Ketchup, I'll take you up on your offer. How do I get my email to you so that you can PM me? Thanks. |
Richardkrebs - the music you inquired about is Cantigas de Santa Maria #77 - sounds like Jordi Savall - he performs in Auckland from time to time during his world tours. Highly recommended. |
Don, Richardkrebs is right..... Why is speed so important? As you know, the primary job of any record player, including turntable, arm, and cartridge, is to accurately reproduce the waveform of the music as it was originally recorded onto a vinyl record.
But how exactly is this job divided up among the turntable, arm, and cartridge? Most people would say that the cartridge has the job of reproducing the entire music waveform, and that the turntable and arm have lesser passive roles, merely responsible for being stable platforms for the record and cartridge, so the cartridge can do all the active work, reading the entire music waveform from the record.
That's wrong. The cartridge does not read the entire music waveform from the record. It can't.
Why not? Because the vinyl record contains only half of the music waveform.
Where then does the other half of the music waveform come from? It comes from the turntable. That's right. The turntable is fully responsible for actively supplying half of the music waveform, and the other half comes from the cartridge.
This puts turntables in a whole new light. If a turntable's job is to actively supply half of your music's waveform, then it had better be doing its job right, otherwise your music will obviously and dramatically suffer -- to an extent you wouldn't have imagined when you thought that music's entire waveform came from the cartridge.
What do we mean by saying that half the music waveform comes from the turntable? You know that music's waveform can be plotted on a graph or on an oscilloscope. The graph of a music waveform has two axes, as do most common graphs. The vertical axis represents amplitude, and the horizontal axis represents time. The music waveform needs both these axes to exist, since it is a two dimensional entity in nature. If one dimensional axis or the other were somehow missing, there couldn't be any music waveform, and there couldn't be any music. Music itself is a time bound art form, and its existence depends on the two dimensions of time and amplitude as surely as a sculpture depends on three spatial dimensions (but not on time in the case of static sculpture).
In a record player, the vertical amplitude axis of the music waveform comes entirely from the cartridge. But the horizontal time axis of this music waveform comes entirely from the turntable.
It's like a gentleman's agreement. The record manufacturer actually gives you only half the music waveform in the groove, for your cartridge to read, namely the vertical amplitude axis. You agree to supply the other required half of the music waveform, the horizontal time axis, by agreeing to employ an accurate turntable to play back the record manufacturer's disc. The turntable that you chose to employ literally supplies the time axis half of the music waveform, while your cartridge reads the amplitude variation half (and only that) furnished by the record manufacturer, as the groove is passed underfoot by your turntable recreating the time axis half on the fly.
We give a great deal of attention to making sure that cartridges are accurate reproducers, so that they correctly read the side to side swings of the record groove that furnish the amplitude information about the music waveform, and thereby do not distort the music waveform themselves. But that's literally only half the story. We should also devote equal attention to making sure that the turntable accurately furnishes the time axis half of the music waveform. If we don't, then the final resulting music waveform will be distorted, as surely as if the cartridge were contributing unwanted distortion by inaccurately reading the amplitude axis half in its side to side swings.
The lesson is clear. You could buy the world's most expensive, most perfect cartridge, that exhibited perfect accuracy in reproducing the amplitude half of the music waveform from its side to side swings in tracing the record groove. But, unless your turntable is perfect in creating the time axis half of the music waveform, the final music waveform you hear will be distorted. The right amplitude played at the wrong time will distort the music waveform as surely as the wrong amplitude played at the right time. So Don.....as the above lucid commentary suggests....unless your turntable is as close to 'perfect' as possible in its speed consistency.....you are listening to 'distortion' without even realising it? |
Peterayer,
The better performance with this video is probably due to the fact that I now keep the TT=101 'powered up' permanently whereas previously......the turntable's circuits were 'cold'?
The results would probably improve even further after a few hours of actual use as I made the video from a 'first play'. |
Richardkrebs,
The music this time is Hymne a Saint Wenceslas circa 1237 from the album Rene Clemencic et ses flutes on Harmonia Mundi.
I agree with you...it is rather charming and the sonics are superb as with most Harmonia recordings. |
