Frequently asked questions about turntables and vinyl, belt-drive vs direct-drive, cartridges, headshells, alignment and more.
Of course, if I have bookings available, simply book an equipment assessment/condition report, and I’ll happily assist. However, if you’re asking for an equipment valuation over the phone or for me to maybe drive a considerable distance to come to you and provide this service for free, we don’t offer those services, for hopefully obvious […]
This one is a real gem and unfortunately causes much pain. The “only 50 hours” cartridge use meme has been part of the hi-fi community for decades. Briefly, it’s where someone selling a cartridge dramatically understates the number of playing hours a cartridge has seen to get a better price at sale. Typical phrases include:
Just as much as necessary to carefully complete the work you’ve asked us to do, and no more. Liquid Audio specialises in preserving and rejuvenating classic hi-fi stereo equipment and always delivers exceptional service, results and value. Our reputation for excellence, the result of hard work and original thinking, respected by customers and visitors worldwide,
System resolution limitations or ‘bottlenecks’ are critically important as they define the maximum performance attainable with a given set of equipment. This is actually the most critical thing to understand about any system. Think of it this way: You can have the best pair of speakers and the most amazing source equipment in the world,
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 many have heard but not as good as many think! For those looking for the TLDR: The Denon DL-103 MC cartridge is probably the best available for higher mass arms like my Fidelity Research FR-64S at the low $400 asking price. The DL-103 is one of my favourite budget cartridges and great value
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 minimise or eliminate tracking error and therefore tracking distortion. When a tonearm moves across a record, it does so in an arc,
A great question. Some remasters are better, but often, original pressings are where the gold lies! The answer varies according to the album and the pressing, due to many technical factors, but remastered records are often worse than excellent, lightly played original pressings, and in my experience, only occasionally better. A Golden Example A classic
I don’t like either very much, but I generally recommend a good moving magnet cartridge over a cheap moving coil. If you have say around $500 AUD to spend, and assuming you are chasing a medium compliance cartridge for a typical medium mass tonearm, there are lots of choices. Moving coil cartridges are technically better
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 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 transformers
