Buying a new TT today

@chakster 

Relating to the Doug Sax article. I recently got into vintage reel to reel. A 4 track revox B77. A record dealer friend found me 25 7.5 ips tapes. Mostly jazz from the 50’s and early 60’s. I listened almost exclusively to these tapes for a couple weeks. Going back to my mc cartridges there was a distinctly different presentation. But switching to mm (881s) it was much closer.  Most noticeable was guitar and piano. MM and even better, tape,  gives a fuller, more weighted sound similar to when I hear my guitar and piano in the house. My mc cartridges are all of the more full bodied sound too. But I have to say piano from some of these tapes was the  closest to the piano downstairs that I’ve ever heard in my room. But not in the audiophile sense. The tapes don’t have the frequency extension, soundstage, and air. But wait. Neither does my piano. Or my original 1962 Stratocaster through my  assorted Fender amps. 

sdrsdrsdr,

"But I have to say piano from some of these tapes was the  closest to the piano downstairs that I’ve ever heard in my room. But not in the audiophile sense. The tapes don’t have the frequency extension, soundstage, and air. But wait. Neither does my piano."


It's always more interesting to hear about direct comparisons rather than what we audiophiles think or expect that we should be hearing.

I'm not too surprised that tape came out ahead in your experience here despite expectations of 'frequency extension, soundstage, and air.' This kind of unexpected result, which has happened to me on a few occasions, can take a while to fully sink in. 


Regarding MM v MC cartridges, I favour the former as they have a higher output and are less fussy regarding arms and might even track better. Sound archivists and broadcasters also tend to stick with Moving Magnets.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the cartridge is in effect little more than a slave electrical generator under total control of a much larger and important one - the turntable drive motor itself.

Anything the motor (turntable/arm) does incorrectly will be inevitably magnified by the cartridge output, even moreso for MC cartridges which unfortunately have a lower output etc.

Just where the bottleneck with today's vinyl playback systems is will depend upon which turntable, which arm, and which cartridge. Case by case.

Cost can be a very poor indicator of performance for all three components. Nothing new here.

Arm and cartridge and then phono stage seem to have a bigger impact than the table, assuming the table can spin the platter at the correct speed with minimal rumble/noise from the motor, whatever that motor may be. Also, the table has to accommodate the arm base’s placement of course. Maybe these are big assumptions.

Matching the cartridge to both the arm and the phono stage is critical. The sum of these is not the result of how good each one of these parts are individually. 

Porsche analogy is very appropriate-sticking a Porsche engine with a Ferrari transmission into an Aston Martin design may not be as good as a car built with those major components as part of its basic clean sheet of paper design. It could, but it’s probably not.

@sokogear

Thats why I left it up to the engineering experts at Rega where all these design considerations are optimized. Rather then expensive experiments where everyone has a different opinion on what’s the best combination of table, arm, cartridge and even phono stage.

You can't go wrong with your choice AJ. The deal you got was fantastic, and you got to hear the differences as you compared each level of Rega's offerings and assess their value to you. Like you saw though, all Rega would have been a mistake if you bought their phono stage. Some of us like Chakster are trying to save some cash and get as good a sound and value as possible.

I've never regretted spending money on stereo equipment except in my college days when I sold stereo equipment and was constantly swapping my own system. Fuses blew, turntables couldn't track and it was a merry go round of upgraditis. Now when I buy anything I make sure it's equal to or most likely better than the rest of my system and fits well.

15-20 years ago I had a Music Hall MMF 5 and I was going to put a Rega arm on it (RB700). When I looked at it, it was almost the same price as trading in the whole table ($7 or $800 versus $1150) for a P5, so I did it. That's how you get sucked down the rabbit hole. The P5 ended up holding it's value a hell of a lot better than what would have been a bastardized MMF 5.

Fast forward 30+ years from college and my speakers I recently traded were 25 years old. My amp is 15 with no plans of ever changing it unless there is major failure, which I don't expect as it is built like a tank. Current similar performing models are now 4 times what I paid. My cartridge is going on 9 and it looks like I will service it instead of replacing it. It is the best of both worlds; a high output moving coil with output of .65mV.

If I had cash burning a hole in my pocket, my local stereo salesmen would be glad to help me empty it to get something that sounds better. There is ALWAYS something better (or coming out) as even Mike Lavigne knows.

The system that supposedly won best at any cost at a stereo dealers show (I guess given a set room size and one table/arm/cart/phono stage/preamp/amp/with 2 speakers and cables-conditioner) was $400K. I am not sure if digital/streaming were part of it or not - I don't think so. There were others >$1M it beat. The cart/phono stage were both Van den hul top of the line, and there are far more expensive options out there for those things.

So, until you have $400K invested you are on the never ending journey. Enjoy the ride - there is no destination.