What is turntable “liveliness”.

@ossicle2brain 

I think there are a lot of people who believe as you do that a TT has no sound and that it’s just a spinning platter.

Here’s the thing. A TT is a combination of a plinth, a motor/drive system, a bearing, a platter and may or may not include some form is suspension. That tiny little stylus, being dragged through the groove  of the record, is prone to all kinds of external disturbances. How all the elements of the turntable work together, will determine what kind, and how great those disturbances are. And seeing as how we are dealing with the tiniest of movements, with the tiniest of electrical signals that are being amplified an insane amount, any tiny disturbance, is going to magnified along with the signal.

An ideal turntable, will have no sound. An ideal turntable will impose no disturbances to the movement of the stylus in the groove. A turntable that imposes no disturbances, is very difficult, and costly to manufacture. A turntable with no sound, will allow the cartridge and tonearm to do their jobs with far greater accuracy. A turntable with no sound will let you hear the music more clearly, with better drive, better attack,  channel separation, soundstage etc.

All that to say, turntables have a sound they impose on the signal, regardless of how good the tonearm and cartridge are.

It’s a 100+ year old technology.  People keep throwing money at the problems trying to mitigate them all as best as possible.  It’s prettty insane!  Go digital streaming!    Much less problematic and way more versatile.  

Well. When I started this I never thought I would get any posts that claimed turn tables make no difference. Well, you just never know. 
 

Yes @mapman it is a hundred year old technology, but I have been using it for over sixty years. The fact that competitive or better sound still comes from analog is mind boggling. I am a big digital advocate… but also am 71 years old… so it is fun to play with analog. As I think you may remember my analog and digital ends sound virtually the same… and since I have a largely pristine collection of 2,000 vinyl albums… it’s fun to play with.

All turntables make noise to varying degrees, and we can hear it. That noise, however small, excites the stylus.

How small in practical terms? Well, I can hear the bearings in my 1.8W precision AC motor, whether the motor is energized or not. That’s with a 45kg platter.

As I understand it, ’lively’ is the opposite of ’dead’. I hear ’dead’ as resonance free, dull, which is bad in a piano and good in a turntable, I hear turntable ’liveliness’ as accentuated high frequency which makes everything sound sharp, as in jagged.

Every time I’ve made a big jump, like conventional bearings to air, or MM to Koetsu, the most obvious thing is a ’loss’ of high frequency. Then I notice that voices sound more like people I know, piano concerti sound more like the piano upstairs, and so on. It sounds ’dead’ for a few hours, and then I realize that it’s more natural.

But then again, that’s just my usage of the term, which may be idiosyncratic.

@ghdprentice yep I am only a few years behind you. I bought my Linn Axis in the mid 80s in order to preserve my sizable investment in records at the time when CDs broke. I’ve bought many more albums since. They are fun to collect. In recent years I play a record once and convert to digital for my digital music library. I added Qobuz recently and have not played a record since, though I still have many records not available on Qobuz that will surely get played again. It’s all good. Who ever said what we do has to be rational? There is still no real substitute for being able to hold a record sleeve in your hand. 👍