I'm wondering if your phono pre-amp and turntable and arm aren't playing catch up with the new cartridge? I went the other way, improving TT, then arm, then in a position to invest in cart and pre. My second and third system are more "generic", but the main system has been upgraded a piece at at time for a very long time. The "better" the TT, it seems, the more intricate proper set up becomes, and the more critical the set-up becomes. At a certain level, and 2K plus TT's are getting close, the improvements are incremental, and require more attention. And the chance things go sideways increases (how I discovered the importance of tracking angle and MC carts). BTW an interchangeable head shell systems can be an error factory.. When I change a headshell/cart I still do full align (I align the cantilever)....just to be sure. never assume. Just one of the reasons I have dedicated Mono and Stereo TT's.
Does a record player make that much of a difference??
Question for all you Audionerds - in your experience, how much of a difference does one record player make over the next compared with the differences that a cartridge, phone pre-amp, and separate head amp make in the signal chain?
Reason I ask: I just upgraded from a MM cart to a MC cart (Dynavector 20x2-low output). Huge difference - the Dynavector sounds much more alive and detailed compared with the MM. I find my current record player (a Marantz TT16) to be a real pain to work with - I have to manually move the belt on the motor hub to change speeds, and the arm is not very adjustable or easy to do so. But, aside from that, it's not terrible. How much of a difference can I really expect if I upgrade to a better record spinner vs the change I heard from upgrading to a better cart?
My next acquisition is a separate head amp to feed the phono stage.
Thanks for all your insights!
Josh
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- 94 posts total
I suggest looking at it from a slightly different perspective-which some of you are already doing; where do the diminishing returns kick in more abruptly. I also am disregarding base-level set ups intentionally (base level skews the analsis). So assuming a $5,000 and up budget/expenditure I believe they kick in most quickly with the phono stage, then cartridge, then turntable, and last with the tonearm. I know many hear will disagree. The above is based on some degree of experience. |
@inna I didn’t want to rewrite volumes as your question contains the life work of many a deceased and living master… they are many… For me anyway it starts with mass and compliance matching. i am an advocate of using the Korf calculator, which includes acceleration. So for example, my Lyra Delos is not ideally suited to the Triplaner without added mass, experiments with added mass help the ear / brain understand the impacts. This is just one relationship, |
@fsonicsmith yours is always the question when $ is involved…. the hard and fast rules seem to come and go IMO… for example Jelco supplied a vey competent tonearm that was capable of much…sadly they are no more. Yet we have Hana with scale / volume / quality control building excellent for $ MC, ditto Ortofon for MM ( RIP Signet, Grace , etc )… good ? |
I believe(for the most part) in Ivor Tiefebrun's maxim; Basically, if you don't get the information off the source, Lp Cd, etc., you cannot make up for it downstream. In a turntable, it's the turntable first, then the arm, and finally the cartridge/preamplifier. Her, I think that this is a good analogy: like a sports car if the chassis is not really stiff(the turntable), the suspension(tonearm) will not work to its utmost, and the motor(the cartridge) will not be able to apply its power as best that it could. Something like that. So if the table isn't absolutely stable and precise in its ability to spin that record with the least amount of error, the tonearm won't be able to control the fine undulations in the record that the cartridge has to traverse. Again, something like that. |
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