Why will no other turntable beat the EMT 927?

Thuchan,

Not so humble! Bavarian Voice? They have an uncanny resemblance to Kevin Scott's Vox Olympians. The back story should be as interesting as the speakers themselves.

Good for you for designing your room. In my experience the listening space is a key component of the chain. A bad room will kill any sound system and a good one will elevate even a mediocre system to new heights. Here in the US, most people's listening rooms I visit are average at best and I have say lucky if they don't totally suck. Over the years I designed and built a number of different rooms for clients as well as a couple for myself. Of course starting from scratch with money no object budget creating a great listening space is relatively straight forward if you know what you're doing but setting up a decent listening space in an existing multifunction space within a budget is a very different challenge. I gained a lot of experience from my projects in manhattan, I totally understand your 2 year journey to build the room. I hope that you got most of it right by now.

The Toho arms look magnificent, a rare gem!

Glass or felt platter, like many of the choices we make has also to do with the rest of the chain and what direction we take tweaking that system. I can't judge your over all system sound from looking at the blog pictures but its enough for me to answer you differently now that I can see your MS setup. Initially I thought that you had the SX-8000 mk2 which was sonically more advanced than the original SX-8000. In this case I will say that you'll hear significant improvements with the AirForce One. You also introduced another variable going from inertia driven thread drive to motor driven platter, my guess is that you went this way to compensate for the FR-66. You gain some body and midrange energy at the expense of airiness and lower bass extension/definition. You might rethink the vpi setup if you replaced the FR with a 3012. Your blog is very informative to understand what you're comparing the R80 to. I thought that we're discussing subtleties and nuances here while in your system with those gorgeous speakers the R80 must be kicking Continuum and the FR-66'd MS butt big time!

Dear Thuchan. Regarding the loading of the personality cards on your Boulder 2008, did you literally solder in each set of resistors, break them in, and repeat that process until you found the correct loading? I tried installing "clip in" connectors, so that I could quickly change resistors. Unfortunately, those connectors degraded the sound so severely that I gave up on that idea. Anyway, my question is this: did you discover any easy way to try out different resistor values? Thanks.

Dkarmeli,

only the BV's image appears similar to Kevins Vox Olympian. Ingredients, size, X-over and sub integration are completely different. But on this later more. I see you have a pretty good understanding of a good listening room. I also got the experience when travelling around the US (but not only here) that the room itself seems of minor importance to the good audiophile guys.
Nevertheless it is always an arangement you are doing with your family and your life style. So I do understand.

I sold my Micro Seiki SX 8000 II last month. It will arrive very soon on your continent. I loved this machine, was the first owner and it is a supreme table some even try to copy today. I did some tunings on my blue micro which brings it somehow in the same musicality.

Regarding the Fidelity Research 66s I think we have two groups of Audiophiles. Those who know this arm pretty well, who are owning the matching table and wo did build it up perfectly and some others - they might outnumber the first group. Anyway thanks for your good hints and options you are describing. I will take them into consideration.

Thuchan said, "I understand why most analogue friends don't believe in the quality of digital reproduction. Nevertheless if you ever get deep into it the dCS stack it is an overwhelming alternative, or not?"

You're opening a can of worms with me Thuchan but since you asked for it here it is;

The problem isn't as much the quality of digital playback but rather the digital's qualities, see the link in above thread. You can massage it as much as want to but you're not going to change its nature. From day 1 the CD was designed with inherent limitations by the engineers and copyright paranoid media companies like Sony. The production chain is highly flawed and loose so the best that you accomplish is more tweaking and that wont change anything meaningful. CD is a truncated facsimile a much larger file. Upsample it, reclock it digital lens it, green bands, demagnetize, shark oil, snake oil or any other band-aid you want to attach it, it still remains the down sampled, i.e. reduced quality commercial product and DIGITAL. This blog article is tweaker's porn. What are you hearing? The clock? The up sampling? The power cord? the digital cables? Was the CD a direct transfer from analog master or was it an oversampled 24 bit remaster which is another tweak? and the list goes on. So your analysis of this clock is really analysis of whole lot of different variables that have nothing to do with the source. I'm sure that you realize that once you introduce your first "AUDIOPHILE" tweak to your system you have altered the parameters. Audiophile power cords all have overt characteristics and coloration, after you put one in, your system takes on a new character and that character gets stronger with everything additional cord from this point on every modification or tweak that you make is predicated on the power cord's overwhelming character and not your components. You're basically chasing your tail at this point on. Every cable and every tweak introduces another character that you end up offsetting with further tweaks.Its a never ending money pit.

Maybe this is where you and I differ in our final approach. For me, specially at these price points, if the equipment doesn't perform as advertised I'd get rid of it and replace it with one that works right. My philosophy is understanding the basics and nature of the subject to get the fundamentals right and only then one might make some adjustments to taste, like glass platter vs felt. In your shoes if I had spent years building a listening space and then have an expensive custom tailored speaker system installed, I'd never compromise it with resonators and traps. I'd spend that resource figuring out what went fundamentally wrong and fix that before applying patches that will ultimately lead to more aids. This is how I see the digital clock, another patch but not a cure.

Thuchan said, "I understand why most analogue friends don't believe in the quality of digital reproduction. Nevertheless if you ever get deep into it the dCS stack it is an overwhelming alternative, or not?"

You're opening a can of worms with me Thuchan but since you asked for it here it is;

The problem isn't as much the quality of digital playback but rather the digital's qualities, see the link in above thread. You can massage it as much as want to but you're not going to change its nature. From day 1 the CD was designed with inherent limitations by the engineers and copyright paranoid media companies like Sony. The production chain is highly flawed and loose so the best that you accomplish is more tweaking and that wont change anything meaningful. CD is a truncated facsimile a much larger file. Upsample it, reclock it digital lens it, green bands, demagnetize, shark oil, snake oil or any other band-aid you want to attach it, it still remains the down sampled, i.e. reduced quality commercial product and DIGITAL. This blog article is tweaker's porn. What are you hearing? The clock? The up sampling? The power cord? the digital cables? Was the CD a direct transfer from analog master or was it an oversampled 24 bit remaster which is another tweak? and the list goes on. So your analysis of this clock is really analysis of whole lot of different variables that have nothing to do with the source. I'm sure that you realize that once you introduce your first "AUDIOPHILE" tweak to your system you have altered the parameters. Audiophile power cords all have overt characteristics and coloration, after you put one in, your system takes on a new character and that character gets stronger with everything additional cord from this point on every modification or tweak that you make is predicated on the power cord's overwhelming character and not your components. You're basically chasing your tail at this point on. Every cable and every tweak introduces another character that you end up offsetting with further tweaks.Its a never ending money pit.

Maybe this is where you and I differ in our final approach. For me, specially at these price points, if the equipment doesn't perform as advertised I'd get rid of it and replace it with one that works right. My philosophy is understanding the basics and nature of the subject to get the fundamentals right and only then one might make some adjustments to taste, like glass platter vs felt. In your shoes if I had spent years building a listening space and then have an expensive custom tailored speaker system installed, I'd never compromise it with resonators and traps. I'd spend that resource figuring out what went fundamentally wrong and fix that before applying patches that will ultimately lead to more aids. This is how I see the digital clock, another patch but not a cure.