Thank you to all for the thoughts so far. What I was getting at (or trying to do so) was which of the four components has the most effect on final sound, which comes next and so on. It's obvious that if there is a bottleneck in sound quality ('the weakest link') then that must be addressed. But to me, a TT or a tonearm has a relatively subtle effect compared to a cartridge or a phono stage. Likewise, I can certainly hear changes when I swap phono stages, but I hear bigger changes when I swap cartridges. And what's the point of this? - very little! Maybe I'm simply justifying my choices, as I realise my expenditure on the four items has followed my ranking above!
Relative Importance of Analog Components
We see people struggling with what to upgrade next, or where to direct their attention if everything seems to be working fairly well. I'm probably a bit more inclined to give more importance to sources and less to speakers than most people, but in general I like to look at which component is the 'rate-limiting factor' which one holds back the rest and then concentrate on improving that.
But to look specifically at vinyl reproduction, I have the strong impression that out of the four main components, they can be ordered in importance of potential effect on sound like this:
Cartridge
Phono stage
Tonearm
Turntable
I'm sure other people would list those four in a different order. How would you rank them and why?
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Dear @dogberry : " which of the four components has the most effect on final sound... " It's obvious that a change in the transducer ( cartridge/speaker ) has " the most effect " but what I posted is more about quality level more than just sounds different.
You can have 2 same model cartridges that will sounds alike when in reality no two same model cartridges sounds exactly the same, always exist very tiny differences and be differences thaT YOU ONLY CAN BE AWARE AND DISCERN ON IT IF YOU OWN THE " RIGTH " HIGH RESOLUTION PHONO STAGE AND THE MATCHED TONEARM and even if you own those two audio items maybe you can't discern about because sometimes we need to know what to look for, this is that we must have a test whole proved proccesss. The cartridge signal quality level depends ( everything the same ) directly/mainly by the Phono Stage and tonearm quality design levels. No matters what.
Discern between different and better depends of each one of us MUSIC/sound experience.
R. |
1 Turntable - nothing further down the chain can fix any speed and resonance issues here. In fact they'll only make them more obvious. 2 Arm - once again structural/resonance issues will make the job of the cartridge much much more difficult. 3 Phono Stage - very few amps have good phono stages built in. Some don't have any. 4 Cartridge - even a budget AT cart can give you very good results in a decent deck. Besides they will wear out fairly quickly, are far too easily damaged, and are often a pain in the butt to change over and align properly.
It goes without saying that turntable siting is also very crucial if you want to make life easier for your turntable. A lower performance turntable optimally sited will more than match a better one that is not in the same way a budget Ford will run better on a new road than a Tesla on a bumpy one. The quantum world that turntables operate in is not readily visible to the naked eye or one that can be felt by human touch. |
- 36 posts total