[Audio_Empire[_2_]]

On Saturday, September 21, 2013 3:46:39 PM UTC-7, ScottW wrote:
On Friday, September 20, 2013 8:05:20 PM UTC-7, Audio_Empire wrote:

In article ,



I still enjoy vinyl. I have a huge collection (that I didn't dump when
the CD came out) and I enjoy listening to them. I also enjoy trying new
record decks, arms, cartridges and phono preamps as they come out. In
spite of some posters' protestations to the contrary, modern phono
equipment does elicit more information from those record grooves than
was possible during vinyl's heyday. The best designed new tables have a
lower noise floor and less wow and flutter than did their predecessors.
Modern arms have lower resonances, less bearing friction, and track
better than did earlier designs and modern cartridges can have better
and flatter frequency response, track better with lower distortion and
generally cause less record wear than did cartridges in the 1980's.

I'll agree on some carts measured performance improvement...though it
is still modest and questionably audible. My old Signet cart tracked
every bit as well as my new AT OC9 and the best tracking cart ever
tested is no longer in production.

The improvement here is that the level of tracking once only available in
a Shure V15, is now commonplace. While many MC cartridges are still
too hot on the top end, strides in materials technologies and manufacturing
processes have made many MM and VR cartridges finally equal to MCs in
their ability to retrieve information from the records and even have most of
the MC's other attributes (such as speed) without being +10dB at 17 KHz.

I think carts are like mics. Different makes/models don't sound alike
but the specs rarely offer clear insight as to why and as such the
positive or negative of said differences remains subjective. What you
might like in a cart someone else may not.

That should be obvious. But, there are other things that make choosing
cartridges problematical as well. For instance, due to the combinations
of mass and compliance, not all cartridges will work optimally in all
arms, yet, not even lip service to this problem is given by the industry.
Since the required information to make the required calculations to
find the resonance of a particular arm/cartridge combination is often
not forthcoming from either manufacturer, the only way to find out
whether your arm can accommodate the cartridge in which you are
interested is to try it. With today's cartridge prices, that can be an
expensive proposition.

I also find your table comments really questionable. For example...if
wow and flutter and noise floor are below audible levels...what will
measured improvement bring to the listeners ear? I don't think modern
players improvement in these areas offer any real audible improvement.
I do think labels like classic records and analogue productions have
improved the noise floor of the media but it remains by far the
limiting factor in vinyl playback, on either the latest or good
quality vintage players.

OBVIOUSLY, if an older table had noise, wow and flutter and resonance
specs that were already below audibility, then any improvement in
their modern counterparts due to improved materials and manufacturing
methodology is going to be academic at best. But in the case of low-end
turntables, these new methods and materials yield 'tables that
today, perform far above the levels available for that price range of record
decks back in the day. Yesterday's state-of-the-art is still excellent, but the
delta between yesterday's price-is-no-object designs and todays more
affordable offerings is getting smaller. These are the improvements that
I am referring to when I talk about new materials and new methodologies.


ScottW