Advise buying a record player?

True but the room the Record player is going in has amazing acoustics.

 

What, a sun lounge?! Surely that's full of glass? That makes for terrible acoustics. It's also very bad for your records, and those fluctuations aren't good for the equipment, either.

 

It's just called the sun room. No Glass roof, just 4 windows each side and 2 in front, the turntable goes in a relatively cool corner of the room. I don't keep my records in there they stay in my room away from the heater.

 

GoH, that record player you own is honestly a toy. Even if it sounds just "decent" for another hundred dollars you could have gotten a real one...but i digress

 

I wanted a real turntable, not some mass produced Crap, I got that. I had a shit turntable, I exchanged it for a not shit turntable.

Lets not get into Audiophile snobbery, delt with that enough last week.

 

The table that GoH bought to replace that one with the built in speaker is actually pretty good. I use one myself and even though it's cheap it sounds great as long at you are not relying on the built in amp too much. I use mine in conjunction with my audiophile level PC sound card.

 

I get this vibe that anything that isn't a $10,000 set up is just a toy to Audiophiles.

 

fools and their money I guess. I really do like my audio. Always have done since a teenager but I'd never spend really stupid money. I know my turntable isn't the best but it's also not complete crap. In the future I will upgrade but for the time being I'm happy.

In fact I'd happliy put up two audio clips to see if anyone could tell the difference. One from my turn table and another from a propper quality 80's Onkyo table which a mate has.

 

The kinds of people I've delt with in Vinyl communities, Jeez. Buy a record on the wrong label, and they lambast you for owning something digitally sourced with no proof it actually is. Use a cheap sound system........shit is given.

That said, while I'm VERY happy with my current set up, It would be nice to upgrade at some point, total overhaul, new system, better CD Player (maybe an SACD player) and a different turntable, Pioneer turntables seem nice, they aren't overly expensive like some are. So should something happen with this turntable down the line, I'll probably go with a Pioneer.

 

Vinyl can be bad if bought in the wrong country. I know many say this but a lot of US vinyl has bad background noise due to the poor quality of the vinyl. Not all of it but quite a lot. Saying that I have some UK stuff that sounds like shit too but they are mostly discs made with DJing in mind so I guess they don't need ultra quality. My best sounding records are mostly from Germany, UK and Japan. Some say that Japanese stuff lacks Bass but I've not really noticed that. On the flip side my worst sounding record of all is a Japanese picture disc. Oh man, the amount of background noise on that is awful. You can clearly hear it through the music at times.

 

almost everything I have has been pressed in Europe.

 

Happy with my Pro-Ject which is only a few hundred dollars. Pair it with a decent amp and it's great. Not getting all snobby, just saying.

 

Nothing wrong with that at all.

 

Which is fine, but calling a turntable a toy..........that is. especially when it's well reviewed on actual turntable sites.

I am a bit on the defensive I've seen audiophiles blabber about how half my collection is "Sourced from CDs" with no proof like it's a bad thing and that I'm not hearing real sound since I don't have vacuum tubes and a $10,000 system. SO YEAH I might be slightly insulted when my turntable from a respected company is called a Toy.

 

You don't have to spend tens of thousands to have a capable hi-fi setup - you don't necessarily have to spend thousands, even.

Some of the highest regarded turntables were actually fairly cheap... it's the tonearms and cartridges that required the cash injection. Pro-Ject make some amazing turntables for the money. Personally, I'd far recommend someone invest that little bit more in a Pro-Ject than a cheap turntable, as they have relatively decent tonearms and cartridges (and sell components to other manufacturers). The difference between a crappy turntable and a crappy CD player is that the CD player doesn't come into contact with, and risk damaging, your CDs.

SACD is a dangerous field - full of snobbery. In fact, I've seen one high-end turntable manufacturer (mentioning no names) leave nothing but snotty reviews for SACD transfers of rare old recordings, saying they shouldn't have bothered.

As for vinyl quality, the material does play a part (look at some of the shite Woolworths budget records e.g. Music For Pleasure output in the Seventies - paper thin!) but it is mostly down to inexperience. The studios don't know how to master for vinyl, so the pressing plant has a poor master to work from. You need experienced hands working on cutting your master in the pressing plant, too. Generally speaking, modern 180g records are remastered to a high quality.

You should be able to hear a difference between any two turntables on the same system - as with any analogue component. When I picked up my studio workhorse cassette deck from a wizard who modded it for me recently, I tried it against a couple of more expensive decks. The difference was certainly audible - but then, they're set up for somewhat different purposes (and fussier). What was apparent, despite the difference on some tricky recording, was that mine (set up as a "jack-of-all-trades" deck that'll play anything thrown at it) did a good job at reproducing the sound, just not as bright or detailed. In fact, I'd say you can't really say one turntable(/tonearm/cartridge combo) is better than another unless you've heard them side-by-side on the same system in the same room. Set your deck up correctly for your style of music, and you'll probably get a pretty enjoyable sound out of it.

 

I'm well aware. What I have now is just fine even and I'm sure if an audiophile saw my set up he'd turn my nose up at me turn and leave.
They'd also shun me for the jazz albums I have on CD saying they sound horrible, though I myself barely can tell the difference between CD and Vinyl. Vinyl sounds, I dunno more dynamic than a CD. But I'm not in anyway opposed to CDs or SACDs there are some things you just can't get on Vinyl anymore without spending 100s on a single LP. That only goes for collecting Jazz any other Genre I'm pretty much either streaming or getting on Vinyl.

As for differences between turntables and their sound, There is a HUGE difference between my last Chinese mass produced piece of crap and my Audio Technica. The AT produces that dynamic sound more clearly than the other unit did.

 

I apologize I didn't see you had actually got the AT one.

 

I once worked in a kitchen where the chef was an ardent jazz fan. He would always have some old scratchy 78 (or a recording from one) playing - REALLY scratchy. I mentioned how scratchy it was - he told me to give it time, and you tune it out and hear the detail past it. He was right. For me, it's nostalgic as I used to go in an antiques market that had scratchy old jazz records playing. Great stuff! Crystal clear recordings are all very well, but some of these recordings, I'd doubt they were ever that clear. And they're so rare, surely hearing them is better than not hearing them at all? Like watching lost Doctor Who episodes that were recorded on a crappy NTSC home VCR, or pointing a cine camera at the TV.

Did you ever find out what cartridge the AT comes with?

 

All is Forgiven, you are absolutely right about the Jensen I had that was Toy, A VERY CHEAP TOY.

I LOVE Jazz, absolutely love it. Always have but it took Cowboy Bebop getting it's Blu Ray Reissue for me to start actively seeking out stuff that sounds like the music they were going for. Then there are the New Japanese Acts like Ken Akagi, UoU, Soil & Pimp Sessions where absolutely nothing else sounds like them. Then you have Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Coletraine, Ellington, Lee Morgan, Stan Getz, Yusef Lateef just great stuff to chill on a rainy Saturday to. I'm not picky with how I listen to Jazz, but there is something special I can't put my finger on to listening to Jazz on Vinyl vs other formats.

I never did find out what Cartridge it came with, I'll have to look.

 

Jazz is more subtle than most modern music - it can be complex in its orchestration, certainly, but the production is more subtle than the likes of dance music, or even rock, so often recorded in digital studios in the first place nowadays. Digital is always going to be somewhat lossy in comparison to analogue, even though it can be practically inaudible nowadays.

Charles Mingus was a great bassist. It's a real shame he was unable to play by the end of his life, but at least he continued to be involved in the industry. A friend of mine is really into Mike Makhalemele, who was again a great saxophonist and worthy of a listen.