy record pressings I continued to buy. Gradually I just found myself buying more records and fewer CD's and thats the way it has remained ever since.

However I have since realised that it wasn't CD per se which sounded bad, it was a combination of things like the fact that my Cyrus Amp and A&R speakers were optimised for the lush sounds of early 80's vinyl. That early CD mastering was pretty poor and that some of the early players did have problems as does any new technology. The Marantz I had was actually quite laid back.

The first generation Sony players in their early production runs certainly had a really nasty top end but most players from this period sound pretty soft and for want of a better word "analogue", compared to what has come since.
Imagine if you had heard a 96k MP3 back then! it would probably have induced vomiting...

At last count I had about 6 1st and 2nd generation CD players and in many ways I prefer the sound to modern machines.


The Hi-Fi press in the UK certainly weren't overawed by CD. They said the same things back then that they say today; that CD is great for the mass market, has brough Hi-Fi to a much wider section of the population and is always going to sound better than a cheap turntable ( although there are precious few of those around today).

 

[Leporello]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tomcat Have you been there? Did you listen to early digital reproduction? It was awful.

Well, I was there.

I abandoned my Philips cdp from 1984 only about a year ago. I also have several CDs from the beginning of the 80s. To my ears most of them do not sound awful at all. The audiophile myth about bad "early digital" is just a convenient way of selling new gear.

The real problem during the dawn of the cd era was of course that the audiophiles' listening abilities had been severely corrupted by the inherent colorations of the vinyl. They just could not handle the musical truth.


Regards,

L.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leporello The real problem during the dawn of the cd era was of course that the audiophiles' listening abilities had been severely corrupted by the inherent colorations of the vinyl. They just could not handle the musical truth.

so if cd = truth what then is DVD truth squared?