that's a lot of money, good start. AVID or Rega for sure for both TT and amp within the same brand as they can fine tune them to death
what speakers do you have?
If you had $12k / £10k to upgrade your analogue front-end...
Hi all,
I am upgrading my system in my listening room bit-by-bit. This room is for focused listening of music only. No movies. In the future I will be looking looking to upgrade my analogue front-end and am thinking of a budget of around $12k / £10k for a turntable, tonearm, cart and phono stage/pre-amp. I listen to all sorts of music from electronic, bass-heavy vinyl, jazz, hip-hop, rock (new and old), ambient (Cinematic Orchestra, Nils Frahm etc...) and lots of soul/funk type tracks. So quite varied.
If you had $12k/£10k to spend, what combination of turntable, tonearm, cart and phone stage/pre-amp would you go for? I'm looking for suggestions to help with my research. I'm unsure what the balance should be between them. For example, should I go for a Rega Planar 10 with Aphelion 2 cart (£6,840) and give myself just over £3k to spend on a phono stage. Or spend less on the cart (Rega Planar 10 with Apheta 3 is £4,950) and get a more expensive phono stage.
Turntable brands I've been thinking of are Rega, Clearaudio, Technics, VPI, AVID, Thorens, Michell Engineering, VPI, SME etc... but don't really know where to start.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Showing 13 responses by grislybutter
@cainullah btw I have an AVID pricelist which can be helpful as the web site is not the easiest to figure out | ||||||||||||
I think what I am trying to say: it's not an Olympic event where winning is everything and pouring millions into Michael Phelps' diet will pay off by that .1 seconds at the end. It's just a bunch of decent components that will (should) do their part for 1000s and not 10s of 1000s (unless you have a giant concert hall to work with). I guess that goes against 98% of what's being argued here :) | ||||||||||||
reading some of the comments, I really started to wonder how much difference the phono stage will make. My understanding from what I am reading is that it yields the littlest gain in the chain (say: 5K on a phone stage, 5K on a TT vs. 2K phono stage, 8K TT - the latter being a much better allocation) But that seems the opposite to what commenters say here. Then, I am also clueless about the best allocation of the TT components and I don’t care as I have no plans to mess with them. Rega’s choices are fine for me (but it seems to be arm/cartridge/plinth, platter?) | ||||||||||||
@lohanimal good analogy, thank you.
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so I feel like I have been living under a rock until now, not knowing that I need to spend more on the phono stage than the TT - which is what many posts are saying here and other relevant threads. So I used the AVID price list to infer what they think (it seems logical to assume that they are putting together comparable components and they are not selling super high end e.g. TTs and mediocre phono stages). Here is a list
it looks like AVID "thinks" the low end turntable should cost the same as its matching phono stage. And the high end TT should work OK with a phono stage 1/5 of the TT"s price (of course I simplifying - the dots are not connected, it’s just roughly 5 levels in each category). In short, I did live under a rock, not knowing about the need for a decent phono stage. | ||||||||||||
@cainullah I am so sorry!! was anything insured? What a bummer. | ||||||||||||