[brianjrealtor]

I have a Numark TT1650 turntable I bought for $150. I replaced the cartridge with a Grado Red. It sounds great so far in my Soundcraftsmen Preamp EQ, but do higher priced turntables make that much of a difference in sound quality if you have a good cartridge on them?

How much difference do the interior components make in the sound quality on the more expensive turntables??

 

[DannyBuoy]

My opinion? The turntable is the least of the worries in analog setup (I am assuming here that the platter tracks at correct speed with no noticible fluctuations).

You made a great choice going with a decent cartridge. To me here is the bang for the buck list in order of most to least.

Get the best cartridge you can for your money. Before buying, determine if you are going with Moving Coil or Moving Magnet. Most higher end cartridges are Moving Coil.

Get a Phono Amp that matches the charecteristics of your cartridge. Do yo want tube or SS? Make sure the output of your cartridge is matched in impedence and voltage to the Phono Amp.

Get a good record cleaning kit. They can run from $20 to $2,000 (and above obviously. There is always above). Clean your records, made them smooth and slippery to the needle and you extend the needle/cartridge life and your ears will thank-you for the effort.

I went from a Sony Direct Drive and Ortofon cartridge years ago to a ProJect RM6A with a Sumiko Blue Oyter Special EVO3 Moving Coil Cartridge with a ProJect Tube Phono Amp with Audioquest DiamondBack interconnects (a little over $2,000 a few years back) and it was quite a difference in sound quality, more so than I would have guessed. But if I were to do it again, I would have put more time and effort into the cartridge and Phono Amp choices with the old Sony Turntable because they are the most critical pieces that you notice the change right away.

Since you already have the cartridge, do some research and see with other Phono Amps you can try. Make sure you have a least several bucks spent on your cables, don't use 50 cent cables to move those low level signals between turntable and phono amp and phono to preamp. Make sure you have signal grounded and you are plugged into a power supply that has low noise on it (I use a computer's UPS that has auto voltage regulation, filtering, and surge suppression). It ran about $100 to have fairly clean power.

If you do want to make a jump to better turntable check out Todd The Vinyl Junkie in these forums. I believe he carries VPI which is one of the best bangs you can get today.

 

[Skylab]

Better cartridges and turntables will indeed offer better sound quality - but that isn't to say your Numark/Grado set-up doesn't sound good - I am sure it does! But every step-up I have made in analog gear has been very rewarding.

That said, I *definitely* agree that a clean records are hugely important! The $500 I spent on a VPI 16.5 wet-vacuum record cleaning machine is the best $500 I ever spent in hi-fi.

 

[GuyDebord]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DannyBuoy /img/forum/go_quote.gif My opinion? The turntable is the least of the worries in analog setup (I am assuming here that the platter tracks at correct speed with no noticible fluctuations).

I totally disagree with this statement. The turntable is as critical as the cartridge and arm. An excellent turntable provides incredible detail extraction, coherence, rhythm, sense of space, impact and most importantly solidity and timing. Turntables are almost rocket science, they are impossible precision instruments that make the cartridge glide and perfectly balance the hold of the arm. A bad TT will ruin any cartridge!

BTW, I consider myself a senior considering TT's, I have owned too many for almost 20 years, so I can say with confidence that Turntables matter A LOT!

Quote:

Originally Posted by DannyBuoy /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you do want to make a jump to better turntable check out Todd The Vinyl Junkie in these forums. I believe he carries VPI which is one of the best bangs you can get today.

Best bangs? I must say that the only vpi I have liked is the HRX, the cheap models have never made me forget about them. If I wanted a cheap TT I would go for a Rega P2 or better save for a Rega P3. TTVJ is one of dozens of sellers around. The best? your local dealers! you must hear and handle a TT before buying!!

 

[fzman]

will also chime in that the turntable itself makes a very crucial contribution- it is wrong to overestimate the value of the cartridge- as it would be to claim that a better keyboard will make your computer faster--

 

[9pintube]

Yes the turntable is every bit as important as it's "other parts" for great LP playback..I would say, as others have stated, the speed of the platter, the Bearing noise itself caused by worn(spindle/end ball and thrust pad) will be heard in the platters rotation! This is especially true while listening with headphones... Most important when "Upgrading" your T.T. keep your Table, arm, cart.(M.M. or M.C) and phono preamp in the same $$$ ballpark....You don't need a 2K cart on a rega P-2 table...I also found that when I added my clearaudio speed controller/power generator was a huge improvement........SO,take baby steps, be happy and enjoy your T.T. and Vinyl!!! Oh, and like SKyLAB said,*definitely* agree that a clean records are hugely important! The $500 I spent on a VPI 16.5 wet-vacuum record cleaning machine is the best $500 I ever spent! I think that would be my 1st upgrade.....It will last forever!!!! Enjoy

 

[edstrelow]

It seems that everyone is forgetting about the arm, especially the need for a radial tracking arm. I wouldn't pay much money for a good table unless I could get something like the old Rabco to use with it.

This site has some good history of these types of arms.Rabco SL-8E SL-8: Tangential Tonearm, Servo Control, Parallel Tracking, Functioning, Drawings, Construction, Manual.

I remember when I wanted to switch to my first moving coil cartridge, an Ortofon, which I was going to plug into a modified B&O 4000 radial arm.

I took my 4000 to a shop to compare the MC with the stock B&O cartridge on the 4000. The shop had the cartridge set up on a Linn Sondek/SME, which was pretty much the best conventional turntable of the day. Frankly it didn't sound any better than the B&O. In fact the B&O sounded better. So I debated but finally went for the MC cartridge thinking that the radial arm really was good and the 4000 wasn't far off the Linn.


Subsequently I installed the Ortofon on the 4000, rebuilt the arm, replaced some wiring and ran this and other MC cartridges for many years onward.

My main point being that I firmly believe that no conventional arm equals a radial tracker and the difference more than outweighs a table with super low wow and flutter.

In any event no matter how good your table's specs, I can't believe that lp's themselves don't contribute more wow and flutter than the table.

 

[Skylab]

That may be true, but from everything I read, every "radial tracking"/linear tracking arm ever made was hopelessly fraught with problems.

The VPI uses a uni-pivot arm, which is brilliant in its simplicity, although it requires some precision manufacturing. I think the uni-pivot concept makes a lot of sense.

But I have heard a lot of good arms. I owned an SME III - that was a nice arm too.

 

[memepool]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DannyBuoy /img/forum/go_quote.gif My opinion? The turntable is the least of the worries in analog setup (I am assuming here that the platter tracks at correct speed with no noticible fluctuations).... I went from a Sony Direct Drive and Ortofon cartridge years ago to a ProJect RM6A with a Sumiko Blue Oyter Special EVO3 Moving Coil Cartridge with a ProJect Tube Phono Amp with Audioquest DiamondBack interconnects (a little over $2,000 a few years back) and it was quite a difference in sound quality, more so than I would have guessed. But if I were to do it again, I would have put more time and effort into the cartridge and Phono Amp choices with the old Sony Turntable because they are the most critical pieces that you notice the change right away.

As others have said the turntable and arm shouldn't be dismissed in this fashion.

interesting that you could take that view...

How is it possible that a basic elastic band spinning a piece of acrylic knocked together in a factory dating from former Soviet Czechoslovakia could possibly outperform an advanced direct drive turntable made by one of the most innovative and influential audio companies ever?

I guess you concluded that if such a basic design of turntable could out perform such a technologically advanced one then the turntable must be less important?

The explanation you overlooked is that the turntable and arm can't be considered as one entity and the tonearm on the Pro-Ject is a much more modern proficient design than that of the Sony (assuming it had a Sony arm or at least one from the 1970s)

As you suspect the Sony might measured up better against the Pro-Ject if you were just comparing the turntables and not the tonearms and cartridges.

This is the problem with comparing many vintage designs with modern ones. In many ways the turntable industry has regressed from the 1970s insofar as now the main choices are simple belt drives (apart form the stalwart Technics SL1200). This is because the industry is now boutique serving a tiny market and these designs are cheaper to build.

However in other ways it's continued to progress and it's often overlooked that massive advances were made in tonearms in the twilight years of vinyl in the 80s by SME and Rega and almost every modern design today is informed by this.

Similarly although materials like acrylic were used as far back as the 1960s by Transcriptors it's only recently that their use has become widespread and the influence on sound quality of the plinth design in particular has been more fully understood.