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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2017 13:25:43 GMT
My visit to Bristol show this year did give me some pointer as to a price point for really satisfying vinyl. The new Planar 3 with the new Rega budget MC and Fono MC would come in around £1500 total similarly a Michell Tecnodec with MC/MM and Dino around the same. The Tecnodec is easily equal to older Gyros and the P3 is a whole new sound level for their products in this price range. That is about equal in cost to a mid market CD player or Dac/Streamer. Or 7-8 times the cost of Raspberry Pi streaming setup that will outdo the £1500 vinyl, cd or DAC/Streamer setup😉 Even if that were true, Pi is essentially DiY computer hobbyist stuff.
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Post by John on Mar 20, 2017 14:14:17 GMT
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Post by julesd68 on Mar 20, 2017 14:23:44 GMT
The Source sounded great the one time I heard it (late 80's?). Certainly I got the impression it outdid an LP12. it was quite expensive at the time and frankly would expect it to better something around £1500 incl arm cartridge and phono stage. Double that at today's prices and you will get something better but likely not by much. At shows I can't usually tell much difference between a £5K vinyl front end and a £20K one in sound. Most of the price difference is likely heavy build and luxury finish. Yes at the time it was much more expensive than the LP12 - it was around 1K without arm and cart which is perhaps one reason why it didn't sell in better numbers. That's well over 3K in today's money taking inflation into account and nothing else. I dread to think what it would cost nowadays if it came to the market in a new guise .... I completely agree with your comments about vinyl at shows - it's very difficult to form any opinion about a deck at a show as none of them have the same partnering equipment as I found out yesterday.
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Post by The Brookmeister on Mar 20, 2017 15:27:35 GMT
There's a thought for a thread (no disrespect Jerry) - "Is digital really the future or does it just make us lazy?" best quote I have heard this year, respect due fella.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2017 16:46:22 GMT
There's a thought for a thread (no disrespect Jerry) - "Is digital really the future or does it just make us lazy?" Definitely a good thread to start - I am sure it would give us quite a lot to talk about and polarize opinions.
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Post by jandl100 on Mar 20, 2017 21:00:28 GMT
"At shows I can't usually tell much difference between a £5K vinyl front end and a £20K one in sound. Most of the price difference is likely heavy build and luxury finish."
The difference I heard between a £30k SME 30 and an £80k Rockport Sirius was devastating!
I've heard high price dgital gear (DCS) and haven't been impressed. You don't need big bucks for digital, you do for vinyl, imo.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2017 22:57:33 GMT
"At shows I can't usually tell much difference between a £5K vinyl front end and a £20K one in sound. Most of the price difference is likely heavy build and luxury finish."
The difference I heard between a £30k SME 30 and an £80k Rockport Sirius was devastating! I've heard high price dgital gear (DCS) and haven't been impressed. You don't need big bucks for digital, you do for vinyl, imo. I should hope so for £50K more or could be SME was not that great for £30K. Also what was the rest of the system(s) used? A better cartridge and phono stage could account for much of the difference. Bet the Rockport was sporting a far more expensive arm. Agree about DCS. Would like to hear Fremers SAT arm plus Caliburn in the flesh rather than Youtube -that is over £150K.
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Post by MartinT on Mar 21, 2017 6:24:33 GMT
I've heard the Caliburn and it's exceptional. However, the incremental improvement over a deck half the price is really quite small, as you would expect from diminishing returns.
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Post by jandl100 on Mar 21, 2017 7:23:26 GMT
"At shows I can't usually tell much difference between a £5K vinyl front end and a £20K one in sound. Most of the price difference is likely heavy build and luxury finish."
The difference I heard between a £30k SME 30 and an £80k Rockport Sirius was devastating! I've heard high price dgital gear (DCS) and haven't been impressed. You don't need big bucks for digital, you do for vinyl, imo. I should hope so for £50K more or could be SME was not that great for £30K. Also what was the rest of the system(s) used? A better cartridge and phono stage could account for much of the difference. Bet the Rockport was sporting a far more expensive arm. Agree about DCS. Would like to hear Fremers SAT arm plus Caliburn in the flesh rather than Youtube -that is over £150K. Re: SME vs Rockport Same cartridge (top flight VdH, iirc) but yes different arms. SME on the SME (surprise) and Rockport's own air bearing parallel tracking arm. Same Jadis full amplification setup for both - into huge Rockport speakers. Just the tt front ends were swapped. But the point I was making is that the jump from £30k to £80k was not diminishing returns incremental, the SME 30 deck which was demmed first and sounded really good was simply crushed by the Rockport. In a way that's a great thing about LP playback. If you had £80k to spend, you would be well happy to do so and consider it worth it. But if you don't, then it can get a bit disheartening! ... and I heard that tt comparison decades ago - prices now for the kitted out Rockport or its present day equivalent? - £150-200K? Probably.
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Post by jandl100 on Mar 21, 2017 7:52:27 GMT
To broaden the debate a bit, in my fairly extensive experience of hifi I've only heard similar price-performance behaviour (i.e. you really do get what you pay for, forget diminishing returns) with speakers and LP front ends. Excellent sounding electronics (and not just excellent for the price) can be had at pretty much all price levels, imo. It's the transducers that are the tricky part - converting one form of energy to another. Physical movement to electric signal and back again. Simply tinkering around with the electrical signal is not hard and need not be expensive to do it effectively and accurately. Although quite a lot of manufacturers / components do seem to manage to muck it up! Low level signals may be an exception to this - phonostages do seem to be subject to similar vfm laws as transducers. I've not come across low cost 'stages that sound high end. I've come across a few that are great for the price - but not great in absolute terms. But maybe there are some! So Big Dosh on speakers and LP playback - and you can get away with comparative buttons for the rest (amps and digital tomfoolery) when well chosen. All the above in my opinion, of course! ---- having said all that guff, my next purchase will probably turn out to be a high end multi-£k amp!!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 9:47:43 GMT
To broaden the debate a bit, in my fairly extensive experience of hifi I've only heard similar price-performance behaviour (i.e. you really do get what you pay for, forget diminishing returns) with speakers and LP front ends. Excellent sounding electronics (and not just excellent for the price) can be had at pretty much all price levels, imo. It's the transducers that are the tricky part - converting one form of energy to another. Physical movement to electric signal and back again. Simply tinkering around with the electrical signal is not hard and need not be expensive to do it effectively and accurately. Although quite a lot of manufacturers / components do seem to manage to muck it up! Low level signals may be an exception to this - phonostages do seem to be subject to similar vfm laws as transducers. I've not come across low cost 'stages that sound high end. I've come across a few that are great for the price - but not great in absolute terms. But maybe there are some! So Big Dosh on speakers and LP playback - and you can get away with comparative buttons for the rest (amps and digital tomfoolery) when well chosen. All the above in my opinion, of course! ---- having said all that guff, my next purchase will probably turn out to be a high end multi-£k amp!! Have you heard the NVA phono 2? Might well compete with some fairly high end stages at more than 5 times the price. I would say that extra power and control is beneficial in an amp which can come at a cost. You do not need to pay for an expensive complex pre as can use an inexpensive passive with a suitable power amp.
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Post by jandl100 on Mar 21, 2017 10:15:35 GMT
I've tried quite a variety of types passive preamps and enjoyed many of them - but ultimately I prefer to listen with a good active pre. Decent cheap ones of those are very hard to come by, though - but it can be done .
And I do agree that some speakers and/or types of music benefit from a power amp with a serious and hence costly power supply. But some speakers seem deliberately designed to present an awkward load - it doesn't need to be that way!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 10:23:30 GMT
In my experience a much better power amp improves the sound of 90db speakers considerably to a mid range integrated (at time of manufacture). The stated power at 8 ohms being not considerably more.
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Post by jandl100 on Mar 21, 2017 10:35:58 GMT
In my experience a much better power amp improves the sound of 90db speakers considerably to a mid range integrated (at time of manufacture). The stated power at 8 ohms being not considerably more. Define "better". More expensive? - maybe, but that depends on the quality (not price) of the particular mid range amp. Most are relatively poor, I agree, but some aren't. That's my point. Price is not a good guide to the best sounding amps. And sensitivity can be a poor guide to how difficult a speaker is to drive!
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Post by MartinT on Mar 21, 2017 10:54:25 GMT
Stated power is definitely not an arbiter of quality or even how well speakers can be driven by an amp. A more representative figure is peak current, but not many manufacturers quote that.
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