Sound Quality Vs. Measurements

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The weird thing is despite being the same they aren't. Beatrix foods that bought Ortofon were fed up ( yep ) with variability. They found out that they needed a resident rubber expert. They rented him out to companies who already knew him so had him nearly free of charge. I notice the quality control was 100 % from then on. Food industry standards that worked. Mostly compliance sets the sound then stylus type followed by cantilever design. Rake and all that along with cantilever length-rigidity.

The DL 110 has a double cantilever wall and 45 kHz upper frequency response . 8 cu 1.6 mV and 160 R coils. It sounds in my set up worth 4 times it's price. I bet 90% will never know how it sounds as they will never have the pre amp it needs. By pure chance the old dog Quad 33 suits it. Now that is a miracle. For the Quad that is walking on water. Falling in love with a Quad 33 303 is like marrying your house keeper.. It shouldn't be loves young dream but it works. M1 setting that overloads at 40 mV 1 kHz and by implication 4 mV 20 kHz. No evidence it is overloading except it likes worn records less than things I built myself.
 
This is a turntable I had on loan with a pair of DQ10 speakers. The problem was it had no technical support in the UK. Hard to say if it was as good as it looked. Somehow to me it didn't work. Sounding like an AR. Nearly all that came later it seemed to have already. I suspect the chassis design was not quite right. Loved the arm although had doubts the designer had many cartridges outside of their designs to play with. It seemed fussy. Certainly an unsung hero.

Empire 598 Troubador Manual - Classic Belt-Drive Transcription Turntable - Vinyl Engine
 
This is a turntable I had on loan with a pair of DQ10 speakers. The problem was it had no technical support in the UK. Hard to say if it was as good as it looked. Somehow to me it didn't work. Sounding like an AR.

I owned one for a couple of years. The AR (except for the arm) was miles better, especially for vibration and foot-fall immunity. Re-arming the AR (I used a Mayware F4 and a Grace 707 at various times) took it into another quality level.
 
Another confession and one I am proud of. The waiting list for Rega turntables was at least 3 months. As we were the only dealers for 60 miles it brought many people who would never have visited me otherwise. I have quite a nice house which I guess is 70% down to Rega. The TD160 was a valiant attempt to beat a Rega Planar 3 . Even though I had to match discount prices and set them up properly we did well out of it. Everyone we switch sold a Thorens made the waiting list less. My boss would also give preference to anyone buying a system. By freeing up P3 it made me feel less commercial when selling. I doubt any Linn Rega dealer also sold what we did. It wasn't always well liked.

You might remember we didn't have Linn for some years due to local politics. On visiting Julian Vereker listened and said instantly he didn't like the Rega. He tried the Thorens and said he had no problem with it. He made a phone call to Linn and stock arrived the next day. To rub salt into the wounds I had to ask Roy Gandy how to set up the Linn when RB200. That combination with the old Lustre arm was sensational. The Lustre was much better than RB300 in terms of what was called musicality. Simon who worked for Rega thought so also. I never lost my love of the TD160 and I feel I was the one salesman in history to do the right switch sale. My motives were complex and profit was small. We learned where I worked to sell anything is good. How much we made was not the most important thing.

I wasn't a salesman really. I would do it if someone asked. My helpers did it mostly. I was 100% of the time doing something with spanners or soldering.
 
I owned one for a couple of years. The AR (except for the arm) was miles better, especially for vibration and foot-fall immunity. Re-arming the AR (I used a Mayware F4 and a Grace 707 at various times) took it into another quality level.

The AR arm is better than people think. If you said better than my Ekos I wouldn't say no. I doubt it is better and doubt it much worse. It was very much like broadcast arms.

Mayware was very interesting. A bit of Blu Tack to stop the mass adjuster vibrating.

The thing to say is gradually over the years low compliance cartridges have been made to track. An old ECM record I have would launch some out of the groove. Coral 777EX for example. As the low compliance designs became survival of the fittest the AR arm seems less challenged. The Grace 707 in some circumstances a harder to place arm . I have never tried AR + DL110. With enough mass I suspect it will be OK. Bias compensation might be a problem with some PU. Grado's were offset to suit AR. On a Rega I set them with about 0.5g correction of bias. The now ones I believe have dropped that? Joe and Ed were great friends. The wood body Grado's sound excellent to me and suit SME 5 well.
 
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More fun with numbers

Pi power 2.7 = 21.994022057896
Pi power 1.7 = 7.0009145579726

Pi^2.7/Pi^1.7 =Pi.

That was my deception of earlier. It is simply because the power is exactly 1 different that gets the result and not the close approximation to Archimedes 22/7.

Pi power 4.7 = 217.07229690026
Pi power 1.7 = 7.0009145579726

Pi^4.7/Pi^1.7 =Pi^3. =31.0062766803
Pi^999/Pi^996 =Pi^3. =31.0062766803

P^3 = 31 +0.02% Just think if Pi^3 was 31 it would be just as intriguing as it would be use of a prime. 3.141380652391 if so. 22/7 is 3.1428571428571. I wonder if some thought cube root 31 more correct? I doubt it as the celestial bodies were not going to be using prime numbers. They more likely would think only 22/7 correct and anything else a measuring error. Could we learn from that?
 
The thing to say is gradually over the years low compliance cartridges have been made to track.

At the time (and this was many years ago!), I was using things like Shure V15-3, ADC XLM, Grado G1+... they needed something rigid but light. When I inherited a Decca 4RC from a buddy who was a Stereophile reviewer, those arms weren't really the right thing to use; an old Weathers took their place. Wonderful unit, silicone damped and fabricated from walnut. My room-mate from that time still has that table and arm.
 
Spot on Max.

Show us your LP12!

At last a genuine Ariston RD11. Some say Hamish Robertson designed the RD11. This would be like saying Honda designed the CB750 and ignore their racing nemesis MV Augusta, Gilera et al.

I had the RD11S model, with one power switch and rubber rings on the platter instead of a mat, as I recall.
The suspension could never work quite as well as it should have, since the left spring had to be excessively
tightened to get the suspension level.
 
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Inertia enhancing poppers for long term (audio) raving

I tot : 0.04 kgm2
(All-day birthday celebration, brunch, dinner, just home ten minutes, Now, let's see, where did I leave the amyl-nitrite and the XTC ?)


Thank you Her Professor Jacco.
In all three iterations I used the wrong equation. (x axis instead of z axis).
Stupidity is the only aspect of me that doesn’t seem to diminish with age.
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My testing says that optimizing platter mat for noise/vibration isolation, worsens the precise transcription of the recorded music. A compliant mat can cause the equivalent acoustic effect of a compliant driving belt.

If noise isolation is not one of the problems to fight against, no mat is the best mat. Next best is a very thin mat. In the same direction, record clamp or weight is IMO a must.

The acoustic impedance transition matching mat idea of SY is interesting. But I find it difficult to evaluate the effect of matching impedances in isolation from the effects caused from other mat physical properties.
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The TT enclosure acoustic effect on suspended TTs is a reality. I don’t like to tune it.
I try to minimize any resonance effect .
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When I was young, with some friends we run a test on some spring suspension TTs to see which one was more immune to acoustic –via air-feedback. Speakers over pillows on the concrete floor, 1m away from and facing the TT. Opinion made from real-time audition and later play back from a cassette (via tape-out) event recording.
Winners: 1) Empire 598, 2) B&O Beogram 1500, 3) Phillips either 208 or 312 I don’t remember, 4) AR XA, and below these the Thorens TD166, TD 160, Ariston RD11, Dual 503. (all lids were raised)

George
 
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If Pi^N was any integer then Pi would be far less interesting, as it would no longer be a transcendental number.

What could be more interesting than the ratio of circumference of a perfect circle to its diameter being this particular value. A lot of those x times x to the y power almost equals z are simply coincidental artifices of one particular mathematical convention or another.
 
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diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
Hi,

To Nigel et all,

Apologies for the late intervention, been moving places.

Most parallel tracking arms I have used are disappointing

That may well be due to the fact that the energy transfer is distributed along the length of the beam. IOW it is dispersed.

It has everything to do with mechanical impedance matching. A very simple but very effective way of dealing with unwanted energy loops.

This is also why uni-pivots are preferred in general but are so difficult to execute correctly in a tone-arm. Almost impossible.
A very simple solution to the uni-pivot's tendency to lose balance is to use an uneven number of bearings and load these in such a way that one is highly loaded and the others are hardly loaded. Just without chatter.

Apply this principle throughout every single component in the chain of reproduction and hear the magic.

Especially for you Nigel: This is the stuff Jimmy Hughes, Tom Fletcher and myself discussed a long, long time ago. This is what's in the engineering book I sent to Tom and is exactly what Goldmund (Read the Levy Brothers) applied in their top notch product.
In essence you could call it the application of the mechanical equivalent of a diode.
It's all about getting rid of unwanted energy, from acoustic feedback to self-resonance, etc. be that through careful choice of materials, (materials have their impedances) through the tightening of a screw, mass as an energy sink or extremely light but rigid material (aerolam, light wood) etc, etc.

For the same reason, Jean-Constant Verdier wanted magnetic levitation only to spare his bearing. He still wants a single contact bearing point to be present though.

Anyway, whenever I see a TT I see the flaws at a single glance. There's still so much that can be improved just be applying simple physics....

Cheers, ;)
 
diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
Hi,

My testing says that optimizing platter mat for noise/vibration isolation, worsens the precise transcription of the recorded music. A compliant mat can cause the equivalent acoustic effect of a compliant driving belt.

Correct.
An overly damping mat is like trying to write a letter on a pillow. It won't be easy to be precise.
A belt driven TT is far more complex in that it also involve the motor.
If the motor is vibrationless then there's no need for a compliant belt...

Yet having the motor vibrationless will obviously shift the problem elsewhere and that's what TT design is all about.

Cheers, ;)
 
aspect of me that doesn’t seem to diminish with age.

Yesterday, I carried a 6ft high integrated fridge-freezer up a twirling staircase to the 1st floor, like the one in the picture, with walls around it.
1 inch clearance on 4 sides, one man job, and I was the only one able to pull it off.

Birthday present for a 1st year history student at Leiden university, moved to his room a month ago.
(right above a barbershop, staircase in the back of the shop, moving stuff only on sundays when the shop is closed)
I drove it over, an hour by car, was also the one who bought the thing.
How smart is that, Prof. Papageorgiou ?

(been reading the Aristotélēs book you posted since last friday, good reminder of how smart some people were hundred years ago, or much much earlier. According to the writing on page three, it should have been returned to the university before 1897)
 

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diyAudio Senior Member
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Hi,

Scott, there are dozens of engineering books about mechanical diodes out there.
I realize it's not your field but it's real.
What it means is that with careful impedance (mechanical) matching energy is drained from one point and impeded from returning to that point.

It's the same principle that makes spikes under speakers/stands work etc.
The same works for materials in general.
Granted the analogy may seem a tad off the wall at first but as a descriptive means it's quite fair.

Cheers, ;)
 
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