I didn't first think of changing mats because I went through all that ages ago.
When I was young I would switch cartridges not knowing that the mat and/or what the TT rested upon made a difference.
DeKay
If you had $12k / £10k to upgrade your analogue front-end...
Hi all,
I am upgrading my system in my listening room bit-by-bit. This room is for focused listening of music only. No movies. In the future I will be looking looking to upgrade my analogue front-end and am thinking of a budget of around $12k / £10k for a turntable, tonearm, cart and phono stage/pre-amp. I listen to all sorts of music from electronic, bass-heavy vinyl, jazz, hip-hop, rock (new and old), ambient (Cinematic Orchestra, Nils Frahm etc...) and lots of soul/funk type tracks. So quite varied.
If you had $12k/£10k to spend, what combination of turntable, tonearm, cart and phone stage/pre-amp would you go for? I'm looking for suggestions to help with my research. I'm unsure what the balance should be between them. For example, should I go for a Rega Planar 10 with Aphelion 2 cart (£6,840) and give myself just over £3k to spend on a phono stage. Or spend less on the cart (Rega Planar 10 with Apheta 3 is £4,950) and get a more expensive phono stage.
Turntable brands I've been thinking of are Rega, Clearaudio, Technics, VPI, AVID, Thorens, Michell Engineering, VPI, SME etc... but don't really know where to start.
Any help would be much appreciated.
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- 76 posts total
@overthemoon Have you got any experience with the 310LP? My dealer tells me it is a step up from the phono stage in the 390. But if the 390 has a phono stage based on the 810LP, you’d presume that wouldn’t be true. Any thoughts? Boulder also added to the mix. Thanks :) | ||||||||||||
@grislybutter Thank you! Very helpful. | ||||||||||||
so I feel like I have been living under a rock until now, not knowing that I need to spend more on the phono stage than the TT - which is what many posts are saying here and other relevant threads. So I used the AVID price list to infer what they think (it seems logical to assume that they are putting together comparable components and they are not selling super high end e.g. TTs and mediocre phono stages). Here is a list
it looks like AVID "thinks" the low end turntable should cost the same as its matching phono stage. And the high end TT should work OK with a phono stage 1/5 of the TT"s price (of course I simplifying - the dots are not connected, it’s just roughly 5 levels in each category). In short, I did live under a rock, not knowing about the need for a decent phono stage. |
- 76 posts total