All about Turntables - Part 2

Scott And KJ continue their discussion about the most important part of your home vinyl experience:  the Turntable.


Making a record of your own? Your music deserves the best.
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Music heard :
Artist - Freedy Johnston
Song -  Across the Avenue
listen on Spotify :  Across The Avenue 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Okay, I'm rolling. Give me a mark. Here we go. And Mark. Pretty cool. So hi everyone. This is Making Vinyl at MasterDisc, a podcast with Scott Hull. We're picking up where we left off on the last episode. I'm talking with my friend and colleague, KJ of the Odyssey. Hello, hello. Hey man. We ran out of time last time. We were talking about turntables and home use and consumers and all this sort of stuff. What what questions? What more questions do you have?

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Well, it's funny. I think we both assumed that it was going to be a one-episode subject matter, and it turns out we hardly got past cartridges. Um Welcome to my life. Seriously. Um, you know, hell, I could talk about gear till the cows come home. Um, so why don't we move uh why don't we move down the signal chain then? Um I remember that another thing that I had to be concerned with uh and that you helped me with was the stereo aspect of it. At the time I had a home theater set up, and um one of the things that I particularly realized was that it was so idiot-proof this thing that I just I couldn't really I couldn't really get a great sound out of it. I realized that it was just like too hip for the room. Um have you experienced that yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Home theater has a um uh a way of kind of falling into two categories. Um the super tweak where everything's adjustable and the and just about everything else where it's um intended to just like turn on out of the box and and that's what you get. Uh there's of course there's knobs and settings, but they don't do a heck of a lot, and they certainly aren't very customizable. And the the big, big, big, big, big issue is most of them don't have phono preamps built into them.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

That was the case with mine as well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah, so you'd have to get an external phono preamp. Not the end of the world. Some termtables even come with it. You can I think you can get this project or something like it with a phono output uh built into it. Um oh boy, I guess we're we're getting technical, so let's get technical. Get technical, baby. I love it when you get technical. There's a um there's an interesting pre-emphasis curve that's added when when we cut records. Uh this was invoked in the um um just as the LP was being developed, it was understood that bass frequencies used more space on the disc, and it was also understood that discs inherently are kind of noisy. 78s were really notice really noisy and it was very noticeable. So what they developed was a preemphasis curve called the R I A curve that that stands for the Recording Industry Association of America. It just happens that they were the one that endorsed this and uh and put their level of approval on this frequency spectrum filter. So what it does is when I cut the record, this filter enhances the top end a lot, like like 20 dB, which is a ton. It's like adding a huge amount of brightness. And it does exactly the opposite to the bass frequencies, it rolls all the bass off by like 20 dB, also a ton. So what I'm actually cutting to the disc is very, very, very, very bright, excessively bright, with the bass rolled off. Well, that doesn't sound like a very, very hi-fi or very slick, but what they build into the phono preamp on the consumer end is exactly the opposite. It restores the frequency response to exactly what was there before by cutting the top end at exactly the same amount as it was boosted, and by restoring the bass that was cut on the record side. Now you ask the Gotagas the question, why do they bother to do that? Well, there's two really main uh benefits. The boosting of the high frequencies causes the music to be brighter, but then after it's put on the disc and played back, um the record noise, the surface noise is added to that, and it but it's not been made brighter. The record noise is just record noise. When that filter lowers the high frequencies back down, it restores the audio to where it was supposed to be, but it reduces the noise floor by 20 dB. Yay, that's a great thing. Uh it's brilliant, actually. What a great idea. Um, so that's why an LP primarily, I mean, uh there's a couple other reasons, but primarily that's why an LP sounds so much quieter than a 78 did. 78's had some EQ, but nothing nearly as dramatic as the RIAA filter. And then on the bass, a brilliant stroke here, but by reducing all of the bass frequencies, the grooves don't have to get as wide as they would have. And uh as a result, they take up less space on the disc, so I can get more grooves on the record, which means I can get more music on the record. That's principally why 78s were only 10 minutes long, and LPs can be 20 minutes long, or you know, more or less. Gotcha. But the the reduction of the bass on the record side conserves real estate conserves a space on the disc so much that you can now get full frequency response on the disc where you couldn't achieve that before. Also, the fact that those big bass wavelengths move back and forth so much that actually you would have to design us a different cartridge for the the cartridge would have to be able to move back and forth so much more than it has to now. So then um, same way as before, when the disc is played back through the phono preamp, the bass is restored, and um the music goes right back to a flat frequency response, in and out equal is equal. Um, but we benefited by having all of that real estate uh added to the uh equation. There's one little caveat with the bass though, and I'm sure you all um have noticed this. If you're not careful with the placement of your turntable, if it's too close to the speakers, you get hum or rumble or bass feedback. It literally is the turntable um oscillating and resonating with the speakers. There's so much bass being added on playback that it creates feedback with your speakers.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

So Okay, so wait, I want to stop you there because this is this is a really interesting thing. And I I knew this conversation was going to reveal stuff that I had no idea about, but what you're telling us here is that you can really screw up the sound of your precious home listening rig just by having the speakers too close to the turntable.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Yeah, that's exactly right. Uh, the worst place in the world to put your turntable is on the same furniture that your speakers are sitting on. Um, you can isolate the speakers and you can isolate the turntable. There's all sorts of gadgets, urethane and membrane and vibration damping things that reduces the likelihood of of transmission of rumble. But bass also moves very pretty efficiently through the air. So even if your speakers are on a completely different set of furniture but are fairly close to the speakers, as soon as you turn it up, your base is going to get all muddy and and um ill-defined. And it won't really you won't really understand why, because when you turn on a CD or play a stream or play a digital file, your system will sound fine, but when you play back the vinyl, it'll sound kind of muddy. And it's it's hard to spot, but one of the things that you can tell you've got a feedback problem is if you can pull the covers off your speakers and actually look at the woofers while you're playing back like a silent groove, either at the end of the record or the beginning of the record. Oh, yeah. You'll see the vo cones really heavily vibrating in and out. And that's the sub frequencies, the low, the really ultra lows that are trying to feed back, but the speakers are not really able to reproduce it, but they keep trying. It's it's it just means there's a coupling problem between your turntable and the speakers. If you're really into your hi-fi and you notice that the records sound muddy, that is probably the issue. And buy some not the cheap foamy guys, but some of the more um substantial vibration isolators but made for turntables or or made for acoustic isolation. In my own room, yeah, even though my speakers are about fourteen feet away from my turntable, uh, I still have some mechanical coupling through the room, through the floor, through the furniture. And uh I have um isolation pucks on on a turntable that's already has very, very, very good isolation specs. But uh but the addition of the pucks um help cut down on the mechanical connection.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

And is it the case that uh higher-end turntables that are more sensitive um are more prone to this issue?

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Well, if you spend enough money, then they've also put more design and uh design factors um into reducing the feedback. One of the things that's really important is making sure that there's as little motor rumble as possible getting into the turntable because that motor rumble is also amplified by the um by the RIAA filter on playback. So, you know, you might wonder why you're spending so much money for a very high-tech motor and high-tech suspension system. But in fact, it it actually most of it goes back to the fact that the RIAA filter boosts the bottom end so much that it makes all of these other issues something that you have to watch out for.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Right. So sometimes you're paying extra for a great turntable, not necessarily, not just because it sounds better, but also because it simply operates better and therefore produces less of what you don't want.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Yeah, everything that you hear that wasn't intended, you know, is a distortion. If you want to take the if you want to take that meaning sort of literally, if it's if there's too much bass, it's that's a distortion of the of the original. Think of it as like looking at a photograph with a filter on it. You know, for a certain photo, that might really enhance the creative impact or your your joy of for of looking at that photo might really improve. But if you put that filter on everything, um, there's going to be some music where that that color, or some, in this case visual, sometimes with that color just isn't gonna work and it's gonna really detract. So, yeah, the uh as you get more expensive turntables, you have better rumble and better isolation specs, you have better motors and motor systems that don't uh put as much rumble in. You have um turntables and platters that are made of specific materials that are intended to not resonate at lower frequencies. And you also have tone arms that are made of higher tech um components that either um are so solid that they won't vibrate, um they're stiff, but they still will comply to lower frequencies so that there's better specs. Um Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

The one that I got uh again on your recommendation has a carbon fiber tone arm, and Project was very proud of saying that.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

It's um it's moving, it's it's mass, and it's the total mass that you're worried about. You could balance a heavy tone arm, but it picks up resonances. Once it gets moving, it's going to ring or resonate. Now, some of these things are inaudible, some of these things are very audible. It really depends on the audience and depends on how revealing your music is that you're listening to, and and honestly, it depends on how perceptive, uh, how critical of listener you are. What I call sort of the the young enthusiasts of playback system. It's it's a it's a turntable that's good enough to reveal what's on the record, and also good enough to reveal what's what's bad about some records. It's not just to make everything sound good, it's to it's it's accuracy, is what really what the goal is.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Um I wanted to uh just back up a moment because um just a minute ago you opened up the the door to a conversation about um about the drive mechanism. Um and I know that there are there is a choice um between uh belt-driven and direct drive. Uh can you talk about that a little bit? And also can you um satisfy my curiosity? Does it make a difference to the sound that I'm hearing?

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Um it's all about what we just talked about. It well, as presumably the motor is going to run on speed and the speed control system is is accurate enough to keep it on speed, um, then the difference between the two drive systems is literally a difference in transmitted noise from the motor to the platter. There's good reason to be positive about both styles because at the upper end of the upper echelon, there are really good examples of both. Belt driven and uh direct drive. Uh classically, the direct drive turntables were the um quintessential, were the were the most expensive and most design conscious uh turntables. But there have been some really well presented uh belt drive systems where the motor is actually removed from the mechanism of the platter. So there's a turntable, literally a box with a spindle and a turntable on top of it. You know, think like lazy Susan, like a disc that rotates on top, and then a belt that goes off to a separate box that is physically isolated from the turntable, and that houses the motor, and a larger belt goes around the two. Um, it looks a little bit like a science project, but it um those can have really good results. What I usually tell people is it's almost always directly proportional to how much money you're gonna spend. The results that you get in turntable land are really there's a few brands and there's a few times when it's smoking mirrors and you're buying, you know, because it's got an expensive label on it. But by and large, these days, if you go up a few hundred dollars in turntable price, uh total price, you're going to get some better specs. And if you go up another three hundred dollars, you're gonna get some better specs. And as uh as you get to the point of wondering, hmm, is that the best I can do? And you get an opportunity to compare something like your turntable to something that's an upgraded model, yeah, you do you do really hear it. It's the question is whether it's worth the additional funds and how much more enjoyment are you gonna get out of it? For many, it's a it's a hobby, a sort of an endless evolution of um fiddling with the stylus and the cartridge and the tone arms and the turntables and the mechanisms that they might amass several different turntables that they might even use for different types of listening environments or different different types of music. None of that should get in your way of enjoying your record collection, though, as long as the the turntable is of a reasonably good quality so that it's not damaging your records uh unnecessarily as you're playing them. So that's why that you know about $400 turntable was what I consider to be a good stepping off place, a good place to to go, so that if you did get into record collection and somebody did buy you a a uh a really nice box set that you intended to keep forever, you wouldn't feel like you couldn't play it on your on a turntable with a rusty needle, a rusty nail as a needle.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Yeah, I think though that would be the biggest shame of all. I probably know I remember you know sort of psyching myself up for this adventure in vinyl and and kind of promising myself that I wasn't going to be too precious about it. I didn't want to be stressed out about playing a record and it eventually turning to, you know, to dust. I just I I promised myself that I would just play my music and enjoy it and enjoy the process of owning these records.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

I think that there's people that can really find themselves in both camps. Um I'm I tend to be of the practical side, I have music around me all the time. So it's it's almost hard to be really precious about it because tomorrow there's another artist, another record, another deadline, uh, another sonic problem, another pressing plant with, you know, um test pressing evaluations and stuff. So it's it's hard to be super, super precious. Um as I continue to produce music of my own creation. I think that those I I might have find myself caring for those pressings uh in a little different manner. But it's not a priceless commodity. These are mass generally mass-produced. I think the artists, the producers, and the labels when put these things out for people to play and enjoy. You know, you can buy a an amazing, you know, pastry or confection that looks amazing, but it's really meant to be eaten. Right. It's a good analogy. So it gets consumed through the process of enjoying it. And but frankly, um, with a good turntable and just a reasonable amount of care, you really won't see wholesale degradation of your vinyl collection until you start loaning your records out. Then then you have to start worrying. Then you have to start worrying about it. One, you have to worry about getting the back. And it's not, and this isn't like you know, sharing music over the internet, you know, where you put up a song and everybody can play it. You know, sharing your music with a friend or neighbor or fellow uh vinyl uh lover is great, but you do have to remember where you where your records are. Sometimes they don't come back.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Let me ask you a question that first involves me explaining very briefly why I basically threw my Sony uh home theater receiver out the window. Um it after painstakingly going through all the billions and billions of levels of um of controls inside this system, and I mean they have an on-screen menu like hooked up to my TV, and I'm trying desperately to get like a halfway decent sound out of you know from my new turntable. And it came to me, as I said before, that this thing was just way too hip for the room. There were so many settings, I could have it in a German concert hall or in an exact um uh you know, the a replica of the where the London Philharmonic plays or a jazz club, and this and that and whatever. Flat wasn't wasn't happening. I was forced into these things and I was just so frustrated. I just wanted to hear what the artist intended. My question is have you run into this issue before and what do you do about it?

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Well, the producer's intention, the artist's intention, was for it to be played back, you know, in a reasonably high quality turntable through a minimal path directly to the speakers. Um that's what we listened to when we made it, and that's how we made the judgments about well, is it bright enough? Is it loud enough? Is it other drums good, or the is the panning good? All of those creative decisions are made in an environment that's similar to what I just described. Turntable, phono preamp, amplifier, speakers. The inclusion of any other processing uh just takes you further away from the intended result. Yeah. It's a little old school, it's a it's a little old-fashioned compared to the way things are are built. It actually makes you have to think a little bit and how to integrate the uh turntable into a surround or a soundscape kind of listening system. I'm thinking of like a a Bose home entertainment system or um, you know, the in-home multiple speaker, you know, Bluetooth kind of scenarios that are really popular. Um so those speakers and that the theater system are really intended to play back, you know, entertainment audio correlated to video or correlated to action um on you know your games. Um when you're playing back a turntable, it's uh it's not correlated to anything, it is the entertainment. Right. And you can sort of posterize, you can sort of uh doll up the the audio and improve the impression when it's correlated to the video. But if you did the same thing to the video, you wouldn't be enjoying it. Yeah, it's either the the entertainment there is the is the video. And if you like made it all sparkly and bright and changed the contrast and and did all other sorts of you know video effects to it, it would not be what the television producer or the video producer or the film producer intended for you to see.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Absolutely. That was my frustration. I I felt like I was always listening to it through somebody else's idea of what it was supposed to be, and I really didn't trust their taste.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

The two environments are really separate. And I I'm consulting with a fellow that has a really elaborate home entertainment rig, but he's also a devout hi-fi and vinyl guy. And um he's having the exact same problem. It's like he's gonna take the expensive route, um, because it's really the only way to do it properly, and that's have one set of speakers for his surround and his television, and a different pair of speakers for his home uh vinyl and stereophile playback. Right. Um, there's some other subtle reasons why this doesn't work so well. Your home theater is generally set up with um smaller speakers with a subwoofer, a centralized subwoofer. And you can get good stereophonic sound out of them, but it takes some work. You know, it's just another remote and you're fumbling with all the different settings. Your frustration is is is you know well documented, but that's that's that's what everyone you know have has issues with. Same same with me at home when I want to try to play something. It's like I can't get the home theater stuff shut off. I I really need to just have a separate pair of stereo speakers and an amplifier and a preamp. And that's the way that I listen to music when I'm listening to just music.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

So let me tell you what I did and you tell me if I shot myself in the foot or if you think I did the right thing. Being a musician I have access to studio gear. It's it's everywhere much to my wife's chagrin. It's the the apartment is littered with it. So what I ended up doing out of frustration was I put the Sony thing and the speakers on the fire escape and pushed them off the edge of the building and I took a pair of studio monitors an extra mixer and my studio monitors are powered and I put them in the living room and in an effort to get the pure sound of the record that I was looking for I just cut out the middleman and went sort of pro audio with it.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Yeah oh well it works as long as you've got a good phono preamp. You've got to get so this what we talked about the RIAA curve that's built into the phono preamp. Back in the day not that many generations ago but back in the day receivers or integrated amplifiers and receivers was the way you solved this problem. And the receiver was kind of like your multimedia central switching station that you have today but it had phono inputs it had tape machine inputs for cassette and for reel to reel and it had a tuner input and it had other line level inputs but most importantly for our discussion it had a phono input and that was specifically designed to take a turntable signal in and then tilt the frequency response with the RAA curve and then amplify the signal up to line level so that it could then go through the rest of the amplification stage to your speakers. So your method there works fine with the only pause or concern is that you're adding some noise to the picture um by introducing a multi-channel mixer. Right okay so if you have all the faders down except the two that you're listening to your turntable on it's probably not too much but the smaller format mixers tend to be a little bit noisier than a than an integrated amplifier would be and I'm just talking about HISS just the sound just the sound of of of the device some much better than others. I would recommend a different setup unless you happen to have gear like that sitting around and that was your reason for choosing that that option I suspect it sounded pretty good. I suspect that there's using the studio monitors probably sounded great.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

I was pretty happy with it yeah absolutely I mean I in comparison to the other thing that I was so incredibly frustrated by it was just incredible. I mean it was an enlightening experience and I feel you know as discussed I feel like I finally understand what the artist and the producer and the mastering engineer intended me to to hear. And just to complete the picture I did actually get a photo preamp. It turns out that Project makes one as well and Amazon was nice enough to send it to me the very next day.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

They're good about that.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

They are so my so let me ask you a pointed question here which is let's say that that um one of our listeners today is is is having the same frustrations that I had but isn't necessarily a professional musician and doesn't necessarily want to go out and buy pro audio gear. Is there a likewise solution um that you can suggest or what what would you suggest for that for that kind of person?

SPEAKER_01 25:46

I would suggest going kind of old school but it it opens up this enormous question of what's a good set of speakers. And my gosh that's even if you're that's going to be next episode if you're even if you're just talking to one person that's a two hour discussion and you get a room full of people talking about what's the best speakers you get well what I usually say if you ask three people you're going to get five different answers. Because it's uh it really and even the word depends depends. It depends on so many things um most of the of the time it's whatever the person has gotten used to listening to so if if if you do have some some studio experience um uh with Fostex or Yamaha or Janilec or Focal or B and K or uh you know um the endless list. Now if you don't have a particular preference then you're gonna have to go to IFI store you're gonna have to let them help you figure out what you need. All studio monitors are great in an apartment setting. You start with the conclusion that they're intended to be pretty full range and they're intended to be not terribly hyped in the top end or bottom end. They're they're meant to be a working reference for the engineer. So they're a pretty good place to start. Powered speakers are interesting in that they've got the amplifiers already built into them so then you just need a line level signal. There's one very interesting and very elegant solution that even old Hi-fi folks not that like unlike myself would actually be proud of there is a device uh that was made that was called a preamp. Its point was to interface all of your equipment up to your amplifier. It had a volume control and it had input select switches for phono and tape and tuner and stuff like that. This is when when stereos went to separate this was from the 50s through the 70s and in the 60s and 70s they started to integrate all of those components into one thing and called it a receiver or an integrated amplifier where they integrated the pre-amplifier into the amplifier and it was one unit. Many of the receivers are quite good. That's a decent approach if if you don't have powered speakers if you're going to use a a passive speakers speakers that don't have don't have their own amplifiers. You can still get and I probably still manufacture a classic preamp because all you need is a level control to feed out of your preamp then into your powered speakers. The weak link with what you have set up now is your mixer in my opinion even though it's very versatile it's going through electronics that you really don't need it to be going through. Right. The the equ equipment to uh equalize and equipment to pan and the the faders and then the mixing bus part of it. If you went into your mixer and went straight back out a line output then you're minimizing the circuit path quite a bit might be quieter might be an interesting way of doing solving solving that problem if if it's just a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. I'm not I'm not sure if your mixer was quiet enough it wouldn't be a problem. So there's there's two solutions. One um to answer your question is either a receiver uh so that you could use either powered speakers or uh passive speakers or a preamplifier which would be a really neat mate between your turntable and your powered speakers and in which case um a high end preamp usually included a really good phono preamp in there so that would literally be you could have just a turntable preamp and powered speakers and that would be your your vinyl listening setup. Which sounds delightfully pure and uh well short short signal path will produce the most accurate results assuming that you know you've got speakers that can handle it and you've got a turntable that can handle it. Almost anything else that we put in the chain will solve one problem but probably create at least one other problem as a result. Yeah to scratch the speaker surface um uh scratch the question of you know what makes a good speaker um it's usually the brand that the that this the hi-fi dealer is gonna make the most money on markup that's usually the one that you can that they will we will really make sure you really appreciate how that sounds and I we all have jobs to do I don't even they may even be trying really hard to be to be uh you know sincere but um you know the dealer's got to choose one brand over another and the one that's gonna make them more money is is going to be one that's gonna figure high on the list. I don't know whether this is a place where you could really ask the the hive mind and get a reasonable answer. Whenever someone uh uh posts a sort of a a newbie question uh on one of the engineering boards like what speakers should I be using for my home recording rig? You know the responses are all over the place everything from a $300 kind of entry level kind of not so great speakers you know up to $10,000 speakers. And so it's not a very purposeful question if you don't um add the additional information like what's a great speaker to replace my focals and I don't think I can spend more than $2,500. So now so now we got some guardrails we we we can qualify our commentary you know much better and and make better recommendations. In that particular case I would ask well what's wrong with the focals which models do you have are there the smaller ones the big ones do you have a is it a room issue does it sound you do you know whether or do you think it's because of the dimensions of your room that are causing the problem or can you even tell and yada yada yada speakers are the hardest part of the whole thing and it's very personal.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

I imagine so well as we are at the end of the episode I think we should uh have a full discussion about the rest of the signal chain starting next episode um uh because speakers is gonna take up a whole one I I have a feeling um but in the meantime I'll say that if you guys uh have any uh particular questions um specifically that you'd like Scott to talk about on on a future episode definitely hit uh hit up Scott and the and the MasterDisc team um social media you know um Instagram Facebook Twitter whatever whatever floats your boat or go to masterdisc.com and uh hit them up directly and you know let us know your questions or um tell Scott what you know your frustrations uh you know with your home theater rig and um and maybe he'll have a good solution for you like he did for me.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Yeah yeah I encourage everyone to reach out and uh tell us if you're liking the podcast and uh if you'd like to help us steer it in another direction let us know. And there we go a uh another making vinyl at MasterDisc podcast uh with my host KJ from the Odyssey. Goodbye everybody and we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Alright