There is one aspect of any turntable based system’s sonic presentation that is primarily determined by and attributable to the turntable itself; and hence the reason that, yes, one can “hear” a turntable compared to another in the context of an unfamiliar system. michaelivosevic touches upon this in his post and cd318 asks a key question which goes to the heart of the matter:
**** At what point do turntable speed issues become inaudible to human hearing? ****
As usual in these discussions the focus is issues of tonality in the music heard with little in-depth consideration of the effects of distortions in the area of rhythm and pace which are primarily the result of the turntable’s rotational accuracy and consistency. So, “at what point do turntable speed issues become inaudible to human hearing?”. I don’t know, but while not directly applicable to turntables the question begs another far more familiar question: “at what point do harmonic distortion and other tonality-related issues become inaudible to human hearing?”. Of course, the better question is: “how can two electronic components sound so different when the two measure the same or close to the same?” Better still is to point to the almost universally accepted notion that measurements seldom tell the whole story; a notion definitely applicable to turntables. What our strobe discs tell us is only one piece of the story.
Think about all the minutia related to tonality that we hear from various components and obsess about when evaluating components. Rhythm is the most important component of music and in many ways the most fragile and hardest to record and reproduce accurately. So, why should turntables be any less subject to issues that affect its primary purpose of reproducing the rhythm of the music encoded in the lp grooves in a manner that is natural (accurate)? Every turntable that I have owned over the years has had a unique rhythm “signature”. Moreover, all the fiddling with belts of various kinds and their tensioning and positioning that I have done and the ensuing changes in the sound has shown me that correct rhythmic reproduction also influences our perception of tonal (and soundstage) issues; just as tonal issues which are determined by harmonic (and other) distortions influence our perception of rhythm. Often the reason that an electronic component might be perceived as being “faster” than another is mostly because it has a different, usually brighter or leaner, tonal signature.
Bottom line for me is that it is entirely possible to “hear” which of two turntables in an unfamiliar system does a better job with the rhythm in the music. Although more difficult and trickier it is possible, to a degree, to learn to recognize and extrapolate from how superior or inferior rhythmic accuracy might be affecting our perception of the tonal character that we hear.
