Yes. Turntables matter enormously as does the arm and cartridge. I am very aware of that as are most of responders. I have heard many turntables from $1K to at least $75K.
What is turntable “liveliness”.
I have listened to turntables for sixty years. I bought my first high end TT about thirty years… it was revelatory. I do not swap tables often. I do a huge amount of research and then stay with one for fifteen years or so. My most recent upgrade was from a VPI Aries (heavy mass) to a Linn LP12 (light weight, sprung)…very nearly the very top level. Could we please not turn this into a religious thing about Linn… mine is an outstanding TT which compares favorably with any other $45K analog leg (TT, cartridge, and Phonostage)
The term lively comes up in descriptions. One of the differences in character I noticed between the VPI and Linn… which I thought might be considered liveliness was to me a bit of what I perceived as the images very slightly jumping around… the kind of thing you would think of when you see films of “The Flash” maybe vibrating in place. While I found this gave me the feeling of the notes wanting to jump out at me, I found it a bit disconcerting. I attributed it to a relatively light weight rig, that is really good at rejecting low frequency vibrations (it is a sprung table… known to be lively sounding) up to a relatively high frequency… but beyond that not. Something a really heavy rig would not be effected by.
To test my theory, I had a Silent Running Ohio Class vibration platform constructed for my turntable. The image smear, as I called it disappeared. There is no smear and it has great solidity.
Is this attribute “liveliness”?
Showing 8 responses by ghdprentice
Thanks for your comments. To answer your question, I think you need to spend time with some quality turntables maybe at a couple levels. The difference is like day and night, once you have heard the profound difference in sound, you will turn the question around and start examine the design elements that create these differences. |
Well. When I started this I never thought I would get any posts that claimed turn tables make no difference. Well, you just never know. Yes @mapman it is a hundred year old technology, but I have been using it for over sixty years. The fact that competitive or better sound still comes from analog is mind boggling. I am a big digital advocate… but also am 71 years old… so it is fun to play with analog. As I think you may remember my analog and digital ends sound virtually the same… and since I have a largely pristine collection of 2,000 vinyl albums… it’s fun to play with. |
@terry9 …”As I understand it, ’lively’ is the opposite of ’dead’. I hear ’dead’ as resonance free, dull, which is bad in a piano and good in a turntable, I hear turntable ’liveliness’ as accentuated high frequency which makes everything sound sharp, as in jagged.”
Thanks. That is what I was looking for… different perspectives so I can figure it out. That is good. I’ll need to think about that and see how it fits in to my experience… but, I think you are right.
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