turntable

You might think turntables have an easy job: just spin the platter supporting the record. Hold on, spinning at exactly thirty-three and a third revolutions per minute, without the slightest variance and flutter is a surprisingly difficult task to pull off.

Remember, too that the phono cartridge's stylus tracing the LP's groove is a remarkably sensitive device; it "reads" groove wiggles that can be smaller than a wavelength of light. But the stylus tracing the groove can't distinguish between groove wiggles and other vibrations, such as those from the turntable's extraneous motor noise, or the sound coming out of the speakers in the room with the turntable. The bearing the platter rests upon, and the tonearm's bearings also make noise, which are also picked up by the stylus.

A perfect turntable's platter would spin at the exact right speed; its motor and bearings would produce absolutely no noise, and the turntable/platter system would be completely isolated from its environment. No such turntable exists, but high-end turntables get a lot closer to that ideal than budget contenders.

That's why the very best turntables seem quite a bit quieter than lesser turntables; they produce less rumble and groove noise, and clicks and pops seem less intrusive. Cheap, poorly designed turntables exacerbate groove noise and tend to sound screechy. Most budget 'tables have limited bass power and poor bass definition. … Read more

You don't see the phrase "world-class" associated with American-made consumer goods. TVs, iPods, computers, and cameras are mostly designed and built in other countries. The U.S. may be the world's leading consumer state; we just don't make the very best products here anymore.

High-end audio may be one of the few remaining industries where America still designs and builds the very best products. I'm proposing an all-American hi-fi system that could be installed in the White House. It would be the sort of hi-fi the president could, after a hard day's work … Read more

The Crosley brand is known for creating vintage-styled radio and stereos with modern day features, such as CD players and USB connections. Typically, its designs hearken back to the '50s, complete with wood grain paneling, oversized knobs, and the golden glow of an analog radio dial.

With its latest USB turntable, the Crosley Revolution, the brand turns its retro sensibilities to the '80s, reviving a portable turntable design from the Walkman era.

Specifically, the Crosley Revolution looks like a spitting image of the Audio Technica Sound Burger, a unique portable turntable from the early '80s that has become something of a collector's item … Read more

Denon will commemorate 100 years of audio innovation with its Anniversary Product Collection offerings.

One might wonder what an electronics company built in 1910, but I never really got a definitive answer at the media event held at the D&M Holdings (Denon's parent company) headquarters in Mahwah, N.J., last Thursday. True, there was some mention of the introduction of Japan's first phonograph (turntable) in 1910, but no one gave any specific information. According to Denon, it was honored to produce the very first audio recording of Japan's Emperor Hirohito's voice at the close of World War II in 1945.

Actually, the biggest surprise of the event, at least for me, was learning that Denon was founded by an American entrepreneur Frederick Whitney Horn. With Denon, he started Japan's first audio company; apparently, globalization isn't a new idea.

Denon focused most of its media event on presenting its Anniversary Product Collection's offerings, which include new amplifiers, SACD/CD and Blu-ray players, a direct-drive turntable, phono cartridge, and headphones. All of the products, except the phono cartridge and headphone, share the same $2,499 MSRP; the phono cartridge and headphone are $499 each. The Anniversary Product Collection models are limited editions and will be sold at 40 specially selected dealers in the United States starting in November. They will all be sold with five-year warranties. … Read more

When Theo Braakman was 12 years old, he got a turntable "just to demolish," but he was so fascinated by the machine's inner workings he spared the turntable's life. He put a mirror under it to get a better view of the automatic record changing mechanism's gears, belts, and levers that lifted the tonearm and the end of a record side, moved the arm to the rest position, dropped another record to play, and gently lowered the "needle" into the grooves. Braakman played records on that first turntable until he fully understood how the mechanism worked. But that just led to more turntables!

Theo and his wife recently celebrated their 25th anniversary. Braakman told me his wife had one request when they first got married: she wanted him to limit his collecting habit to only one kind of collectible, and the choices were typewriters, tape recorders, or turntables. Braakman now has more than 230 turntables, and lives in the Netherlands.

Some work, some do not. Braakman tries to restore them as much as he can, but parts are hard to find, especially for the really old ones. If during restoration he discovers a vital part is defective or missing, he'll try to find a matching model to cannibalize for parts. That's why he doesn't usually start a serious restoration until he has at least two of the same model. However, some models are so rare it can take years to find another one.

Judging by the photos on Brakkman's Web site, he does superb work. These machines may look simple on the outside, but their intricate mechanisms are something to see. Braakman's clear photography documents many of the turntables' insides and their exterior beauty. I've included just a few here, but there's a lot more on his Web site. You can see the turntables playing records on Braakman's YouTube pages.

Braakman's collection focuses on specific brands that manufactured automatic machines and record changers. I see a lot of familiar names like Dual, Garrard, Thorens, and Philips among brands I've never heard of, such as Luxor, Jobo, and Perpetuum-Ebner. Most of the turntables are stored outside his house, along with his large collection of 78-rpm records.

He's not an audiophile. I gather it's not the vintage sound that interests Braakman; it's the technology. When I asked if there's an end point to his collecting he said he would like to find just the right Thorens TD124 Mark I from 1957. It's an audiophile turntable classic, and Mark IIs, from a decade later are easier to find.

If you have an exceptional hi-fi collection, tell us all about it in the comments section. TVs from the 1940s or 1950s? Share the news with us.

More turntable photos after the jump.… Read more

I love records and turntables. I dig the sound, and at its best, analog music is more fun, engaging, joyful, and groovy than digital (MP3, PCM, WAV, FLAC, etc.) ever is. It's not even close.

I say let analog be analog, but if you need to convert analog grooves to digital zeros and ones for convenience sake, sure, why not? But you're cheating yourself out of most of the experience. USB turntables are generally pretty lousy turntables, and I question how many vinyl newbies listen to these things and wonder what all the fuss is about. The cheap … Read more

This poll was inspired by David Carnoy's recent blog asking, "How long should your iPhone last?" Seventy percent of the respondents polled said phones should last two to three years, but 45 percent said two years, so nearly half of all buyers are happy with two-year lifespans. Most folks buy new phones because they break them, lose them, or they want a new one with features the old one didn't have.

Hi-fi systems--or at least the speakers, turntable, and amplifier parts of those systems--should last a good deal longer, figure 10 to 20 years. CD players … Read more

Times are tough, and even tougher for the music business, but that didn't stop Jeff Ogiba and Sommer Foster-Santoro from opening a new record store, Black Gold.

It's in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and I dropped by on Thursday to see how they were doing. Black Gold also sells freshly brewed coffee from Rook Coffee Roasters and baked goods from Scratchbread, so the shop has great ambiance. The vinyl selection covers rock, punk, hard-core, blues, jazz, hip-hop, and everything in between. Prices seem very fair, and I spotted one of my favorite Rolling Stones LPs, "Love You Live,&… Read more

Every sound you hear in real life that doesn't come out of a speaker is analog. Analog audio is, simply put, an analogous record of sound, and an LP's groove is a literal imprint of the music's soundwaves. Analog magnetic tape is just as analog, but the waveform is recorded to the orientations of the iron oxide particles bonded to the tape. Tape or LP, analog recordings store audio signals as a continuous wave in or on the media and therefore have theoretically infinite resolution.

Digital audio recording converts the original sound into a sequence of numbers; sampled to convert the analog signal to a digital representation. Sampling is the division of the signal into discrete intervals (CD's sample rate is 44.1 thousands of samples per second). CDs have a 16-bit resolution and DVD-Audio discs can be encoded with a maximum of 24-bit resolution. DVD-A's have greater bit depth results in finer gradations of sound compared with CDs and MP3s, and is subjectively on par with analog recordings. Analog-to-digital processing is performed by a converter in the recording studio; and must be converted from digital-to-analog to be listened to.

If I lost you with all that talk about sampling and conversions, let's just say the prime difference between analog and digital is that analog recordings are continuous in time, and digital is sampled at distinct intervals. What happens between samples? Not much. Analog is always "on," digital is either on or off. Analog recording's theoretically infinite resolution refers to its continuity, compared with digital's on/off sampled nature.

If digital audio sounds a lot more complicated than analog, that's because it is. But digital recording offers very significant advantages over analog recording; it has inherently lower noise, perfect duplication capabilities, and superior speed accuracy (lower wow and flutter).

Most of the digital audio advances since the early days in the 1970s come from today's superior A/D and D/A converters. Digital audio has never sounded better than it does now.

The same can be said about analog: the best LPs, played back on a good turntable sound more like real, live music played by human beings than digital recordings ever do. That's my subjective opinion. On a more objective basis I'd say digital eliminates, or lowers analog-type distortions (noise, speed variations, and so on), but it suffers from far from perfect analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion processes. To many, but not all, audiophiles and recording engineers, the best digital still sounds sterile, cold, and lacks natural warmth.… Read more