Suspended vs. non suspended turntable


Hello all,

I am ready to begin my foray into the world of vinyl (again). Looking at the turntables out there, it seems as if there are two types - those with suspension, and those without. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

Keith
amfibius
Oh, you can hear it easily. I isolate my TT in a 100+lb armoire, loaded with probably 50 pounds of CD and spare cables and wires in the bottom and my control amp, universal player and TT in the top. All-in we may be talking about 200 lbs.

I've got a Korg MR1000 hard drive recorder that records in 1-bit DSD at 5.6MHz, twice SACD resolution. For the best recording quality I go straight from the phono preamp into the Korg with no speakers. When I record the same thing with doors open and the speakers on I get a less clear recording. With the doors closed and the speakers on the recording is almost as good as with no speakers.

The distortion presents itself as slight smearing or obscuring of detail. There's no outright mistracking. I haven't tried it at really high levels, merely the levels that I'd listen to music at (75 to 100dB at my listening position, with averages in the mid 80dB range).

My armoire and TT is 6 inches from the left speaker and about 18" from the right speaker, so there's a lot of energy right around the TT. After my little experiement I keep the armoire doors closed for all listening session and all recording is monitored with headphones. (I'm archiving my D2D recordings to DSD.

I've got 10" concrete floor and ceiling, so room-borne vibrations are not a big issue for me. Also, the mass of that armoire and all the stuff in it gives my turntable a nice headstart.

The demonstration is easy to replicate if you've got a high quality recorder and a way to isolate your TT from airborne sound waves. (Maybe move it outside the room door). The beauty of the recording is that you can set the level and then move things around quite a bit between test recordings, but when you play back you go very quickly from A to B to C, making it easy to hear the differeces.

Dave
Dcstep, that's a test I can trust. I wonder if I can re-create this with my CDP and a recording that I have in both formats.
02-19-08: Piedpiper said:
"nice test Dcstep! Have you figured out a way to burn SACDs from your Korg?"

No, SACD is a controlled format; however, DVD-A has equivalent resolution and that works.

I have big ambitions for my Korg, but they're unrealized so far. The DAC is exceptional, but the analog inputs and outputs are a little noisy. You can listen through the noise, but I'd rather not. I thought I had a modder lined up to upgrade the input and outputs and add some internal shielding, but he's gotten tied up with other projects.

If I can find somebody to do the mods, then I'd like to do a bunch of comparisons and make those available to people on this forum and clubs and just cover the postage. The resolution is so incredible that you can actually successfully record the different in interconnects, for instance. As a club project, it'd be very interesting to record a bunch of cartridges, arms, etc., etc.

Any modder want to fix up my Korg??? Ric Schultz was who I had in mind. I may just wait him out, but I'd also like to start some projects.

Dave
Dan ed,

you'll have to be sure that it was mastered by the same company. I've done the vinyl vs. CD test numerous times for myself and others using audiophile recordings such as those from Audioquest where the recording itself is reliably good and the mastering is consistent between the two formats. This test won't give all the information that Dcstep got but it should tell you a lot.