Record Player/Turntable

Squirlz said:

I'd like to get one to play my old vinyl collection, but I need to see if either of my receivers have turntable jacks.

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bcla said:

I was never really into vinyl. I never really bought into the argument that the sound was purer or more accurate than well mastered digital. It was definitely a different sound.

However, I do remember reading about and even seeing some supremely esoteric turntable/tonearm/cartridge setups. I heard of wooden hand carved cartridges with moving coil pickups that cost hundreds, as well as fancy tonearms. The most extreme setup (that I saw in person) used turntable mounted on stone block, along with a vacuum clamp that sucked the record flat and which was supposed to produce more accurate sound. I think it was about $10K in the mid 80s. The name was the SOTA Sapphire. I'll see if I can find a picture.

Addendum: it was the Star Sapphire that had the vacuum clamp, and it was a wood body. There were other turntables with stone bases.

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Squirlz said:

Nothing to "buy into". It's simple fact. The most amazing setup I saw in the 70s was a turntable with the arm dampened in STP. You had to turn on a heat lamp and warm it up for 1/2 an hour before using. This was in the den of a Neurosurgeon that a friend of mine was house sitting for.

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http://diffuser.fm/do-cds-actually-sound-better-than-vinyl/
Another highly respected name in the engineering business is Bob Clearmountain, who has his own issues with the vinyl format. “I’d just listen and go: ‘Jesus, after all that work, that’s all I get?’ It was sort of a percentage of what we did in the studio,” he says. “All that work and trying to make everything sound so good, and the vinyl just wasn’t as good. If you’re a musician like Bob and I, and you get to do a mix and you listen to it and you love the way it sounds,” he adds, “and then it’s transferred to vinyl and suddenly it’s got noise and ticks and pops, for me that’s an extremely unmusical event.”

Clearmountain readily admits, however, that he was not initially sold on digital, noting that early analog to digital technology was far from perfect. “It wasn’t until CDs actually started to sound good [that I went]: ‘That’s what it sounded like. That’s what I remember doing in the studio,’” Clearmountain says. “The great thing for me about digital, about CDs, was that I could do things that I could never do for a vinyl record.”

The other aspect of the current trend toward vinyl is the aesthetic appeal of the entire package, and with it, a lifestyle choice, if you prefer, as opposed to simply the sonic experience. “I don’t think that is really the appeal for people right now,” says Pete Lyman, chief mastering technician at Infrasonic Sound Mastering Studio. “They like the collectability factor. They like the whole ritual and process of listening to it. They’re more engaged with the music that way.”

So it seems to be about personal preference over some magical equation or definitive sonic test as to which format is truly, and undeniably, the best. “In theory, digital (especially 96kHz sample-rate digital, which takes any filter issues out of the way) should win hands down, because it is unquestionably superior in every measurable way,” adds Robjohns. “However, current mastering practice means that vinyl releases can often sound noticeably better from a dynamics point of view, bizarrely.”

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LBIJim said:

Still have and use my linear tracking turntable from the early 1980s. No arm. The cartridge and needle travelled along a rod attrached to the lid. It could find the third song on the album without playing the first two, then repeat it if desired, then go back and play the first song, then skip to the fifth song, etc.

I considered buying a vertical turntable, where the record played upright rather than flat, but decided against it.

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