[Audio Empire]

On Wed, 2 Nov 2011 19:49:26 -0700, bob wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 2, 7:22=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote:

Forty years ago, vinyl was THE source of listener-owned music media. Today it
has to compete with a myriad of other viable music sources. That's a sign of
musical source diversity.

Let's not oversell this. The moment vinyl faced serious competition it
started losing market share. In the 80s, it was losing out not only to
CD, but also to cassettes, for heaven's sake. It was dead. It's now
back from the dead. That's something, but a 2% market share is nothing
to crow about.

It is certainly true that the compact cassette ate deeply into LP
sales starting in the mid-seventies, which just went to show that most
buyers valued convenience over performance (no matter what one thinks
of LP as a music source, I think most knowledgeable audio/music
enthusiasts would have to agree that decent vinyl performance is far
better than was Philips cassette performance - even WITH Dolby B and
HX Pro). I always found commercially available cassettes to sound
lousy. Even on a Nakamichi 1000, they had much more wow and flutter
than an LP, they were noisier than an LP and always sounded
compressed. In short, they were lousy.


snip

All of them. Project. Music Hall, and Rega all make fine performing
"high-end" turntables. There's no market for any other kind.

I wouldn't call them "fine performing." But certain know-nothing
reviewers have anointed them "high-end," and that's been enough.

They have low wow/flutter, the arms are low mass/low friction and
dynamically balanced, and they do a decent job of playing a record. Of
course they don't elicit the last word in resolution from one's vinyl
but they are better than any $89 direct-drive table from the 1980s.

snip

But there are scores of new ones that have taken their place. The absolute
bottom tier is gone, that's true. There are no more cheap mass-market tables
from the likes of Pioneer, Yamaha, Panasonic etc.,

Not those brands in particular, but the low end is still well-
represented. Last time I was in Best Buy (a while ago), the only thing
they carried was a sub-$100 Sony. It's still made, and has plenty of
competition.

Yes, it seems that cheap tables from Numark, Ion, and Sony are still
available, but I must say that I've never seen one in a store. Numark
tables show up from time-to-time in Music stores as "DJ equipment"
however.

Let's not forget that the only thing that kept vinyl alive in the 90s
AT ALL was the DJ market. (And they were not using the hamster-powered
belt drives of today's entry-level audiophile market.) The SL1200 is
out of production, but several copycats are still out there.

That was then, this is now. I never had a DD table that satisfied me,
and I had a number of DD tables that were highly touted at the time. I
don't remember their model numbers but I had the big, expensive
Panasonic SP-10 as well as the top-of-the-line JVC QL-70 (among
others) and I didn't like either. I believe that looking back, my
favorite turntable, and the one I should have kept, was the Empire 598
"Troubadour". It was built like a tank, belt drive, with a sprung
sub-chassis, had a nice big torque-y motor and an excellent mid-mass
arm. My friends and I called it the "great gold idol". it was very
imposing looking. With the Nakaoka heavy, lead-filled record mat
fitted, it gave the most satisfying sound I think I ever heard from LP
(although my later Mapleknoll Athena was close, it's requirement for a
noisy aquarium pump and the concomitant difficulty in keeping the air
properly proportioned between the SLT arm and the 'table's platter,
made it a pain in the arse)

What's really missing today is the p-mount, which brought acceptable
and non-destructive reproduction to the masses.

The indictment of the p-mount concept was that arguably, the highest
quality P-mount cartridge ever sold (to my knowledge - who knows what
was sold in Japan and never made available in the rest of the world)
was the original Sumiko Bluepoint. There was no P-mount Koetsu, or
Dynavector or even a P-mount Shure V-15 available. I'm not saying
that this kind of standardization wasn't a good idea, it certainly
was. But unfortunately, it looks as if it were too little, too late
and only mass-market manufacturers embraced it. I don't remember one
high-quality arm maker who had a P-mount arm. If I'm wrong here and
disremember, please enlighten me.