Why hasnt a turntable manufacturer produced a table with automatic tonearm return/shutoff?
I'm listening to my old Technics 1700 turntable, which has the tonearm return/ shutoff mechanism. It's one of the reasons I don't upgrade. The idea that you have to get up to retrieve the cartridge and turn off the machine makes little sense when the technology has been there for years. I know the issue of the mechanism introducing sound into the table, but it seems to me that the mechanism can be isolated and kept off until the record ends. What gives?
why not? very low priority in terms of actual use. most serious vinyl users would be afraid of other compromises introduced by an unneeded complicated feature. rather put their money on things making the performance better. and the manual process is part of the muscle memory and ritual associated with vinyl playback. so cultural headwind to have it be something valued. |
@pryso - Tone controls have come back relatively recently; you see them on quite a few newer, very expensive, high end preamps and integrateds, and they can be completely removed from the circuitry if they're not to be used. Usually just bass and treble, but I've seen some that have a 'Mid' adjustment, too. |
I was going to suggest the ability to stack multiple LPs on top of each other and have them drop when the prior one has finished. But I won't, because then it would have to adjust the VTA. I am, of course, joking, because the record clamp issues would be tough to solve. No I am not serious. It pisses me off that pressings from the 60's and 70's often have sides 1&4 on one disk and 2&3 on the other - or even worse 1&3 and 2&4. And it gets really crazy with multi disk opera LP sets.
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Re tone controls: many DACs have multiple filters and choices of sample rate conversion or DSD conversion. And we do choose our interconnects and roll tubes to get the sound we want. I remember my British Quad 33 preamp from the early 70's had bass, treble and slope controls and I think the current ones do also. |
