Micro RX 5000 Renaissance?

Dear @opus111 :   """  Is this a joke? Having owned 1500, 5000, and 8000 I am a MS fan but the 237 and 282 arms are by far the most overrated tonearms of all time, and nowhere near the level of their better turntables. They sound thin, sterile, and downright unmusical....."""

That you owned all those MS TT models and that you think are really good only speaks that you are totally unaware of all its design faults and that you like all the distortions degradation the TTs makes to the cartridge signal.

In that statement you confirm what I'm saying on what you like it when you said that the MX MS tonearm models sound: thin, sterile and dowrigth unmusical ". Well, first than all a tonearm must has not sounds by it self, I owned too the MAX models and are very good tonearms and very well damped and maybe is because of this that you did not like it because you like higher distortion/coloration levels. .

Good for you are still a MS TT fan, this fact only says you are a fan of a wrong designed TT.

R.

Wrongly designed or not, I rather like my 8000, at least more so than 90% of the turntables being made today. I'd take the "higher distortion/coloration levels" of the arms you don't like over the MS tonearms any day, and you can continue enjoying well damped accuracy of MAX-282 if that's what you think you are hearing

@amg56, your analogy with old cars is sort of interesting. It seems to me that all the electronics and software in modern cars put up a barrier between the driver and the actual driving experience. Yes, everything is much more sophisticated, but is it also more real?

Might the same be happening in audio? While the limitations of early digital were painfully obvious, I was nonetheless able to enjoy the music. But the exponential increase of digital processing power hasn't improve my listening enjoyment and it seems that the higher the bit rates, the more manipulated it sounds. It is a barrier between the music and the listener. You hear every detail, but it's just a lot of information (a 'data dump'). The musical message seems to be 'lost in translation'.

With analog audio this should be different, as the source material is untouched by digital manipulation (unless of course you buy those vinyl reissues pressed from digitalized sources). But perhaps to some extend all these computer aided tools do more harm than good in designing turntables, tonearms and cartridges as well?

It touches on the many 'thorny' questions around digital technology. I'm not a Luddite, but I don't belong to the 'technology will make everything better' crowd either. I try to be mindfully optimistic, perhaps against my better judgement. If a singularity is inevitably and we get this intelligence explosion, what will it mean for the human listening experience?

For this analog forum it might all come down to this question: what will the first AI designed turntable sound like? Will we enjoy it as much as we will enjoy 'driving' autonomous vehicles?

It may be just a coincidence, but looking through the various reports of the recent Munich high end event I've noticed no fewer than four (!) different turntables that all look suspiciously like the Micro RX-5000

Makes sense.  Fundamentally, Micro Seiki's famed RX 5000 belt drive remains relevant even today from both a playback perspective and engineering point of view. 

Solid design.  Ultra high analog playback capability.  Nothing superfluous, timeless really.

Dear @ferrari275: """ famed RX 5000 belt drive remains relevant even today from both a playback perspective and engineering point of view.  
Solid design. Ultra high analog playback capability. """

IMHO no one of those characteristics in your statement are really true but the other way around.

The RX 5000 is way way different design to the SX models and there is no comparison in between on each one quality performance levels.

R.