Upgrade from TW Acustic Raven AC-3 to what?

Hi Alectiong, what's the rest of your system comprise of, possibly you should be looking somewhere else within the line.

Thucan

" Alectioning, what I learned from a friend in France: it is not easy to sell a Raven at the moment. I do not why but many potential buyers my friend contacted were quickly offered nearly new Ravens for a very good price. I have no clue how this could work."

that's a nice thinly veiled, but rather pathetic shot at TW.

Exactly what was the point of this comment?

Even if it was true, I would suspect any expensive turntable may be hard to sell in this current environment.

Dear Alectiong, Has your system ever previously given you those qualities which you now say are missing with the Raven AC? If so, was it an analog or digital source that gave you greater satisfaction? I will say that what you are seeking (or what you say is lacking from the Raven presentation) is in the very essence of what distinguishes a great idler-drive or direct-drive implementation from an otherwise great belt-drive one, in my limited experience. However, you might be able to get what you want from the Raven, if you were willing to modify its drive system (one motor with a pinch roller or rim drive; the added noise of the Teres rim drive motor is a trade-off you might find easy to live with). Personally, I never was convinced of the 3-motor approach. I think it is "sand in the public eye".

Hi Lewm, my system's sonics is better than ever before. Problem is in this hobby, most of us become more critical as we move along. Before the TW, I had a VPI Superscoutmaster and was amazed how much improvement a TT upgrade can make. After I had the TW, I sold off my Weiss Digital transport and DAC (which are highly regarded as I understand), as suddenly, i had little desire to listen to digital. I now have an Ayre CD player but only use it to burn in equipment. As to drive motor, I wouldn't want to mess around modifying it as my TW is still under waranty.

Hi Dev, my associated equipment are posted in one of my earlier threads. However, I just added Elrod Gold Statement power cords for my power amps. The p.c.'s are still brandnew, getting burnt in.
Rgds
alec

Alectiong,

To get the wall to wall imaging I would suggest as follows: listen to a CD and compare the Vinyl on your TT. Then go back and forth to remember placement positioning etc. Then adjust Anti Skate/Azimuth etc. until the 2 coincide. I have learned to do Anti Skate by ear and once it locks in place the imaging is scary.

As for the Mid Bass bloat, that sounds like a resonance problem. It will also smear the highs and darken the sound. You need to sort out where the resonance is coming from. No matter how good a turntable if you don't have it isolated and maybe have it located in a room node etc you will not get near 50% of what the TT / Front end is capable of. Again I suggest you go back & forth between a well recorded CD/SACD and compare with LP for bass output etc and determine if it is really the turntable or the setup or the tonearm/cartridge or just something elsewhere in your chain. I have listened to some friends very good Analogue front ends where they were lacking one thing or another. They would never believe me until I put in a CD of the same and it was that apparent. Then we would redo the tonearm setup and got most of the way there. What I couldn't do is compensate for the Phono stage which didn't have enough gain. By the way the phono stage can be a big part of the darkness as well (although, I do agree the Raven AC table is slightly warm in comparison to the Black Night - from which I get a bit more detail, and more definition (and hear more problems in my setup - some cartridges just don't cut it anymore). I have had phono stage mismatches with cartridges which would have you condemn a cartridge that in a different system would be excellent. Same for Speaker/Amp combinations. Hope this helps as a turntable upgrade doesn't sound like the solution.