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Who uses high end TT setup for vintage records ?

Many of us are into Vinyls because we listen to lots old vintage music along with the new ones. Digital sounded nasty with all those oldish recordings. Analog on the contrary is much more like music but as we move up the analog chain we start segregating vintage from modern recordings simply because our $$$ MC cartridge doesnt favour old records. It can sound noisy, lean, unforgiving. All that classic vintage warmth which is embedded in those old vinyls somehow do not get conveyed.

I always knew a lot of the turntables and cartridges are clearly voiced to favour a certain era of music/recordings. But it seems even tonearms have such favouritisms. Lot of these new age tonearms dont play old records with grace.

I am trying to meet members here who have successfully been able to use their high end TT/tonearm/cartridge combination to play any kind of music from any era with its desired grace, warmth and musicality. What combination did you arrive at ?

I understand one can always use a second tonearm/cartridge combination to play old records but that is not the point, cant we have a nice high end combination doing everything well ?
pani
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atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,901 posts
 
I always knew a lot of the turntables and cartridges are clearly voiced to favour a certain era of music/recordings. But it seems even tonearms have such favouritisms. Lot of these new age tonearms dont play old records with grace.

I don't buy this at all. Modern arms, if anything, play older LPs a lot better then older arms do. Tonearms, cartridges and turntables are not and never were 'voiced' for certain records.
manitunc
795 posts
 
I dont agree at all. I use a Sota Cosmos IV, Oracle Delphi V SE and Transrotor Fat Boy, all fairly new models, and see no difference playing 50 and 60s original albums from my latest re-issues of the same music. I also use Lyra, Ortofon and Dynavector cartridges. The sound is comparable, if not quite as detailed, on my Empire, Russco and Rekokut tables using similare SME 309 arms. Is there a particular album where you are experiencing this effect?
stanwal's avatar
stanwal
3,147 posts
 
The other day I played a new LP and followed it with TIME FURTHER OUT ; an LP I have had since the mid 60s. The surfaces sounded quieter and the sound was comparable if not better. With new gear I hear things that I had no idea were there; I have a moderately large [3,000] LP collection and often play ones I have not heard in years. I am constantly surprised by the quality of some of the old records.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,389 posts
 
Hmm, I've always considered a good turntable setup to be agnostic in regards to source material vintage.

Whatever. My setup does great with all for modest cost. See my system page if interested.

Now off course most newer records do not sound like older records by nature in that modern production techniques are way different than those used in the past, digital versus analogue mastering being just one aspect of this. SInce they are usually different sounding by nature, each will have a preference regarding what sounds better, but that is largely a subjective judgement.

Vintage records represent a large % of the actual records out there, so I suspect that most TT setups including high end ones see way more "vintage" records than new ones.

In general, if you have a high end setup and vintage records do not sound right/good, then I'd say there is a problem there somewhere in that vintage recordings are where a lot of the vinyl magic exists.
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