Direct Drive

I've owned AR, Thorens, Lenco, Gerrard, Philips, Dual and ProJect Debut Carbon turntables, most of them manual (that old classic AR is just a platter, tonearm and on-off switch). The ProJect was the last to be replaced—by a Denon DP-37F (so, a lower-end Denon direct drive). The Denon, with an Ortofon 2M Blue cartridge, blows all the others away in every relevant category: speed constancy, lack of wow or flutter, lack of rumble, transparency of sound...and, of course, convenience of use. It performs its various automatic functions like a ballet dancer, and the very easy to use cue button is extremely precise in where it picks the arm up and puts it down. The only reservations I have about this table are theoretical. The arm's parameters are mostly controlled by a chip; when you turn the power off, the arm floats. So, both tracking force and anti-skate are somehow provided by computer. But I've owned the table for three years now, and had no problems at all with it. And the tracking force settings are accurate, as confirmed by a scale. So are the anti-skate settings. The whole rig (minus the 2M Blue, which I bought new) cost me about $200. It sounds as good as Red Book CDs (I've got several recordings on vinyl and CD of the same thing—e.g., the famous Kleiber performances of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh), but SACDs (again, of the same recordings) sound marginally better.

Thorens are wonderful machines. I had a TD160 for about a decade (lost it in a burglary). A beautiful machine. I particularly liked the use of opposing magnets to handle anti-skate. Ingenious. But well-preserved ones are expensive now. I’d hoped to find an affordable one when I came across the Denon.