2. analog
  3. 1182259227

New TT ideas please

I'm doing a major upgrade to my system with the new electronics likely to be Audio Research REF3/110/PH7 (though may be PH5 in the interim)/Verity Parsifals. My Roksan Radius 5 is going to find a loving home, but I need some ideas of what to look at. Here are a few that appeal to me visually and reputationally, and a few that I've heard (all similar $$ roughly, budget seems to be about $6-$7.5k for table and arm):

1. Clearaudio Ambient (looks simple to setup and use), unify arm
2. Rega P9 with the 1000 arm (again, simple setup)
3. Michell Gyrodec or Orb (with the acrylic platform and cover)
4. Transrotor Atlantis with Origin Live tonearm
5. Redpoint turntable (a long shot) - looking for opinions

Excluding VPI, what else should I consider? I would like a company with a long standing history (Redpoint is questionable on this front), excellent build quality, not too finicky, sounds lively, involving, quiet background, controlled and detailed. I don't mind a touch forward, as I think the rest of the system could use a slightly forward source. Simplicity is preferred - I don't want to have to adjust things too often or it won't be used.

I have a fascination with Koetsu cartridges, so I want a TT that would suit an Urushi / Rosewood Signature cartridge. I also think transrotor is interesting, but their web site confuses me (only 3 models? I thought they had many more).

I will try my very best to hear them so what I'm asking is your best ideas and a little brain storming. I will only buy what sounds best to me and works with my system - no question about that.
hatari

Showing 2 responses by piedpiper

piedpiper
753 posts
 
Intuitively, I have always thought that every technology has it's place, even within a given design. I have always had a hard time trusting a designer who espouses a one size fits all approach. It seems to me that implimenting layering of harder/lower mass to softer/higher mass plates with increasingly compliant interfaces as you get further from the plinth would be the way to go. This would allow evacuation of internal resonances to be optimized closer to the plinth, and disipation of them, and isolation from external resonances, further from the plinth. Somewhere, probably further from the plinth, the external motor would be coupled, but not so far as to inroduce too much compliancy between the motor and the platter.

Any thoughts on how best to minimize motor resonances in an external motor assembly? Is it better to decouple the motor from its housing with compliant material or to ridgedly couple the motor to the mass of the housing and isolating further downstream?

Thom?

Doug,

How is it possible that VTA is affected by belt torque? It would seem that truly proper VTA, as opposed to tonally judged VTA, would be a separate issue. It sounds like you're using a tone control to cover a problem.
piedpiper
753 posts
 
Thanks Doug, for the clarification. I always thought of correct VTA in terms of focus, which is a simple way of dsaying what you describe, relating to the perfect mating of the sylus to the groove, which, at least with the fancier stylus designs, should be quite specific and seemingly independent of any other non-cartridge-alignment issue such as VTF and azimuth.

World without end...
More to discover