GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Analog Playback
In the Thread: Ultimate Turntable

Post Subject: Around and around depends on lack of comparisonsPosted by steverino on: 5/7/2014

A lot of assertions are made about this being better or that being the same. In the absence of assessment (and I don't even mean DBT tests, just pooling of expert judgments) this game never stops. There is not a standardized system that can be used to plug in a component although with a little thought 3 or 4 systems could be built around the 4 main speaker types : dynamic floor, dynamic monitor, horn and panel, plus maybe headphones as a 5th category. At least that way there would be a reasonably controlled way to assess a component across the available systems and rank each against other TTs.

It seems clear that much current TT design is upgrading with modern parts as is done with many tube amps without changing the basic design. The only true innovation was the laser turntable which unfortunately supported Alexander and his swordcut through the knot. I mean that sometimes a stylus just plowing through the groove solves many practical issues. Yes sometimes someone comes up with a clever way to reaarrange the same components or mixes and matches better. We could say that Rossini was able to take the old musical formulas and improve them or rejigger them just enough to create something better. That's great and deserves praise. Similarly a TT or tube design that tweaks things a bit better is fine and should be rewarded in the market place. If the market wants to spend 100k on some tweaked TT compared to 3k on the non tweaked version that is the prerogative of the fools with the money (and we are all fools with money in one way or another). But to preserve sanity and the language we should distinguish innovations from tweaks despite the universal PR campaign designed to confuse the two (in all walks of life needless to say).

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