Raul, if you cruise around the vintageknob website you can see some great DD tables from Japan in the 70's and 80's. All of which attract horrendous prices these days if you can ever find a good one. As an indicato,r one of supposed greats is the Sony PS X9 - and recently I acquired a PS X-70 as a cheap and cheerful table for my upstairs second system and while I am sure it is not in the same league as the big Sony, you get a flavor for how good these decks and arms can be.
Here is a quote off the vintageknob website (a good place to cruise around and experience the feelings of audiolust):
"Myth has it that there were only fifty PS-X9 ever made but that is myth and myth only - even if not as succesfull as Denon's DP-100M or Pioneer's Exclusive P3a, many X9s found their way into radio stations and in a few audiophiles' rigs. I know of someone who has critically listened to all of the usual suspect (L-07D, DP-100M, Tt 1000, PD-555, SP-10mkIII, EMTs et al) and finally sttled for his own deck on... a PS-X9."
Interesting ....... As you say Raul, there is no "best" - like art or ballet we should appreciate each for its merits and our own perceptions of its beauty and performance. And like the ballet, audio systems and performance are a synthesis of individual components and the synergies between them. That is why it is so hard to get into rating the performance of an arm, or table or cartridge, because there are usually a lot of variances in the total system. That's why I am suspicious of equipment reviews as a finite mark on a product. I know that in my system, the final sound from a cartridge might be subtly changed by the capacitance of a phono cable.
But you know all that already Raul, so apologies for the Sunday morning philosophy rant!
Steve
Here is a quote off the vintageknob website (a good place to cruise around and experience the feelings of audiolust):
"Myth has it that there were only fifty PS-X9 ever made but that is myth and myth only - even if not as succesfull as Denon's DP-100M or Pioneer's Exclusive P3a, many X9s found their way into radio stations and in a few audiophiles' rigs. I know of someone who has critically listened to all of the usual suspect (L-07D, DP-100M, Tt 1000, PD-555, SP-10mkIII, EMTs et al) and finally sttled for his own deck on... a PS-X9."
Interesting ....... As you say Raul, there is no "best" - like art or ballet we should appreciate each for its merits and our own perceptions of its beauty and performance. And like the ballet, audio systems and performance are a synthesis of individual components and the synergies between them. That is why it is so hard to get into rating the performance of an arm, or table or cartridge, because there are usually a lot of variances in the total system. That's why I am suspicious of equipment reviews as a finite mark on a product. I know that in my system, the final sound from a cartridge might be subtly changed by the capacitance of a phono cable.
But you know all that already Raul, so apologies for the Sunday morning philosophy rant!
Steve
