ELP laser turntable - any comments?

Tbg...That's what I would expect based on my experience with the Halcyonics. Enjoy!

I'm late as hell coming to this party, so whatever I say may not be seen by anyone who might care. I am motivated to write as an actual owner and user of an ELP who feels that this product has received far more negativity than it deserves. In my 1 1/2 years of experience with the ELP, I'd have to say that Useridchallenged has done a very fine job of defining the ELPs strengths and weaknesses, so any differences between his overall assessment and my own would have to be attributed more to personal taste and values rather than actual performance.

One gentleman wrote that he had two friends who sent their LTs back after a few weeks of ownership. I can relate, as when I first got mine I thought it sounded like it was missing something. It just wasn't as lively, and the sense of instrumental resonance and hall ambience seemed subdued. As time passed, two things happened: The LT improved with age, and I gradually began to realize that the missing information was not actual recorded information, but rather mechanical and resonant colorations that are inherent in all but the the finest of LP playback systems. I had become so used to these "distortions" in 30 years of LP playback that I had accepted them as musical qualities. That said, as a frequent attendee of live orchestral works, I do concur that the preceived dynamics of the LT are somewhat less than that perceived with conventional playback and, most assuredly, live music. For whatever reasons, I have observed that room temperature as well as time turned on have a noticeable effect on the perception of dynamics (a cold room seems to lessen dynamics). Nonetheless, I find the performance of the ELP to be compelling.

VOCALS

As Useridchallenged noted, there is a "rightness" to the sound of the LT, and recordings of the human voice reveal this attribute is spades. Vocals are rendered with greater ease and naturalness than I have ever heard from mechanical stylus playback. If you don't like the sound of vocals on the LT, its because you either have a record compromised from prior stylus wear or a bad recording/pressing. In fact, that could be said regarding most other aspects of reproduction as well. In my collection, worn records sound worse when played on the LT than when played on a standard turntable, but well-pressed new records are rendered with great realism (provided the recording possessed realism). This brings up another most important point.

NOISE

The LT has been bashed by everyone for noise. Unfortunately, there is no free lunch with the LT. The laser tracks everything, thus the superb detail retreival and resolution noted by Useridchallenged. Consequently, even the tiniest dust particle is "read" as information. A large particle might have the impact of a cannon shot. A stylus, by virtue of its size, will likely glide by the finest of particles never to be deflected by their presence. Thus stylus playback tends to be quieter, but at the expense of detail retrieval and resolution. I have found the Loricraft record cleaning machine to be an absolutely essential accessory. Some records are stubborn about coming clean, but repeated cleanings continues to lower the noise floor on even the worst offenders.

LINEARITY

One of the greatest joys is hearing instruments sound, both harmonically and in timbre, more like live instruments. If there are frequency response abberations with the LT, they have escaped me. In my many years of standard turntable/arm/cartridge playback, I could never say that about any arm/cartridge combination I ever owned. For this reason, I am completely perplexed by JV's comments in TAS as I find almost every record to sound quite different from the next. Admittedly, however, I don't have a Rockport or a Walker to make the comparison with.

I find it interesting that so many want to compare the ELP to State-of-the-Art turntable/arm/cartridge combinations that sell for 2 to 4 times the cost of the ELP, and then declare that the ELP is not ready for prime time. This is the turntable that audiophiles love to hate, and I'm afraid the reasons are diverse.

A real turntable has sex appeal, with bright chrome pieces, a massive, thick platter, exotic suspension and an exposed isolated motor--the LT looks like some old Laser Disc player out of the 70's or 80's. A real turntable has a sleek highly engineered tonearm that the user can tweak and adjust to his/her personal satisfaction of knowing that every aspect of alignment and playback has been personally optimized--an LT requres a weekly calibration with a calibration record that adjusts and optimizes playback parameters in 30 to 45 seconds. A real turntable can be made to sound however the owner wants it to sound by changing the cartridge or the arm/cartridge combination--an LT will sound the same everytime you play it unless you change the record. A real turntable both allows and requires a personal investment of the owner's time and reflects the owner's expertise in setup and pride of ownership, not to mention the owner's bias in sound--an LT doesn't allow the owner to introduce his own bias or taste into the reproduced sonic landscape. The damned thing can't possibly sound good because it sounds different from that sound which the audiophile has spent many personal hours and dollars to achieve. Lest you think I know not of what I speak, I've had many years of experience in dealing with the psychology of an audiophile--namely, myself, and I can assure you that all I have mentioned plays a role in what we hear.

IMHO, the ELP represents a tremendous value for vinyl playback. It isn't perfect, but I enjoy LP playback more today than ever before. I no longer avoid playing my favorite LPs out of fear of record wear, and it makes my near state-of-the-art digital playback sound artificial, mechanical and contrived by comparison. I no longer worry about wearing a stylus or bending a cantilever and I don't have the worry of having to spend $2K to $5K every year or two to either replace my worn cartridge or to purchase the latest and greatest whiz-bang cartridge whose cantilever is coated in non-resonant fairy dust and whose stylus is lower in mass than a flea's fart. And, for what it's worth, I have had no operational problems that have required repair or a return to the manufacturer.

I cannot explain JV's impressions of the LT other than perhaps his own bias towards the sound of his existing playback setup. As Useridchallenged expressed, the sound of the LT is different from conventional playback, but I don't consider either one to be overall superior to the other. That my personal biases place greater value on those areas of reproduction where the LT shines makes me a happy camper. Your mileage may vary.

Theloveman, thanks for your comments. I have not lived with the ELP but rather have twice heard good demonstrations of it versus other tables and once master tapes. I have a very excellent Shindo Labs 301 vinyl system that outperforms everything I have ever heard save that it is quite different in sound than the ELP. Once at a June CES , Harry Weisfeld demonstrated his excellent turntable and then took a few of us to another room where he played master tapes and dryly noted that he was no where near the master tapes. I guess that is also my impression of tables other than the ELP.

I probably would not sell my Shindo, but I might buy a ELP because critic's views of it are so at odds with what I hear. I well know the dirt problem having some 20 years ago heard the first prototype of the ELP which nearly tore everyone's head off when it encountered a speck of dust. Even then, however, it was exceptional until it hit that dust.

TBG, As old as this thread is, it's nice to know that someone saw my post. It's also nice to know that someone has experienced a good demonstration of the ELP. All too often, the ELP has not been demonstrated to its best advantage.

If a person can afford it, the absolute best of both worlds is achieved when you have a high quality turntable like the
Shindo Labs and an ELP. So many of my older LPs that exhibit some degree of record wear actually do sound better on a standard turntable. I attribute this to some slight degree of forgiveness by a standard arm/cartridge combo, though other factors that I am about to mention are likely to be involved as well. I've not found any rhyme or reason as to why some LPs that I used to think were great don't sound so great on the LT, and yet others that I never thought much of on my standard turntable are astonishingly good on the LT. A new record of a well recorded performance will sound great on either playback format, but the ELP, with its greater channel separation and typically more linear response really shines on a top notch piece of program material on a reasonably neutral system.

I've speculated that the reason the ELP doesn't sound quite as dynamic or as alive as most moving coil cartridge/arm combinations relates to what I remember seeing years ago in test reports showing the performance of moving coil cartridges (mcc). In looking at the oscilloscope output of a good mcc reproducing square waves, I consistently observed a rapid rise time on the leading edge of the square wave accompanied by a rather significant overshoot before settling back to the amplitude of the top of the square wave. The reproduction of the top of the wave would exhibit constant ringing. The return to the baseline was also marked by an negative overshoot. Compare that to the square wave reproduction of a Grado Signature. The Grado not only exhibits no overshoot, but actually slightly rounds the corner from the vertical rise to the horizontal top. Further, it exhibits virtually no ringing at the top of the wave and very little if any overshoot as it falls back to the base line.

Now, anyone who has been around this game for a long time can readily describe the differences in the sonic character between most any moving coil and a Grado moving iron. The "coils" always sounded more dynamic, more lively, more defined, and airier on top (in no small measure due to the rising high frequency characteristic that many exhibited). OTOH, the Grados sounded somewhat rounded, full bodied, smoother, and very musical. It's been a number of years since anyone has published any test result of square wave reproduction from a moving coil cartridge, so I can't say to what extent these anomalies have been ameliorated, but I can say that the sound of mcc's today relative to the sound of the ELP is reminiscent of that old comparison between the Grados and various mccs. The biggest difference is that the ELP, sonically, doesn't exhibit the weakness of rounding or dulling the leading edge of the square wave as the Grado did.

If you can afford both, by all means get an ELP. Truly, the longer you listen to one, the more you will grow to appreciate its virtues, both sonically and operationally. Short of being financially capable of buying the very best in conventional turntable/arm/cartridge systems, I don't believe that I would ever go back.

Theloveman, what you suggest is what I would hope to do. This would cause me several problems, however, mainly space and isolation support for the ELP.

Having know Joe Grado and having asked him why he held the patient on the moving coil but did not make them, I can assure you that the ringing on the leading edge is exactly why he did not do moving coils.

Thanks again for your informative posts.

Norm