First a 4k fuse now this....

[plastic penguin]

Isn’t this a bit like someone choosing a vintage wind-up watch instead of a Casio?

The former evokes a certain style and pride of ownership; the latter tells the time more accurately.

Yes, are those wind up watches costing 22k?

I'm still trying to absorb the sheer lunacy of the price.

 

[Oxfordian]

Yes, are those wind up watches costing 22k?

I'm still trying to absorb the sheer lunacy of the price.

You can get wind up watches costing £20k+, Patek Philippe Calatrava 6119R in Rose Gold is manual wind and costs £25,720, if I had this kind of money to splash on something I'd go for the watch.

 

[Winter]

Yes, are those wind up watches costing 22k?

I'm still trying to absorb the sheer lunacy of the price.

Hang on the fact that they offer free shipping is somewhat admirable dont you think ?

 

[Oxfordian]

Hang on the fact that they offer free shipping is somewhat admirable dont you think ?

And what about the 'Free Warranty' now that's a real bargain!

 

[Gray]

Isn’t this a bit like someone choosing a vintage wind-up watch instead of a Casio?

I think it is.
Though some seem to think this TT (and the fancy watch) do their respective jobs better than cheaper alternatives....when the opposite is probably true (certainly in the case of the watch).

 

[Oxfordian]

I think it is.
Though some seem to think this TT (and the fancy watch) do their respective jobs better than cheaper alternatives....when the opposite is probably true (certainly in the case of the watch).

define better - I know that my wind up watch will still be working and fully serviceable for many decades to come but will a cheaper alternative? Watches bought well before the turn of the century are still totally repairable today, for example an Omega Speedster from the onset of the 1960's can be fully serviced today, so when you take this into account a wind up watch is actually a better buy.

if you are totally focusing on accuracy then yes a modern digital watch will always outperform any mechanical watch but that is not why a mechanical watch is bought.

 

[podknocker]

Are people really suggesting a brand new, 24 bit 192kHz recording, in a state of the art, multi million pound recording studio, full of the best electronics, will sound better, when pressed onto vinyl, than when streamed, bit perfect, using the best quality DAC in a NAD M33 for example?

Vinyl is incapable of resolving this level of information and could never come close to a brand new format.

Regardless of cost, CD sounds better than vinyl. Expensive construction and aesthetics play no part in this.

 

[plastic penguin]

Are people really suggesting a brand new, 24 bit 192kHz recording, in a state of the art, multi million pound recording studio, full of the best electronics, will sound better, when pressed onto vinyl, than when streamed, bit perfect, using the best quality DAC in a NAD M33 for example?

Vinyl is incapable of resolving this level of information and could never come close to a brand new format.

Regardless of cost, CD sounds better than vinyl. Expensive construction and aesthetics play no part in this.

Paul Weller, Tom Jones, Brian May, Lars Ulrich, Fatboy Slim and countless others. What do they all have in common?

They all favour vinyl over any other format.

 

[plastic penguin]

Hang on the fact that they offer free shipping is somewhat admirable dont you think ?

Who? The wind-up watch seller or the people trying to sell the ludicrously high priced Garrard?

 

[Gray]

define better

Better at doing the job it is intended to do.
When I bought a watch, it had no other purpose for me than to accurately tell the time.
Amazed work colleagues asked me how I managed to clock in to the second every day.
No secret. With occasional 6th pip calibration, my £7.99 Casio watch did it.
No winding necessary - but I did have to change the 3 volt battery every 10 years.

A turntable needs to sound good. To do that, consistent speed is essential.
I put it to you that this rim drive turntable will have a less consistent speed than the Technics direct drive. So in that respect, at least, it is worse.

Again, I wonder what this turntable is giving for its stupid price?
If owning a 'classic' product is what someone desires, fair enough.

Personally, I prefer something that excels at whatever its intended job is.
Substance over style for me.

 

[Oxfordian]

Better at doing the job it is intended to do.
When I bought a watch, it had no other purpose for me than to accurately tell the time.
Amazed work colleagues asked me how I managed to clock in to the second every day.
No secret. With occasional 6th pip calibration, my £7.99 Casio watch did it.
No winding necessary - but I did have to change the 3 volt battery every 10 years.

A turntable needs to sound good. To do that, consistent speed is essential.
I put it to you that this rim drive turntable will have a less consistent speed than the Technics direct drive. So in that respect, at least, it is worse.

Again, I wonder what this turntable is giving for its stupid price?
If owning a 'classic' product is what someone desires, fair enough.

Personally, I prefer something that excels at whatever its intended job is.
Substance over style for me.

Better is a subjective word, my mechanical watch bought back in 2010 works just fine, it has never got me to work late, I've always been able to clock in on time, it looks great on my wrist and I don't have to wind it as my movement during the day spins the internal rotor that winds the watch up.

Please don't get me wrong I'm not saying that Casio (or similar) are bad as I do own one but it gets used very rarely I bought when I was doing a good bit of mountain biking and wanted something to take a knock or two and it was the better product for that role. Everything has its place.

This turntable at £22k+ does seem to be expensive for what it is but for an outsider with a pot of money and little audiophile sense it may seem a bargain compared to the £25k+ Linn, the name Garrard may generate a memory that says it's a good make, Linn maybe a brand that the outsider has never heard of.

I've worked hard for my money over the years and no item is bought without there being a good bit of research as I try to get the right item at the right price, but not everyone does this and sometimes the saying 'the fool and his money are soon parted' is very appropriate. This turntable may fit that saying perfectly.

 

[abacus]

Are people really suggesting a brand new, 24 bit 192kHz recording, in a state of the art, multi million pound recording studio, full of the best electronics, will sound better, when pressed onto vinyl, than when streamed, bit perfect, using the best quality DAC in a NAD M33 for example?

Vinyl is incapable of resolving this level of information and could never come close to a brand new format.

Regardless of cost, CD sounds better than vinyl. Expensive construction and aesthetics play no part in this.

NO, but you are assuming that all the equipment will be used to its full potential, whereas the recording has to be listenable on phones as well as High end systems, and as phones don't have the range of high end audio (Particularly as most are listened too on Bluetooth headphones) they master the recording for the masses, not the minuscule users who have a high end system.
In a perfect world you would be correct, but we don't live in a perfect world, so its a moot point really.

Bill

 

[Nico69]

You can pay way way way more than £22k for a watch. Try £122k or £250k.
It's not really the point though is it? It's arm bling. It's status symbolism. Same as paying £22k for a Garrard. It's people's choice. A lot of people won't notice a guy wearing a £100k watch. They just see it as a watch. Same as a lot of people won't notice a person has a £20k+ turntable. They just see it as a 'record player'.
Let people make their own choices and be happy for them. It's not as if they've asked this Forum for advice is it, yet we are willing to dish it out in bucket loads.

 

[Gray]

....I don't have to wind it as my movement during the day spins the internal rotor that winds the watch up.

I've still got a (Timex) self winder.
A logical idea really - no reason to have opened it, but had to have a look of course.

As for this TT:
It's for a 'certain type of buyer' (careful with my words there to avoid a lifetime ban).
Its asking price is the product of pure, opportunist greed.
No matter how much money I had, under no circumstances could I ever encourage such a seller.
I'm genuinely sorry that somebody probably will.

 

[jjbomber]

Let people make their own choices and be happy for them. It's not as if they've asked this Forum for advice is it, yet we are willing to dish it out in bucket loads.

Absolutely. People have to do what is best for them, not what's best for someone else.

 

[plastic penguin]

That's all well and good, but what sort of person would spend 22k on a turntable? Premier footballers? grade A actors? Rich hipsters?

Splashing that sort of money isn't worthwhile unless the rest of your system is up to standard.

 

[jjbomber]

Paul Weller, Tom Jones, Brian May, Lars Ulrich, Fatboy Slim and countless others. What do they all have in common?

They all favour vinyl over any other format.

Indeed; every professional musician I have asked has said the same thing. They nearly always mention warmth as the factor. My good friend Dan Patlansky is over from South Africa on a UK tour starting next week. If you go to see him, he'll wax lyrical about vinyl after the show at the merchandise stand. These aren't a case of saying something to the press. These are genuine opinions without a hidden agenda. Saying that, I prefer CDs.

 

[plastic penguin]

Indeed; every professional musician I have asked has said the same thing. They nearly always mention warmth as the factor. My good friend Dan Patlansky is over from South Africa on a UK tour starting next week. If you go to see him, he'll wax lyrical about vinyl after the show at the merchandise stand. These aren't a case of saying something to the press. These are genuine opinions without a hidden agenda. Saying that, I prefer CDs.

It isn't just the warmth, but Brian May said it's the closest to what they hear in a recording studio.

 

[davidf]

CD was always going to be a compromise, but vinyl, along with cassette, have fundamentally inferior sound quality, in my opinion, along with the physical and practical shortcomings. I'm not vinyl bashing, to promote CD, I'm bashing all these old, tired, physical formats, which have reached their limits, with regards to sound quality.

Using the highest quality files, from the best quality masters, is the closest thing you can get to the artist laying down that track, in a modern recording studio, using state of the art electronics. To reveal this level of quality, you need state of the art playback devices. Record players, or now even CD players, cannot provide this level of reproduction.

Problem is, we’ve tried SACD, DVD-Audio, DSD, DXD etc. No one cares. If a hi-res format was going to dig its heels in, it would’ve done so 10-15 years ago. We’re stuck with CD and vinyl, and for those that dislike physical media, downloads. Only streaming can improve, but that’s not likely to happen while the majority seem quite content to rent their music for the rest of their lives.

 

[davidf]

Elaborate and ornate construction will not improve the sound quality of this 70 year old format, in the same way it won't improve the sound quality of CD, which is now a 40 year old format.

Just because it looks nice, doesn't mean it will sound better. LP records cannot reproduce the quality of a studio recording, in the way a modern format can.

I've heard decent record players and they sound nice, but they don't have the ruthlessly revealing nature of CD.

CD and newer formats sound fantastic with good recordings and sound terrible with poor recordings. What do people expect? This is not CDs fault, it's the recording.

LPs will flatter the recording and hide any shortcomings of the recording, hence sounding pleasant, but you aren't getting a true picture of the recording.

I honestly cannot believe people pay a fortune for LPs and record players. This is old technology and does not have the resolution of a CD, or later format.

Sounds like you need to try an AVID turntable. Low distortion, low background noise, and a presentation that is more neutral (less of that fake warmth?).

At Audio Show Deluxe in March, a visitor brought a record into the room which he uses to assess equipment. We played it for him, and it sounded stunning. A real showcase for vinyl’s capabilities. I doubt anyone to hear that track on a good turntable would be able to argue against it.

I once did a comparison of a well recorded album on a music server (ripped from a CD) and a turntable. In this case, you could hardly hear the difference between the two. I expected the record to lose out in certain areas (vinyl’s so called ”shortcomings”), but it didn’t. It easily held its own. By rights, digital should’ve destroyed it. it didn’t. That, to me, shows a shortcoming in the digital format. Things didn’t really move on. All we got with CD was a smaller, more manageable format, no background noise (except for tape hiss, although we did get mysterious digital clicks!), and slightly less prone to general damage. We didn’t get something that sounds more faithful because that comparison was usually aimed at warm sounding turntables - which were cheap, or intentionally warm and fuzzy.

 

[podknocker]

I have a streaming amp, which sounds great, now I've shoved the foam bungs into my QA3030i speakers.

I don't see the point of CD now, never mind LPs. Average sound quality, with surface noise and they are huge and totally impractical.

There is literally nothing that could convince me to start investing in this 70 year old format.

 

[Nico69]

There is literally nothing that could convince me to start investing in this 70 year old format.

Hot diggity dang, I think we've lost one here! "Good morning I was wondering if you could spare the time so I can tell you about God's good news...."

 

[Al ears]

I have a streaming amp, which sounds great, now I've shoved the foam bungs into my QA3030i speakers.

I don't see the point of CD now, never mind LPs. Average sound quality, with surface noise and they are huge and totally impractical.

There is literally nothing that could convince me to start investing in this 70 year old format.

No one is inviting you to invest in Vinyl are they?
However, the fact that it is still around after 70 years should tell you something......

 

[Winter]

Paul Weller, Tom Jones, Brian May, Lars Ulrich, Fatboy Slim and countless others. What do they all have in common?

They all favour vinyl over any other format.

And the money to buy that turntable !

 

[nopiano]

I have a streaming amp, which sounds great, now I've shoved the foam bungs into my QA3030i speakers.

I don't see the point of CD now, never mind LPs. Average sound quality, with surface noise and they are huge and totally impractical.

There is literally nothing that could convince me to start investing in this 70 year old format.

I can understand that. Being almost as old as the LP I certainly wouldn’t start today, but in 1970s it’s all there was was, apart from 8-track cartridges and then musicassettes!

I like LPs for the records from that era, but I personally have no interest in paying £25+ for an LP of a digital recording made in the last decade.

What is remarkable is that 60 year old LPs are better archives than the tapes they were made from, as they’ve mostly turned to mush, or been burned in a storage fire.