Frequently asked questions about turntables and vinyl, belt-drive vs direct-drive, cartridges, headshells, alignment and more.
System resolution limitations or ‘bottlenecks’ are critically important as they define the maximum performance attainable with a given set of equipment. Think of it this way: You could have the best pair of speakers and source equipment in the world, but if your amplifier can only support a certain level of performance, maybe it has […]
What are system resolution limitations and why are they important? Read More »
Do you mean those ‘affordable’ modern phono preamplifiers that cost $1000 or more, contain about $50 worth of parts if you’re lucky and sound ordinary? Not a lot. You first need to understand that I’ve been spoiled by great phono preamps made when vinyl was at its peak. Much of the excellent equipment from that
Mike, what do you think of affordable, modern phono preamplifiers? Read More »
Better than you may have heard but not as good as you may think! For those looking for the TLDR: The Denon DL-103 MC cartridge is probably the best cartridge available for higher mass arms at the low $400 asking price. It’s very good – great in fact – for the money, on the right
Other things being equal, a longer tonearm is always better, with one exception: linear tracking arms. The reason you want a long conventional arm, or a linear tracker of any length, is to eliminate tracking error and therefore tracking distortion. When a tonearm moves across a record, it does so in an arc, because the
A very good question, with no simple answer, other than no, often they are not. This varies due to many factors, but remastered records are often worse than early pressings, and very occasionally better. Here’s what we know about analog recordings made on tape (as almost all analog recordings are): they offer the highest resolution,
I don’t like either very much, but that being said, I’d generally recommend a good moving magnet cartridge over a cheap moving coil, for a variety of reasons. If you have say around $500 to spend, and assuming you are chasing a medium compliance cartridge for a typical medium mass tonearm, there are lots of
What’s better: a good moving magnet cartridge or a cheap moving coil? Read More »
Either a good step-up transformer or an exceptional active MC gain stage. Almost nothing does a better job of taking extraordinarily small signals from a moving coil cartridge and amplifying them than a step-up transformer, with maybe one exception, which we will get to. A Perfect Match Technically there’s a bit to know, but step-up
