My 2019 Update Thread - My final system I think.

[Gazjam]

Latest round of tweaks to the system, tweaking the vinyl and digital playback setups.

VINYL TWEAKS - TURNTABLE ISOLATION

Really enjoying going fully balanced with vinyl, a step in the right direction noise limiting wise, and the new Proj-ect Deck is a nice upgrade on my previous Rega P10.
Plenty of room for improvment though, particularly with upgrading the Ortofon Quintet Blue MC, sounds great as is, but the X8 turntables capable of handling a much better cartridge.

Thats further down the line though, so looked at getting the 'Infrastructure' sorted first before I go looking at cart upgrades.
My Hifi rack is a Stands Unique glass shelf jobbie, which isn't the best surface to plonk a turntable on, So - Turntable Isolation.

I really like the piano black finish of my deck's plinth, so didnt want to take away from that?
Turns out Pro-Ject do their own matching turntable platforms - cool.

The thicker and heavier ones only come in gloss grey, but there is one thats matching piano black.
Its still a 1" thick heavy slab of MDF with damped cone feet, so good enough for me, especially considering I'm throwing more than just the platform into the Isolation mix.

Piano black, matches the turntable



Couple of extra things I did to better isolation of the deck:

Had some SoundDampedSteel isolation plates kicking around unused https://sounddampedsteel.com/hifi/ so used these between the turntable feet and the platform
(I designed the laser engraved aluminium Logo plate in work and added that on. Matches the platter )





So thats the Turntable/platform interface taken care of, still the platform/ glass surface to do.

Ordered some isolation pucks for between the Platform's conical isolation feet and the glass surface.
Had a lot of success with products from Herbies Audio Labs in the States for speaker and hifi rack isolation, so looked to them for this too.







I'm taking the deck into Jonny at Audio Origami glasgow to rewire the arm with Cardas silver cable next, then calling it done until I get a Cart upgrade.
Thinking Hana ML or Ortofon Cadenza black.

See how it plays out.