Don't You Believe It

[worrasf]

I felt compelled to pen this post after an email conversation earlier today with Scott Nangle (what a nice man - https://snvinyl.co.uk/)- I had just bought a new stylus and cartridge from him. The conversation inevitably included cartridge/arm matching etc. Anyway, he sent me a tongue in cheek link to the Vertere Reference Tonearm Gen III at a mere £43,899 No, that's not a mistype a whisker short of £44K.

That was shock enough but what intrigued me and got me thinking was the blurb that accompanied said advert opining that the tonearm was the single most important component of vinyl playback. It got me thinking because I know I have read/heard contrary opinions so I did a very quick Google for some quotes. Bear in mind these are from well respected people in the industry.


1. Our Philosophy – No matter how good your turntable, the crucial link is still the tonearm.’– Vertere
Vertere Reference Tonearm Gen III £43,899.00

2. Maybe it's best to draw an analogy that is easy to relate to. Certain critical parts of the design of a race car will allow it to stay on the track - to allow the driver to not fly off the road - mainly, the tires, and suspension.* THAT is the cartridge in your analog system. It is KEY. In an analog system, the cartridge does MOST of the heavy lifting - it does the nearly impossible task of retrieving physical information from the groove and converting it into precisely perfect electrical signals. A waveform NOT picked up by the cartridge will not be "re-created" by a great arm or table, electronics and speakers. It will be lost at the beginning of the process.*

Peter Ledermann - Soundsmith


3. We get many calls and emails from folk asking how much importance they should place upon the phono amp in their system? *The answer is of course, no matter how good your turntable, arm and cartridge combination is, the tiny signal from a low/medium output coil is open to corruption simply because of the vulnerability of such a small signal voltage. Add to this the EQ and gain needed to amplify the signal while reproducing an extremely flat frequency response above line level and you can understand how difficult it is to maintain your cartridges signal integrity.

Tom Evans - TEAD


4. The turntable itself is the most important since it drives the record, houses the motor, bearing housing, and can affect the suspension and isolation the turntable has from external movements.

Linn (Audio Genesis)



So there you have it - or rather you don't. In 2022 there is still fundamental disagreement among respected experts about the relative importance of TT/arm/cartridge/phono stage. It is not lost on me that the opinions reflect the particular manufacturers product line - OK not entirely so with Linn but their TT's are way more expensive than their arms and cartridges.

Anyway, I just find it a little dispiriting that there is such disagreement which suggests nobody actually knows. Who/what to believe?

My HiFi journey started during the LP12/Naim 32.5/HiCap/250/Kann era so I bought into (and still do) the TT first, tonearm second and cartridge third hierarchy and (I think) it has served me well.

YMMV so interested to read what others think - or maybe it really has been done to death

Caveat Emptor

[struth]

'experts' each say their discipline is most important... well they would say that

[Barry]

As far as I'm concerned the cartridge (and choice of stylus profile) and arm are equally important in 'reading' the record groove.

All the turntable has to do is rotate at a constant rpm with both low low-frequency variation ('wow) and low high-frequency ('flutter') variation. The bearing should be good enough so that 'rumble' is sufficiently low. The latter depends on the way the turntable is mounted in it's plinth; but it's not "back magic". More or less any turntable as used by professional broadcasters or in the quality monitoring suites of record makers are good enough (e.g. EMT, Thorens TD124/II, Technics SP10; though I would regard Gates TTs, as used by some broadcasters, as not being really suitable).

I never bought into the Linn philosophy - especially after hearing their Isobarik speakers, which I regard as being the worse speakers I have ever heard.

[Macca]

It's important to distinguish between experts and salesmen.

Sometimes (but mostly not) the salesman is an expert, but he's still first and foremost selling something.

I'd argue that with a vinyl replay system every component is critical and can probably be improved on in some way.

[losepete]

I'd argue that with a vinyl replay system every component is critical and can probably be improved on in some way.

I have to agree with Macca.

[Pigmy Pony]

I reckon it's the vinyl itself. The best set up in the world can't make a silk purse... And if the black shiny discs are pressed on crappy old equipment that's not been properly looked after, and worked by folk who may not have been born during vinyl's heyday, what can you expect?

There will be exceptions of course, plenty of them, but for the most part it's a gamble with increasingly large amounts of your hard earned.

The bloke from Soundsmith uses a pretty good analogy, which I would expand further: All the money spent on suspension and tyres will be wasted if the racetrack is littered with potholes, gravel and cowshit.

[Barry]

The whole business of vinyl replay is so ridden with compromises and distortion, it's a miracle that it sounds as good as it does. A large part for this is because despite the RSS of all the distortion mechanisms being 10 - 12%, it almost entirely second harmonic, which the ear finds euphonic.

[narabdela]

I never bought into the Linn philosophy - especially after hearing their Isobarik speakers, which I regard as being the worse speakers I have ever heard.

Yes, and no. The Kans were the worst I ever heard, the Bricks came a close second.

[Barry]

Never herd the Linn Kans, but I'm not surprised you found them Krap.

[Us-&-Them]

Its like everything in life; there's always for and against, claim and counter-claim; it makes me wonder if you can ever really get to the truth!!!!! One thing I do agree with though is, the saying used by Linn back in the days when I first got into Hi-Fi, and that is: GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out).

Translated, that means, if you send Garbage into an amplifier, you will get amplified Garbage coming out and, in turn, that is sent to the speakers so, you get to hear Garbage !!!!

THE SIGNAL SOURCE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STARTING POINT!!!!!!