[colonelkernel8]

http://www.laser-vinyl.com/Turntable...er%20Turntable

 

[Sherwood]

I can see under twenty of thse ever being sold. It has the distinct look of a machine designed by UNIX coders. Like my first cd player. Like TRON.

 

[Garbz]

Oh my god why doesn't this product just die. It gets mentioned here at least once per semester. There are whole websites dedicated to how crap that product is and how questionable the company's policies are.

 

[RedLeader]

doesn't mean I don't want one anyways!

 

[Uncle Erik]

This keeps cycling up over and over again in the media and on sites. I was interested for a bit, but I've seen the sonics questioned and there are some rather unhappy former investors/partners out there. I don't think I'd trust the company enough to do business with them.

And even without that, why spend $10,000 when you can get great vinyl performance for $1,000 or less?

 

[Garbz]

I'm sure if you spend $10000 on a turntable you'd get much better quality anyway. The laser is a marketing gimmik

 

[Herandu]

I am not sure how much one needs to spend in order to put together a good TT set up. But I am happy with my almost unknown SONY PS-6750. After several break ins and attempted break ins over the decades it's still in my possession and does the bizz for me. Mind you, I don't clean the rack it sits on that often as before. I am not as strong as I was before when attempting to lift it. That laser guided missile would have to be something very special in order to improve on my rock of Gibraltar.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Garbz /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm sure if you spend $10000 on a turntable you'd get much better quality anyway. The laser is a marketing gimmik

I don't think it's just a marketing gimmick. The original research on this was done at Berkley in the '70s I believe, around the same time as Philips and Sony were working on CD, and it's just taken a very long time to get the technology to market in any cost effective form.

At least someone is trying to further develop vinyl replay, which is pretty amazing considering it hasn't been a mass medium for going on 20 years now. The application of technology is a preferable avenue for development than just reducing record players to objets d'art which seems to be the main trend at this kind of price level.

Hopefully if enough Museums and Archives buy these things some of the technology will be made cheaper in the future. From what I have read the sound is pretty amazing and unlike any other type of turntable obviously but the main problem as ever is with surface imperfections and dust contamination.

 

[khbaur330162]

Wouldn't the reading of a vinyl disc with a laser defeat the purpose of vinyl? I'd see much more potential in something that could copy vinyl over to CD in a one-push-button fashion.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by khbaur330162 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Wouldn't the reading of a vinyl disc with a laser defeat the purpose of vinyl? I'd see much more potential in something that could copy vinyl over to CD in a one-push-button fashion.

The Laser just reads the pattern on the surface of the vinyl as a CD mechanism reads the pits on a CD. The difference is that the pits on the CD are a simple binary sequence representing the waveform whereas with the record it's reading the actual waveform.

Therefore this does away with the need for AD/DA conversion as the waveform remains analogue throughout so is theoretically capable of extracting all the information on the record with none of the band limiting or resampling issues with digital codecs.

This system would be capable a theoretically higher resolution than CD so long as the Lasers can properly scan the 3 dimensional grooves. For this they use 5 lasers I believe.

The problem is that with a CD the plastic layer protects the disc surface and the laser is designed to focus ignoring the imperfections on the plastic whereas with a record there is no such protection and fragments of dust can work their way down into the grooves which are deeper and way more complex obviously. Which makes the job of accurately scanning the record much more difficult.

Maybe someone needs to design a foolproof way of cleaning the vinyl and then encasing it in another plastic to prevent degredation and surface contaminants finding their way into the grooves. Ideally this cover could be removed at a later date without damaging the playing surface for playback on regular machines.

 

[daycart1]

Machines like this have gotten some thorough audiophile reviews. As I recall, the bottom line was that they are excellent for some damaged vinyl, but, of course, not as good as a top conventional tt for vinyl in good condition.