3 New UBER Decks - Is this Turntable's SwanSong? 🦢

Who cares?

@antinn, great example of a proper review. Now if all tonearm reviews were done that way we might be able to draw some meaningful comparisons. My only complaint is that the V15 was too compliant for the Tri Planar. My own experience with damping brushes was frustrating at best. 5 Hz is too low in everyone's book. No wonder bass performance suffered. Not sure how they crammed a Tri Planar on a Sota. Donna insists it does not work without significant modification but maybe that is just the more current versions.

I am going to agree with audioman85, dover for the most part, clearthinker and rauliruegas. 

I am not so sure that vinyl is here to stay. Most of us older audiophiles have large record collections which makes owning a turntable mandatory.
The people around at the time record sales exploded are now older, their kids are on their own and they have much more money to burn. While it is true that some young people are getting into vinyl, far more are getting into digital. I won't be around to see the outcome consequently I really do not care. If I did not have any records I doubt I would buy a turntable on the other hand people who point at all the problems with vinyl reproduction have obviously not heard a top notch turntable with a modern stylus profile set up correctly playing a clean record. It always amazes me how good this can sound.

IMHO the Nak TX-100 was overkill in the extreme. Typical Nakamichi. Shifting the center of the platter is going to alter it's balance which in time will do a number on it's main bearing. Many of us laughed at it. Off center records are a problem and can be quite audible. My solution was quite simple. I returned the record as defective, and kept returning them until I got a copy that was decent. 

@lewm, I know this is anecdotal but here in Salem, NH we have a great media store, Bullmoose Records. They stock new records and I have never had a problem returning defective records. I buy many records on line. Elusive disc is always very accommodating and as a matter of fact replaced a copy of Weather Report's Mysterious Travelers because it was drilled off center. They also pack their records really well unlike Amazon who just throws them in a box and many get damaged. I try not to buy records from Amazon for this reason. Bandcamp is another interesting site to buy music from. I have had no problems with Acoustic Sounds. I do not buy used LPs and have no interest in it.

The wow and flutter of good modern turntables is hidden in the noise of record irregularity and eccentricities. All this is interesting and totally academic. 

@rauliruegas , sorry I missed your last post. Yes, it is very possible that one side could be off center in a different direction. I have never seen it in the records that were off center as I never thought to compared sides. But if you look at the way records are pressed the A and B side stampers or fathers are punched individually. One could be punched off center and the other not. I will carefully look at off center records to see what the other side does.

I have not tried it but you could fill the off center hole with a mixture of epoxy and ebony dust. You would contact cement wax paper to one side and fill the hole from the other. After the epoxy sets you remove the wax paper and clean off the contact cement with lacquer thinner. You would then mark the center using a compass and drill a new hole. The record has to be fixed on a drill press so that the drill does not walk off center. 

@rauliruegas, I think the problem with record manufacture is a matter of cost and what the market will bear. It is possible to make a near perfect record but this means higher tolerances and more maintenance. Pressing records is not a laissez faire operation. Every record is pressed in 30 seconds under some ridiculous amount of pressure. I think I read 2000 psi. at 350 degrees. All this is going to put a lot of wear on various parts. These machines require a lot of maintenance. 
This is no excuse for record stampers punched off center. I believe that is due to operator error.

Richardkrebs, give me a break. Show me the perfectly flat and concentric record. It is not my fault that this makes your work somewhat less important. I have no irons in the fire. It might have been better if you just admitted that these irregularities do cause changes in pitch that might mask turntable speed irregularities. We all want accurate turntables but there is a certain degree of insanity in this. It's just like cars. "My Porsche goes 200 mph." "But, my Ferrari goes 204 mph." Who the heck ever drives that fast! My Porsche will hold a weeks worth of groceries and I can carry my mountain bike on it's roof racks. Try that in your terribly unreliable and difficult to service piece of Italian rubbish! (just comical relief folks, Ferraris are works of art.)

I'm sure all three turntables sound wonderful although the OMA makes me squint when I look at it. Mark Dohmann's Helix is a much better value.
@grooves, You have reviewed the Helix and own one of Mark's tables. How do you think it compares?

"A man's got to know his limits."

Every analog step adds distortion. Every digital step does not. Everyone is use to mastering for digital now and there are much better utilization of anti aliasing filters. Digital may have had a rough start but everyone now has the hang of it. 

What will happen to pure analog reproduction? If I were a betting man I would give it at most another 50 years. It may have some limited uses sort of like propeller driver aircraft.

@rauliruegas , Since our last discussion I have been playing close attention to the centricity of records. It is very disappointing. They also do vary form one side to the other, a lot!  Even such vaunted labels as Analog Production are not well centered. 
I did some research and found this. Go to 8:40   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_GBlzcaWlo
0.2 mm tolerance? My back side. Many records are pressed off by three times as much anyway. I am sure you have seen that. As you see in the video it is due either to operator error or faulty machine calibration which by default is operator error. Every run of records (about 1000) is QCed by pulling a sample and playing it. The QC techs are obviously not paying attention to this. 

Take a test record and with a pointed knife cut away 0.2 mm from one side of the hole and play a 1000 Hz test tone. The tone will wander up and and down. It is painfully obvious to any serious listener. 
I started playing records without looking at the centricity then writing down yes or no next to the title. Yes for concentric, no for out. After 10 records I put them back on the table and gauged their centricity. Picking out continuous notes I was right 8 out of 10 times. I encourage everyone to do this. The only way this will stop is if enough of us complain. There is no excuse not to stay within 0.2 mm. The tech looks at the run out groove under high magnification ( the video shows this!) Either he is off or the Machine is off. Take your pick. Having an accurate turntable does not mean a lot in the face of this type of error. The wow far exceeds the spec of any modern turntable. To gauge centricity draw a black line on a small piece of white paper and place it on the turntable's plinth. Move it around until the line visually lines up with the tip of the finger lift. Then you can watch the tip  of the finger lift float back and forth in relation to the line (reference point) 

What an eye opener!!!

Last night I was in a classical mood. Three European classical pressings from the late 70's were right on the money, dead accurate. Compare that to three modern Blue Note pressings, all off. One was so bad I sent it back.