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Honest question about cartridge vs. turntable performance.

I’ve been a vinyl lover for a few years now and I have an ortofon black cartridge setup with an mmf 5.1 turntable with acrylic platter and speed controller. My question to all the vinyl audiophiles out there is this. How much difference does a turntable really make compared to the cartridge? Will I hear a significant difference if I upgraded my turntable and kept the same cartridge? Isn’t the cartridge 90%+ of the sound from a vinyl setup? Thank you guys in advance for an honest discussion on this topic. 
tubelvr1
optimize
164 posts
 
As long as your turntable has the following figures:

rumble < 75 - 78 db,
wow & flutter as low as possible,
speed stability better than about 1%

and as long as your tonearm effective mass is a good match for your cartridge,
here are the approximate importance of the components:

turntable: 10%
tonearm: 10%
cartridge: 40%
phono amp: 40%

This ∆∆∆

It is easier to choose and to know what you have if you have numbers on the performance.
Otherwise it is just bla bla bla Words that confuse..

One thing that you can look at is if all types of adjustments parameters are available on the tonearm incorporated on the TT.

When cartridge is ~40% and you can't adjust for example SRA then you leave some performance on the table.. .. especially when you have advanced stylus shapes. (even better is if the TT has SRA on the fly adjustment). Now you can easily argument that a TT should sound better than one that cannot adjust it all.
chakster's avatar
chakster
6,144 posts
 
@mijostyn

Everything you posted has nothing to do with reality and I am tired to reply to all these nonsense coming from the belt drive owners who never tried a proper direct drive system.

There are high torque direct drive and low torque direct drive, the torque is adjustable on some models. They are all very well isolated and there is NO magnetic field because there is a platter and additional mat on top of it. I use Micro Seiki CU-500, CU-180, SAEC SS-300 and Sakura Systems The Mat on my different direct drive turntables. With tons on MM, MI and LOMC cartridges I can’t remember any single issue with any of my direct drive turntables.

Stable rotation = Direct Drive, and this is all you need from a turntable, the rest is plinth, tonearm and cartridge. Stable rotation is the most important part of the cutting, this is why there is a Direct Drive motor on the most popular cutting lathe (Neumann). What else you can add? 

There must be some good Direct Drive like big and heavy Micro Seiki, but not those overpriced plastic toys manufacturers selling today and fooling people around.

Direct Drive is the best investment and this type of motor will work for over 40 years without service with stable rotation. 

If you like floating pitch use belt drive, the belt degrades in time. 






atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,111 posts
 
 The torque of a direct drive motor is now superfluous. A quiet environment is far more critical. You have to isolate the platter, tonearm and cartridge from everything. IMHO this is far more difficult than cutting a lacquer.
Since I've had to set up a mastering operation from scratch I cannot disagree with this more. A lathe has to be isolated too. My setup is pretty old- a Scully- and yet it has a table equipped with adjustable points for feet, plus an isolation base, both made at the same time as the lathe, which was the early 1950s (so if anyone tries to tell you that points beneath your equipment is snake oil, you now have proof that the industry thinks it is not). All the stuff you have to do standing on your head to make it work and not freak out if you look at it cross-eyed is ridiculous. Cutting pressure, track ball height, stylus temperature, tangential-ness, bearing noise (the bearings need frequent greasing and should be warmed up for 20 minutes before making a cut), controlling cutter resonance... I can go on; not to belittle your comment but really its pretty amazing that the technology (record and playback) is as good as it is!

Atmasphere, in some cases it might be because they work better:)
We've made a belt-drive machine for over 20 years. I'd put it up beside any belt-drive made and no worries expecting it to keep up; you can walk up to this machine and thwock the platter while its playing and not hear anything significant through the speakers; the platter is damped, the plinth is rigid and dead, it has a powerful drive and the motor itself is a significant flywheel. Its very neutral. But I think Technics makes a better turntable (and for less money, but I'm not a fan of their arm) so we're not making our 'table anymore...unless someone begs us :)
daveyf's avatar
daveyf
3,012 posts
 
Linn has just updated the most important part of their turntable, and it is not the motor, the type of drive, the speed control, the tonearm or the suspension system. It is the bearing!!! Precision engineering in the bearing is actually where I believe the biggest gains are to be had, others may disagree, but listening to what the bearing can bring is crucial. Direct drive tables are fine, so long as the motor doesn't cog ( which unfortunately a lot of them do) or contribute any noise into the platter. 
testpilot
987 posts
 
@daveyf, what exactly is the difference between the old and brand new Linn bearing?  
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