[Jenn]

In article ,
"Arny Krueger" wrote:

"Jenn" wrote in message

...
In article ,
"Arny Krueger" wrote:

"Eeyore" wrote in
message ...


wrote:

wrote:
What components would you put into the best money-no-object music
system in the world?

I nominate:

tube amp: the WAVAC SH-833 - $350,000
turntable: Rockport Sirius III - $70,000

What should be the other components: speakers, preamp, tuner, DAC,
cd
player, etc.?

The Rockport is FAR from being the best TT out there. I've heard it,
I've heard the Continuum, and I've heard the Clearaudio Statement, and
my favorite 'table/arm combo is still the Wilson Benesch Act ONE with
a
Breuer arm, which can be purchased for a fraction of the price of
those
others.

What difference does it make ?

You missed the point Graham, which was for Marc to brag on Usenet about
all
the expensive hardware that he has "heard". No doubt Marc heard each TT
in
a different place, on a different day, with a different audio system
attached to it, and probably even with different source materials. Yep,
really close, fair evaluations. NOT!

Just curious: How else does one evaluate multiple TTs? (other than the
source materials should be the same, of course)

It seems obvious that when evaluating *anything* one would want to hold as
many variables constant as possible.

We did comparative evaluations of cartridges some years back, which is a
similar problem. Here's how we did it:

(1) 2 identical turntables, tonearms, bases, etc., both checked out through
the main system right before the test with test records, protractors, etc.
(2) Pairs of identical stamper-numbered LPs, all fresh, clean and new at the
beginning of the test.
(3) Identical preamps. Of course we played them back through the same main
system.
(4) An operator that maintained the LPs in synch during the test.
(5) All of the above hidden from the listeners.

The listeners compared the alternatives by switching the main system between
the outputs of the two preamps.

If you don't control the variables, how can you reasonably attribute any
sonic differences to just one of many variables?

All true of course. But in the real world, it's difficult to find, say,
the 4 TTs you want to hear in one store.