I'm happy but I want more, more, more

Bill,

I'd say the cart is too good for the table & tonearm. I would really consider upgrading the Performance to another table (not necessarily Clearaudio). Which one depends on how much cash you are willing to throw at it.

There are many choices : SME, Avid, TWAcustic Raven (which I use), Notts Analogue, Verdier etc, even VPI ;^)

The choice of partnering tonearm is also vitally important. I cut out the intermediate choices and went for the Graham Phantom. SME V is also a popular choice if you prefer gimballed.

Yes, it's the old computer adage, "garbage in, garbage out".

What is lost at the beginning cannot be recreated at the end. Not that $2.5K is an unreasonable spend on a tonearm and turntable but these days that seems to get you an MDF chassis that has more in common with a kitchen worktop than a serious piece of audio equipment.

Granted some of them have constrained layer alum outer sheets but even these have been shown to warp under duress or humidity. Contrast this with a continuous path CNC machined billet of aluminium several inches thick. Unfortunately in analogue you get what you pay for and it's usually easy to see where the money goes. (Not that I would normally advocate spending money for the sake of it). Sadly we are not all millionaires and the best analogue is rapidly becoming a rich man's hobby  - which vindicates the ethos of RLawry. Kudos to him for being bold enough to take that course.

LewM said : " I disagree that this is or is becoming a rich man's hobby. The thoughtful and introspective man who is a clever shopper and a little bit handy in a workshop (not necessarily a craftsman) can achieve as much or more satisfaction as anyone with purely money to blow away.  True, you have to have SOME money to spend.  But six figures, nah."

I'm confused. Who said anything about “6 figures”, or suggested that shrewd second-hand buying wasn’t an option? The OP merely asked what could benefit from improvement in his system and he got a few answers. ;^)

Is the HiFi biz rapidly becoming the province of those with higher levels of disposable income….?

Well, that depends on who one talks to.

Some say all we must do to get good HiFi on the cheap is to purchase a second-hand SL1200 and refurbish it.

While I’m not opposed to this idea and have applied this principle a lot with cars, perhaps before we all rush off and start scanning E-Bay a simple lesson in economics might be in order. For every person who currently owns a second-hand SL1200 there is someone out there who bought one brand new then got rid of it  i.e. an undeniably larger number of original owners (because not all units made it back to market). In other words, the second-hand market doesn't exist unless the new market exists strongly.

Last time I looked the new SL-1200G (the non-Limited Edition model) was planned for 2016 release AT NEARLY TWICE THE PRICE OF THE OP’S CURRENT TURNTABLE.

So it would be truer to say that for more than half of us it is *becoming* an expensive hobby and for the remainder it isn’t. I will however put the money towards the items where I feel it will do the most good. ;^)

BTW Bill, another reason I’m less than enamoured with the Clearaudio is their main bearings. They tend to be either the "air-ceramic" type or the magnetic one (which I think you have??). If I’m not mistaken both of these offer a compliance which enables the platter to behave differently from the tonearm i.e. the platter can "bounce" whilst the tonearm does not. I’ve heard quite a few Clearaudio tables so my views are also based on listening experience.

For more discussion on this there was(!) a useful discussion about separate arm pods in the "hot topics" header. ;^)

Hi Bill,

I have a friend who uses the Satisfy arm on an LP12 and is delighted with it. (They say suspended tables and unipivots do not make the best stablemates but try telling that to all the Naim ARO users ;^)

It bears repeating that IMV there is an imbalance in the distribution of cost within the T/T in favour of the cartridge. The item which defines the sound of your analogue system most is the most fundamental one i.e. the chassis/motor unit. As has been suggested already in many threads on the forum, even a modest MM cartridge mounted on a superior platform will sound disproportionately good. The old-established concept is that a good turntable even with modest ancillaries and bookshelf speakers will sound coherently musical. This “source first” approach has been the matra of a certain hi-fi company for several decades and it is a view I still consider true even though I no longer use their turntables.

To a degree, even more fundamental is the platform that the T/T sits on and its location and relationship to the room & speakers. (e.g. although the natural choice of location for a T/T is the corner where it might be safer, the best place is half-way along a side wall. Just for the record I’ve broken this “rule” myself on more than one occasion and am currently doing so :). The moral is that even the best T/T won’t work properly if you site it on the wrong support structure (although some are more tolerant than others).

It isn’t my intention to disregard the influence of the tonearm. The Satisfy is a fine tonearm. I’m not sure I’d be in too much of a hurry to change that except to get something that could be more easily and accurately fine-tuned (e.g. azimuth – not that you can’t adjust it on the Satisfy just that it may be slightly inconvenient) but it must be said investing sensibly here can also reap audible benefits. In the final analysis it is your own opinion that counts and demo-ing alternatives is a first step.

The reason I haven’t suggested any particular alternatives is because I’m not selling anything.

Just to illustrate the scale of what you are dealing with, I was hooking up a printer to my laptop the other day. As the printer was powering itself up I was holding the other end of the interconnect cable between thumb and forefinger, ready to plug it in to the laptop. Every single bit of vibration, gantry movement and hum from the printer could be clearly felt, via the connector on the other end of a 4ft long (skinny) connector cable.

I would have thought such a cable would filter it. If it did, the effect was minimal… :(

(Sound transmits most efficiently through solid objects, even cables )

All the best,