Turntables

[zetroc]

Are Brilliant Pebbles still a thing?

[FSonicSmith]

Since I seem to be unmotivated to work today, I would like to add to my post, #179, that every playback system, no matter how elaborate, is compromised. Significantly. And on top of being inherently compromised, we make our own compromises, intentionally and unintentionally when we pick specific components. For example, our hobby contains a segment who swear by singled ended triode "flea power" amps that can cost huge amounts of dinero with hand wound transformers of silver wire driving bizarre looking super-efficient horn loaded speakers in pursuit of "life like dynamics" and "tonal accuracy" but at the knowing expense of low end bass response, ultimate loudness, and imaging. Some great sound systems are built around two way stand mount minimonitors driven by either tubed or solid state amps that emphasize pinpoint imaging and relatively pure midrange at the expense of low end response, dynamics, and sense of scale. And then there are the super high powered megawatt rigs with huge multi-driver speakers along the line of Wilson MAXX3s that can reproduce the lowest registers of pipe organs, reproduce micro detail like the sound of a mouse farting too close to the recording mics, and shake the windows, but many of us listen to these behemoth speakers the size of refrigerators and wonder where the beauty of the music went. There's a million different ways to create a great system that will appeal to many, but no one system appeals to all. We all hear differently and are attracted to to different aspects of sound reproduction, and every system can only do so many things well at the expense of others, no matter how much money is at your disposal.

[davids]

There’s an incredible amount of snake oil in the audio world. My advice is to let your ears be your judge.

Back in the early ‘80s I was a steadfast reader of “High Fidelity” magazine and its charts and tables. Once THD fell below, oh, 0.1% or so, they claimed every piece of electronics sounded alike. Sonic differences between two well-built turntables? Never. So one day at a crowded stereo store in Harvard Square I listened, back to back, to the same record, through the same cartridge, amp and speakers. All that changed was that the Technics turntable was replaced by a Thorens. The sonic difference was staggering. It blew my mind.

From then on, I listened. And it lead me to discern differences in electronics, transducers, digital systems and (yes) cables.

But it also revealed bullshit claims. I’ll just say VPI Magic Brick and leave it at that. Hey, it still makes a nice doorstop after 25 years.

[alexstar]

Nothing livens up a good audiophile thread like an argument about cables!

[Bobonli]

...so where is the mid-point in cables?

In other words, what is quality for an entry level rig? And, no, Im not trying to bait an argument but the implication from the recent responses is that buying the cables at Amazon or Monoprice might not be the best way to go either.

[Mark Kelly]

It is always grumpy middle aged men, almost always with some engineering background (but never Ph.D. level), and always with rather mid-fi systems. I have an analogy for you. Maybe you go all of your life thinking you hate red wine. Then one day someone serves up that rare amazing Burgundy that sends you into a swoon and you say, "hey, maybe there is something good about red wine after all" and you start seriously experimenting with similar wines and you find out that there is a new world of great wine out there that all along you thought did not exist.

Maybe you missed the bit where I said I designed and built the power supplies for a $50,000 turntable, the Saskia.

As for my "rather mid-fi system", my equipment is difficult to value because I designed and built it myself but to give you an idea, the raw parts cost for my power amp was over $4000 in 1993 so the equivalent would retail these days for say $30k? It uses a $3 power cord because I designed the power supplies (plural, in a separate chassis) to be independent of power cords. As I've been saying for years, if you can hear your power cord then the equipment power supply designs are inadequate. If you can hear your interconnects either the output buffer or the input stage is poor. If you can hear your speaker cables it's probaby the crossover.

Where I find this interesting is the psychology of the whole thing, which seems to be an example of what Daniel Kahnemann might call the heuristic of available modification : since most people can't change the significant aspects of the equipment, they elevate what should be an inconsequential aspect (the cables) to an exalted and unjustified position. This is facilitated by the industry because there is so much profit and churn in these products. If anyone spends 25% of their equipment budget on cables and doodads they are being fleeced.

And BTW I'm a winemaker by trade.

[spopepro]

There's a lot of stuff going on in audio. Some of it is easy to measure (like harmonic distortion in amplification circuits), and some of it is harder to quantify (like talking about idler, direct, and belt drive systems on TTs and what effect they have). All of it is an engineering challenge as to where you are willing to give in order to get what you want. My single ended tube, full range horn* system measures poorly, especially for THD, but it does sound really good. Because of the complexity, and the fact that we like to listen to music as opposed to measuring sweep tones, that the door is opened for the subjective, and that's where the snake oil salespeople get their foot in the door. They are further promoted by those who enjoy audio equipment collection as a hobby onto itself (which good for them! however you find happiness)

But cables aren't active or mechanical devices. A wire really only has resistance, inductance, and capacitance. A wire can also pick up interference. We aren't making HF radios, so things like skin effect doesn't apply here. Any well shielded cable with solid connections, low capacitance and resistance will sound wonderful, and the same as any other.

Buy inexpensive cables and more music.





*not actually horns. more accurately quadratic taper quarter wave transmission lines.

[Britishbane]

Maybe you missed the bit where I said I designed and built the power supplies for a $50,000 turntable, the Saskia.

As for my "rather mid-fi system", my equipment is difficult to value because I designed and built it myself but to give you an idea, the raw parts cost for my power amp was over $4000 in 1993 so the equivalent would retail these days for say $30k? It uses a $3 power cord because I designed the power supplies (plural, in a separate chassis) to be independent of power cords. As I've been saying for years, if you can hear your power cord then the equipment power supply designs are inadequate. If you can hear your interconnects either the output buffer or the input stage is poor. If you can hear your speaker cables it's probaby the crossover.

Where I find this interesting is the psychology of the whole thing, which seems to be an example of what Daniel Kahnemann might call the heuristic of available modification : since most people can't change the significant aspects of the equipment, they elevate what should be an inconsequential aspect (the cables) to an exalted and unjustified position. This is facilitated by the industry because there is so much profit and churn in these products. If anyone spends 25% of their equipment budget on cables and doodads they are being fleeced.

And BTW I'm a winemaker by trade.

Who has some tegaderm for fsonic's burns!

[Mark Kelly]

I was not trying to burn anyone.

I get a little cranky with the common "if you can't hear the cables your system is mid-fi" argument, as I said I think if you can hear the cables there's something wrong with your system. That's not to say that cables are always unimportant: my phono stage is built into the tonearm mount partially so I can wire the tonearm cables directly to the phono input, allowing me to reduce the capacitance and control the Q of the input circuit. There's an explanation of the circuit on Lynn Olson's old website

[ericpmoss]

...so where is the mid-point in cables?

In other words, what is quality for an entry level rig? And, no, Im not trying to bait an argument but the implication from the recent responses is that buying the cables at Amazon or Monoprice might not be the best way to go either.

Mark Kelly is the expert here, but I like DNM cable and Eichmann Bullet plugs for unbalanced interconnects. It's simple, flexible, no-magical-thinking cable that's affordable. It's even on sale now from the maker.

[rec head]

...so where is the mid-point in cables?

In other words, what is quality for an entry level rig? And, no, Im not trying to bait an argument but the implication from the recent responses is that buying the cables at Amazon or Monoprice might not be the best way to go either.

The answer is go with the Amazon or Monoprice cables.

[Gattonero]

Good cheap cables are DIY, satellite coax or Lan Cat5 cables work wonders. Try

[FSonicSmith]

Unbelievable stuff from some otherwise fine folks-I have no doubt. A subcontactor for a small aspect of a turntable nobody has ever heard of and a winemaker for a wine that no wine enthusiast has ever heard of holds sway with populist views! Populist views can get one quite far as recent events have proven. Very nice, and it appeals to mass sensibilities, but that does not make it true. It is not my goal to persuade you otherwise. Have any of you seen Sam Brown sing George Harrison's " Horse to the Water"?
Just idle curiosity.

[Mark Kelly]

Wow, talk about playing the man and not the ball.

Re the TT "nobody has ever heard of": Mike Fremer hasn't published a review yet, it will be favourable when it does come. Meanwhile: caf-2013-most-impressive-product-saskia-ii-turntable.

I don't think that saying that cables are bunk is a populist view, at least not in audio circles: the majority of audio people I know appear to have drunk fully of the Kool-Aid.

[FSonicSmith]

Wow, talk about playing the man and not the ball.

Re the TT "nobody has ever heard of": Mike Fremer hasn't published a review yet, it will be favourable when it does come. Meanwhile: caf-2013-most-impressive-product-saskia-ii-turntable.

I don't think that saying that cables are bunk is a populist view, at least not in audio circles: the majority of audio people I know appear to have drunk fully of the Kool-Aid.

Yeah, you are correct; please accept my apology. When someone from the gallery crow-ed the "What a burn on you" thing, I went off the rails a bit. The OP was on the subject of turntables and so the thread went off the rails too. Someone else nailed it-the debate over cables is tired and boring. You might as well lump cables in there with the topics of politics and religion. On a forum like this, my only motivation is to share my experience to assist others who have less experience. And like the song being sung by the lovely Sam Brown, it is totally up to each individual if they care to experiment for themselves and make their own judgments. From my view, it is sad to hear someone shout to the rooftops that ultra-cheap (cheap in the sense of every shortcut taken) Monoprice is all you need to know because-again in my view-you don't have to spend very much ($100-$200) per pair of 1M IC's and $300-$400 for 2.5M speaker cables to get far better sound (assuming again that the components are into the gray area we call high-end). As to powercords, I am less staunch-everyone's mileage will vary depending upon many variables. A very wise person said, "not all things capable of being measured matter and not all things that matter are capable of being measured". You designed a power supply for what I gather is an extremely sophisticated table. While the PSU may avail itself of measurements, the final product will be mostly influenced by the isolation system of the plinth/motor/drive system/bearing/platter and the tonearm design. Can the tonearm's quality be measured meaningfully? Other than tracking error correction and friction, I am of the opinion that the most important aspects of why a tonearm sounds the way it does can not be measured. Even Stereophile does not bother to provide a measurements sidebar on turntables (though Fremer will sometimes provide some analysis based on Feickert software as I recall). There is simply too little to meaningfully measure.

[Mark Kelly]

No problem, I didn't take offence.

If you remember, my original assertion was that spending $500 on cables and doodads on a $2k budget was a waste of money. In the context of a $10k+ system, $100 ICs and $200 speaker cables are probably reasonable, especially if you believe they make a difference.

Re your wine analogy, a better argument might have been the use of specialist glasses eg Riedels. Opinions go from those that say they are utter bunk to wineries which outfit their tasting rooms with them. For the record, I like them and use them; I handed someone two different glasses into which I'd poured the same pinot (NZ, not Burgundy, I can't afford decent Burgundy any more), they spontaneously commented on "the differences between the two wines". Now the plural of anecdote is not data but that's pretty convincing.

Re tonearms: tell me about it, I've spent five years designing and building a new tonearm based on the Birch null tangent geometry. Still not finished and Frank Shroeder beat me to the punch with his LT arm.