The WJE168 Turntable You've Never Seen Before

[Guest]

The "cartridge distortion" mentioned by Mr Horo is more traditionally called tracking error, it is caused by a stylus moving in an arc attempting to track a groove that was cut linearly. Although long arms reduce tracking error they were never used in high end equipment as they increase the inertia of the arm and affect sound quality particularly with "modern" high-compliance cartridges. High quality tone-arms should be rigid and light, carbon fiber tubes were often used. A violin bow seems a poor choice. Overall the WJE168 reminds me of the Oracle line of turntables.

 

[loomis86]

[citation][nom]sseyler[/nom]It's not just about the "something special," though. Vinyl records (without scratchy imperfections) have something in their audio quality that's just plain pleasing to the human ear. It has a soft warmness and fullness to the sound that they produce that digital audio can't quite match.[/citation]

you are describing the effect of vacuum tubes in the electronics. semiconductor electronics can be designed to imitate vacuum tube sound, but they aren't as good.

 

[teaser]

listen to Van Halen 1 on vinyl and you'll know why some people still like vinyl,that album sounds better on album than a Digital copy.....

 

[Guest]

Doesn't the laser technology sample the surface discretely, that is isn't it just digitizing the continuous surface by the nature of how the laser operates, on-off-on-off? If so, then you lose the analog qualities of the vinyl.

 

[Syndil]

Even my half-deaf dad can tell that a vinyl record (with a proper player) sounds noticeably better than a CD recording of the same album. You definitely do not need to be an audiophile to notice the difference. The problem is that most people have not heard vinyl played properly. You don't need a $41k turntable to get decent sound from vinyl, but a portable record player isn't going to do it either. I've got a mediocre vintage turntable with a relatively high quality cartridge, and it *easily* outperforms my CD player. It's not even close enough to call it subjective.

 

[Stoppemfloppen]

"Those vinyl people are sure funny! The insistence on a degradable medium—records lose their audio quality little by little every time they're played—has always been personally amusing. Why pass up on the consistency of digitally-encoded audio?"

Because as you copy digital it degrades too, just in a different way. And when it breaks, you sure as hell know about it because it either sounds so awful it is unlistenable or it just plain stops working.

Who remembers the initial advert for CD's - "perfect sound forever"? Its not perfect, not by a long chalk and it doesn't last forever. No medium is perfect, remember that.

Besides, as one of those "Funny Vinyl People" who owns a Linn Sondek/Ekos/Troika/Lingo, I fully prefer the sound of vinyl to CD. It is more natural, involving and gives a certain extra dimension and sense of timing completely missing from CD's.

Sure vinyl degrades as it is played but this is somthing of a misnomer. If you insist on playing it on a cheap spud plougher supplied with your nasty midi "hifi" (shudders) then it will be deaad in no time as they use a sapphire stylus with spherical tip tracking at 5g+. You may as well use a steel nail! Quality cartridges use fine line diamond stylii profiles tracking at

 

[Guest]

VInyl is closer to live sound, has a much higher resolution and will last longer than digital if stored properly. Digital will surpass vinyl someday but it hasn't yet.

 

[knutjb]

I know, nose bleed high-end audio seems weird to those who haven't heard it. A properly set player, even an inexpensive one, your are missing out. I don't have one right now but if I had the money I would. Besides record players have visual style too, something digital lacks.

And for those who know little about vacuum tubes they have more even-order harmonics than odd like transistor do. The brain doesn't like odd-order harmonics. Could be why most guitar players use tubes... Modern isn't always better.

 

[Regulas]

Ah a turntable for the rich elitist types like Al loony Gore and Hollywood commies, you know the ones that say do as I say not as I do. I won't even mention details of the communist regime in DC right now.

 

[Stoppemfloppen]

My post was cut short!! So I will continue...

Sure vinyl degrades as it is played but this is somthing of a misnomer. If you insist on playing it on a cheap spud plougher supplied with your nasty midi "hifi" (shudders) then it will be dead in no time as they use a sapphire stylus with spherical tip tracking at 5g+. You may as well use a steel nail! Quality cartridges use fine line diamond stylii profiles tracking at

 

[Stoppemfloppen]

3rd attempt...

Sure vinyl degrades as it is played but this is somthing of a misnomer. If you insist on playing it on a cheap spud plougher supplied with your nasty midi "hifi" (shudders) then it will be dead in no time as they use a sapphire stylus with spherical tip tracking at 5g+. You may as well use a steel nail! Quality cartridges use fine line diamond stylii profiles tracking at below 2g minimising wear. For example my father has vinyl approaching 50 years old and it still plays beautifully, thanks to his care and attention when handling it and always buying quality turntables/cartridges/stylii to play it on.

Vinyl requires care in handling and use plus a quality front end to play it on. You can buy a decent new turntable from £200 (Project, Rega are just two examples) and there are plenty to choose from secondhand. High end turntables are expensive because it requires a huge amount of R&D, they are usually made in very small quantities by hand - in the case of the arm it is machined to incredibly fine tolerances - and the skill required to assemble a cartridge is very specialised. But the result is simply to die for. What is even better is that, apart from replacing the cartridge/stylus, the turntable and arm will last a lifetime. CD players don't - the lasers will die and are all but impossible to replace.

 

[potatolord]

Ah, I remember the joy of opening a new LP, complete with lyric sheets you can actually read, decent quality large photos on the reverse side and freebies like large, well printed posters. Some of Hawkwind's fold-out album covers were works of art in themselves.

You'd be lucky to get a postage stamp inside a cd case.

 

[leafblower29]

[citation][nom]Zoonie[/nom]That's like saying "why choose a 1967 Ford Mustang instead of a 2010 Ford Mustang?"[/citation]

The 2010 has things like standard A/C, etc. and better brakes and safety features so why wouldn't you choose the 2010?

 

[bv90andy]

The insistence on a degradable medium

I have vinyls from my parents as old as 30 years + and they all still work. I have cds and DVDs from companies like traxdata and tdk that I had to throw away after 2-3 years.

 

[NoCaDrummer]

FYI the point of 'cartridge distortion' is that as the arm moves across the album, the angle of the cartridge relative to the grooves is not constant. The longer the arm, the more parallel the cartridge will be with the groove over a larger portion of the album. Remember the short-lived record players that had arms the moved completely laterally? OK, maybe most folks don't...showing my age.

Well, I actually have the Rabco arm on an old AR turntable. And yes, they both work, although both were modified. (Yes, I used to design high-end audio equipment.)
You're right about the shifting angle of a pivoted tonearm - theoretical best is perpendicular to the radial line which passes through the stylus tip.) But having an ultra-long arm has its problems too. Far more mass means even minor warps can cause the cartridge either crashing into the album, or flying up out of the grooves, or both. And using a violin bow is absolute insanity - a bow is NOT intended to absorb resonances. In fact, it's likely to introduce them. Although I'm sure this is beautiful to look at, I'll keep my C cell-using Rabco, thank you very much. And I wouldn't pay over $41 for it.

 

[fwupow]

It's all about the portability and convenience. Most people don't own their own houses with custom home-theater/audio listening rooms and can't even turn up their stereos without getting evicted, so they go with pocket players and headphones/earbuds. For them, the increased audio quality of vinyl isn't worth the size and inconvenience penalty. If somebody will figure out how to record analog audio into storage mediums the size of an SD-memory card and fuss-free, shock-proof players the size of an iPod then we can all welcome back analog with open arms. Of course, I suspect that some of the "warmth" that people like about vinyl on turntables is attributable to the distortion and artifacts introduced by the imperfect needle to record interaction.

 

[johnnyq1233]

I used to have a connoisseur BD-2 table and Empire gold cartridge on it.... It was the sweatest sound I ever heard!!!
No digital will ever capture what a vinyl source has to offer, unless you can sample 20,000 samples per second....
The adjustable arm tension I beleive is for resonance control with various cartridges.
I used to have a "tangent traking" Kenwood too... that one was cool..but didn't like the Grado cartridge I put on it....lol
That said...only true audio files can appreciate the sound reproduction that a fine disk player can produce!!

 

[sublifer]

Doesn't even look like it would work very well. The needle's position at the tangent on each track would provide the torque to pop the needle out of position. Good idea, bad implementation.

He should have had the point of needle impact on the left hand side so it could drag through the needle without stressing the side of the needle/track.

 

[Guest]

A group of hifi fans made an experiment in Spain some time ago. Assuming that there were discenible differences between the CD and vinyl versions of same recordings, they made a digital recording of the vinyl itself, and then played it with the same amplifier/speaker system, switching the sources. To their surprise, they were not able to tell the difference between both sources. May be the heavy equalization used in the vinyl recording/playing process gives some of the warm quality so much appreciated by hifi enthusiasts. Unfortunately for me, I am unable to hear past about 4Khz and can not give a personal opinion on this.