Turntable advice for a beginner audiophile?

If you're sensitive to W&F, you want to get a direct drive table. Their speed control and accuracy are far superior to belt drives (although a decent belt drive can be good enough for many folks).

Unfortunately, there are very few options anymore. I'd get the Audio-Technica 240. Generally goes for $300-350. It has an internal phono preamp. Popular cartridges are the Shure M97 and the A-T 440.

Many dealers, including online ones like www.lpgear.com and www.needledoctor.com, will install a cartridge for you for a nominal fee.

It's not that hard. Just need an alignment tool to verify you've done it correctly. Personally can't guide you on new ones, sorry. Have an old Technics 1200 myself, great table and you can adjust speed easily and see table speed with built in strobe to verify.

The Music Hall MMF 2.2 is an excellent turntable at a very good price. I have the MMF-7 ($1300) at one home, and the 2.2 at the other home, and they both give excellent performance.

Music Direct is currently selling the 2.2 for $449 with the Music hall Tracker cartridge installed. It comes completely set up and ready to use.

That is what I would recommend to you. You will have no problems at all with the 2.2; it is very reliable and easy to use and not "fussy" in any way.

I upgraded to a Benz Micro cartridge after a year or so ($450), but the cartridge that comes with the 2.2 is not all that bad. The Ortofon 2M Blue is about $200, and that would be an upgrade to consider at some point.

The best phono preamp for less than $400 IMO is the Musical Fidelity V-LPS. It sells for about $150 and is excellent; I use it with my 2.2.

And if you can possibly wait until late May, you might want to take a look at the new Pro-ject Debut Carbon. With a 8.6" full carbon fiber tone arm, highly respected Ortofon 2M Red cartridge already installed and full size 12" platter, this new table at $399 from Pro-ject should be a real winner. Your choice of color too.

http://www.musicdirect.com/p-75872-p...turntable.aspx

Add a Pro-ject Speed Box II at $160 and take your pick of many <$200 phone pre-amps and your good to go at under your $700 budget.

Just a suggestion. Hope it helps.

My goodness, the salesmen are coming out of the woodwork.

I still think he'd be much happier with a direct drive, given his apparent sensitivity to W&F.

I am very confused by your comment Sir after my post. I am not salesman. No more than you are for suggesting an AT 240. Unless you do work for Audio Technica. I am just a satisfied Pro-ject owner.

The OP described a problem and asked for recommendations. Several of us gave him some. So we are salesmen for doing so? Why should your opinion be the only one that matters? I merely gave him a suggestion - you state that yours would make him happy given his pitch problem. A Pro-ject Speed Box would take care of that problem too.

If I asked for recommendations, I would welcome many opinions.

My apologies for making an unwarranted assumption. (The poster before you is a salesman, with a reputation for promoting items he sells.) You recommended a product that isn't even out yet, which can suggest inside knowledge.


Yeah, so they say. But why buy a turntable whose speed control is so crappy you have to buy another device just to fix it?

doesnt audio-technica make the music hall usb? are you sure you werent hearing the jitter of usb? did you use a usb phono stage? you do realize that most of the people who buy usb turntables use them to record onto computers. so any "unimpressive" sound you hear will be fixed automatically by the recording software.

if w&f is your problem thorens might just be the answer...but at $700 right of the bat.


i think this would be a very good set up:

pre amp:http://www.needledoctor.com/Musical-...category=35249

table:http://www.needledoctor.com/Pro-Ject...=2&category=46

if you wanna go automatic id say go denon 300.

couldnt agree more.

i came so close to falling for that gimmick.

Do they? What's your point?


Not likely. Jitter doesn't sound like W&F.


What's a USB phono stage?


False, and false.

the only reason to use a usb turntable is to convert your vinyl to mp3's. yes you can listen to records on it. but its for the people who have vinyl they cant find on mp3 and want to digitalize their collection. plain and simple. there is no other reason to use a usb connection on a turntable for anything other than that plain and simple. with ipods being the exception, usb is not meant for high quality audio period. usb is cheap enough, been around long enough and has enough of a following to ensure that if usb gave you such amazing sound it would be all over the back of receivers.

so if usb isnt used for sq, especially in analog (again what is vinyl isnt just a music format, its a type of sound) what else can it be used for...sending information to computers.

releated products to prove my point:
this is a usb phono stagehttp://www.needledoctor.com/Rega-Fon...category=36638

as for my reference to music hall using audio-technica for their usb tables, which i could be wrong, i was just posing a point. if you buy a musichall for $250, that is made by audio-technica, expect audio technica sq.

http://www.needledoctor.com/Musical-...category=28863

http://www.needledoctor.com/Music-Ha...category=12798

http://www.needledoctor.com/Denon-DP...category=12798


what are you gonna do? use the musical fidelity vlink mk2 to convert your usb to optical and have a "digital turntable"- that defeats the purpose of records to begin with.

also, w&f on a decent "hi fi" turntable is at .2%. yes i know a normal room you only need what .5-.1% that can make a difference, but suggesting that THE OP is "sensitive to w&f" is wrong.

suggesting that he should get a direct drive because he is "sensitive" to w&f doesnt have much to do with his hearing at all. it has to do with the room set up and quality of equipment. to me, i think it has to do with the speed of the turntable not being so accurate. while the OP may have a great listening ear it seems to me that he isnt noticing a big shift(little shifts like 1%-2% are said to be noticeable, while 3%-5% can go unnoticed by that very same listener), it sounds more like the motor is faulty, the speed is no where near accurate. maybe if you played with and readjusted the idler wheel it would have worked. who knows?

people arent sensitive to w&f. they are sensitive variables that degrade sound quality. w&f is a variable that can be fixed. while direct drive is good start, its not an end all fix to w&f that means you should give up on belt drives. i promise you a debut 3, xpression, mf2.2, all will be just as w&f free as your technics. if that wasnt the case, noone would ever buy a belt drive.

go get the audio technica, and when you find you want to make upgrades you can sell it to sam ash and go get a project xpression.

also, w&f on a decent "hi fi" turntable is at .2%. yes i know a normal room you only need what .5-.1% that can make a difference, but suggesting that THE OP is "sensitive to w&f" is wrong.

suggesting that he should get a direct drive because he is "sensitive" to w&f doesnt have much to do with his hearing at all. it has to do with the room set up and quality of equipment. to me, i think it has to do with the speed of the turntable not being so accurate. while the OP may have a great listening ear it seems to me that he isnt noticing a big shift(little shifts like 1%-2% are said to be noticeable, while 3%-5% can go unnoticed by that very same listener), it sounds more like the motor is faulty, the speed is no where near accurate. maybe if you played with and readjusted the idler wheel it would have worked. who knows?

people arent sensitive to w&f. they are sensitive variables that degrade sound quality. w&f is a variable that can be fixed. while direct drive is good start, its not an end all fix to w&f that means you should give up on belt drives. i promise you a debut 3, xpression, mf2.2, all will be just as w&f free as your technics. if that wasnt the case, noone would ever buy a belt drive.

That's the reason companies put USB on their tables, but that doesn't mean it's the only use for a table that has USB. There are perfectly good tables that happen to have USB, and no one should be dissuaded from buying one just because it has an extra feature they cannot use. So please stop saying otherwise.


No, it's meant for data. But high quality audio is just data. I suggest you might want to learn a little about this topic before posting further on it.


And what do you know about A-T's sound quality? Music Hall specced the table. If the quality is poor, it's Music Hall's fault. Enough with the brand snobbery, please.


These numbers are pretty meaningless. Do you know why?


Oh, for heaven's sake, go back and read what he said:

Waver. Do you know what waver means? It does not mean the speed is incorrect. It means the speed varies.


I've met people who seem to be. And depending on what type of music you listen to, it can be more apparent.


And W&F is not such a variable because...?


This was my favorite bit of all. Please explain how W&F "has to do with the room set up." I cannot wait.


Then why don't any of them publish a real W&F spec? (Note: A simple number is not a real spec. A real spec identifies the standard by which the number was derived. See the Technics 1200 spec sheet for an example.)

Hmmm wow & flutter is related to your room...who woulda thunk?....no one I'd ever noticed before, can't wait to hear about speakers now from outlawskinnyd (maybe fixies too). Hadn't heard usb couldn't pass sufficient information, guess all that music I transferred via usb is corrupt now. Dang.

"Wow and flutter are particularly audible on music with oboe, string, guitar, flute, brass, or piano solo playing. While wow is perceived clearly as pitch variation, flutter can alter the sound of the music differently, making it sound cracked' or ugly'. There is an interesting reason for this. A recorded 1 kHz tone with a small amount of flutter (around 0.1%) can sound fine in a dead' listening room, but in a reverberant room constant fluctuations will often be clearly heard.[citation needed] These are the result of the current tone beating' with its echo, which since it originated slightly earlier, has a slightly different pitch. What is heard is quite pronounced amplitude variation, which the ear is very sensitive to. This probably explains why piano notes sound cracked'. Because they start loud and then gradually tail off, piano notes leave an echo that can be as loud as the dying note that it beats with, resulting in a level that varies from complete cancellation to double-amplitude at a rate of a few Hz: instead of a smoothly dying note we hear a heavily modulated one. Oboe notes may be particularly affected because of their harmonic structure. Another way that flutter manifests is as a truncation of reverb tails. This may be due to the persistence of memory with regard to spatial location based on early reflections and comparison of Doppler effects over time. The auditory system may become distracted by pitch shifts in the reverberation of a signal that should be of fixed and solid pitch."

when i first read about this i did a lot of research to make sure this wasnt just wikipedia ********.

i guess zaph was wrong when he answered my question about it (sarcasm)

the fact of the matter your beloved a-t table is a joke. it is. im sorry. i know you cant handle the fact that something you love may not be the best for other people, but its the truth. with the project debut he can start out, and tailor the table to how he wants it to sound. with a a-t he is stuck with just cartridge choices.

i respect you, i respect your knowlegge, but i totally disagree with you on this one.

the a-t is a dead end, when he wants something better he will just have to buy a new tt.

Um, that explains how we perceive flutter—under some circumstances. But the OP is perceiving a wavering pitch, which your own source (and what is your source?) attributes to wow, while you wrongly attributed it to speed inaccuracy. So it still looks like your diagnosis is all wrong.

Priceless.

im moving on from this one.

if the OP wants to follow my advice he can, if he wants to follow your advice he can.

all he has to do is call up needle doctor and say "i was told on a forum im sensitive to w&f and that i was told to forget about belt drives all together. once i see what i want in a turntable sound wise, can i upgrade the a-t the way i can upgrade a project debut 3 so i dont waste money."

while i know he doesnt have a ****ing reverberation chamber in his listening space, he can ask just for shits and giggles "hey some other guy on the forum said that depending on how your room handles sound, w&f can be more apparent depending on room characterisics"

then he can ask "if i am not planning on hooking up my turntable to a computer, why would one want a usb turntable. hooking up usb to my receiver would sound amazing because as it was put "high quality audio is just data" RIGHT?"

then he can ask "if left alone, which player can i receive better sound out of, an audio technica or a project debut 3/rega rp1"


then all this can be put to an end. those guys are good honest guys over there. afterall, mcnarus recommended them.

i was on ebay last night, i saw some good old turntables you might be interested in.

if direct drive is what you what id go dual or ar. you can get some really good solid badass made in japan yamaha's or pioneer (some even upgraded with rock solid 1970s marants tone arms) for dirt cheap. that will get your foot in the door.

that way, if you decide you want a whole new player down the road you didnt waste any money. hell you can even get hybrid dd/belt drive combos from dual back when they experimented.

i would stick to dual, ar or thorens. while pioneer is good, i have found i let go of all my old pioneers because they lacked the everlasting quality that pioneer i found with a marantz platter and marantz tone arm looks sick...and its only $30 and if you dont jump on i will.

I'm not familiar with the Stanton tables, but here's some good info on the T92.

I wouldn't reject out of hand something marketed as a "DJ table"—some of them are excellent. But I would definitely avoid a DJ cartridge. They tend to be made with an eye to ruggedness rather than sound quality. The home user doesn't need to make that compromise and shouldn't. Get a good cartridge with an elliptical or better stylus that tracks at a maximum of 2 grams or less.

This is somewhat misleading. Direct drive accuracy may be better in this price range, but some of the finest, most accurate, lowest noise TTs are belt driven with massive platters and highly accurate detached motors.

Well, first of all, I am replying to someone who has stated a price range; I didn't mean it to be interpreted as a universal statement. It was advice to him.

Second, I'll admit that I'm no more than vaguely familiar with the high end of the turntable market (because I'm not in it). I realize that "massive platters and highly accurate detached motors" are a standard way to deal with the inherent challenges of spinning an analog disk accurately. How well they actually work I could not say. Speed accuracy/constancy and noise are measurable parameters, but no one I know of measures them independently anymore, so all we've got to go on are the spec sheets. At the lower end of the turntable world, spec sheets are utterly unreliable. I haven't looked at enough high-end spec sheets to form a judgment.

I'm not implying that you were being purposefully misleading. When I shopped for my TT I was amazed at the total lack of reliable specs. Sadly, since TTs have become a niche market it really hard to find good reliable reviews or specs.
Yet, there are good belt driven TTs, designed with good isolation and "inertial" stabilized, I wouldn't discount a TT just because it has a belt, unless you are a DJ.
Back in the heyday, direct drive TTs had great specs for their price range.