Looking for a turntable, but have no idea!

I’m looking at getting a turntable and considering a Pro-Ject Essential 2 or possibly a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon.

What do I need to know? Please assume I know nothing.

I currently have a semi decent separates stereo but it’s certainly not flash. (Yamaha AX-396 amp + Celestion speakers given to me by my dad, not sure of speaker product code, says on back 8 Ohms & amp range 10-60w. ‘Obviously’ I also have a CD player but not really relevant to this.)

Would this be a good combination with one of the two turntables suggested? If not, what other item with a similar sleek design can be had at a similar price with a similar output? Do these Pro-Ject items always come with dust covers?

I will only want to listen to albums, genres such as soul, R&B & Jazz, plus some hip hop.

I’ve read the odd comment online about ‘pre-amps’, I’ve never heard of one before! Would I need one? I’m in the UK if that is relevant.

Any help is much appreciated.

Pro-ject have a very good reputation. Rega are also very good but maybe more expensive. At that price Pro-ject will do fine.

If the amp covers the CD player to speakers bit then it’s an integrated amp (i.e. both pre-amp and power amp in the same box).

Does the amp have a line in called “phono”? If yes, job’s a goodun, plug it in and you’re away. If not, you need a phono stage because turntables are quieter than other sources. There are plenty of phono stages about but don’t pay too much given the rest of the system. Google is your friend here.

Same advice probably applies to the turntable. Don’t bother spending too much unless you’re going to upgrade the whole lot. Better to spend the money on new music.

The AX-396 should have a phono input for the turntable so you will not need a separate pre-amp. Pro-ject perfectly fine turntables.
Pay a lot of attention to putting it on a shelf/stand that is isolated
from knocks or footfall and is solid – make sure it is level.
Second hand turntables could be a minefield if you are not wanting to
check/set them up.

Nice one cheers MrNice. Just had a bit of fun getting access to the back of my amp moving cabinets around and yes, it does indeed have a ‘phono’ line.

Will take your advice and spend any other money on music.

Thanks finishthat. The turntable will be on a cabinet (amp and CD player IN the cabinet) in the corner, speakers will be in opposite corners. Turntable would not be near any footfall (door is in 4th corner of room, opposite to turntable.

I think I’d buy new, but not maybe for a good few months but wanted to know my options and weigh it all up well in advance!

Are there different versions of the Debut Carbon? What would you recommend?

The only issue with the phono stage, regarding preamps, is concerning the cartridge you use. There are two types, moving magnet, MM, and moving coil, MC. Some amps allow you to select either in the phono stage, but most don’t.
MC carts are more expensive, MM’s are what you usually get on the more ‘budget’ turntables, and I would guess the phono stage of your amp is solely MM, so get the best MM cartridge you can afford, and make sure it’s properly aligned when you get the t/table. That also includes setting the balance weight; too much will cause excessive wear, and if a cartridge is mis-aligned, it will wear one channel more than the other.
I have spent a lot of time getting cartridges set up properly, with little balance scales and alignment scales; I much prefer CD for that very reason. However, back in the 80’s vinyl quality was appalling, with lots of recycled plastic being used; now, much more is 180g virgin vinyl, and runs are shorter, so the quality is far better.
http://www.hifigear.co.uk/accessories/hifi-cartridges.html?p=3
Goldring, Audio Technica, Ortophon and Nagaoka are all good; I’ve got an AT MC cart on my old T/table, I think it retailed around £3-400, but I got it for free! 😀

Thanks ‘0’. I’ll make sure I refer back to your comments when setting up.

I think the one I’m looking at getting comes with an Ortophon cartridge.

Mrnice similar music taste to me and I would say Rega Planner 1 as i have one.

Also the Project Turntables receive god reviews.

Also a Phono stage is a must if you don’t have phono inputs.
And if you want to link it to your computer as well Try one of these and cheap

MC cartridges are not a consideration unless your budget is a lot higher.

A Rega Planar 2 from ebay would be a good purchase, or a Planar 3, and replace the cartridge unless you are sure it is in good condition.

Resale on the Regas will be quite good as they have a very good reputation (Make sure you get the ones with the straight tonearms, not the curved ones like the RB200).

For example :

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Excellent-REGA-PLANAR-2-Belt-Drive-Turntable-Record-Player-IK-T18-/380881985088?pt=UK_AudioTVElectronics_HomeAudioHiFi_Turntables&hash=item58ae55de40

and you can get an isolation platform if needed – or make one with a cheap granite or marble slab (cheap from kitchen stores) and some sorbothane feet like these :

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sorbothane-50mm-Isolation-Hemispheres-/191137180798?pt=Turntable_Parts_Accessories&hash=item2c80a9ec7e

Rega also do a phono stage which has a useful USB ouotput so you can record to you PC and therefore avoid playing your record repeatedly and wearing out your cartridge, for example :

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rega-Fono-Mini-A2D-phono-stage-latest-model-/231201498168?pt=Turntable_Parts_Accessories&hash=item35d4aee438

Warning – my Cambridge amp has an input / switch marked as phono

It doesn’t actually have a phono stage though – I still need a pre-amp

The manual confirmed it – but of course I didn’t check that until after I got my turntable

I got a planar 2 off eBay and a new replacement cartridge BTW

Rega do a relatively cheap phono stage of your amp doesn’t have one. It’s out of their Mira amp so pretty nice.

It’s MM and MC too.

It it were my money, I’d be getting a Planar 3.

An AT95E is a perfectly good MM cartridge for the money too although the Goldring 1042 I had was stunning.

I bought a Project Essential II from Richer Sounds last weekend – £210. I can hear stuff I’ve been listening to on CD for nearly 20 years that I’ve never heard before. The separation and presence of the different instruments is very noticeable. All the reviews I’ve read say it’s the best you can get for the ££. It’s on a budget system (Denon 250 amp) with floorstanding speakers.

Planar 2 actually has a more desirable tonearm, the rb250/251 instead of the 300. Something to do with the bearing arrangement.

I’ve just realized I’ve had my Rega for over 20 years. 😐
It’s had three belts and a new lid. 🙂

Tough old things.
Still sounds great.

MC cartridges are not a consideration unless your budget is a lot higher.

That was a point I was trying to make, probably not very well. It was in case the OP got hold of a preamp with both on, to avoid confusion. The AT95E, IIRC, has long been a classic cartridge, although I’ve not been paying much attention to the vinyl world for a long time. I got very disillusioned with it, because of the truly dreadful quality of the pressings.
I think today’s vinyl pressings, because they’re in much smaller runs, on heavy, 180gm virgin plastic, are better able to show how good vinyl can be.
Even older albums, well mastered and pressed, can sound incredible. I always used to check who’d mastered the album, then look at the run-out grooves; if both said Masterdisc, I was onto a winner!
Paul Simon’s ‘Hearts and Bones’, Dire Straits ‘Love Over Gold’ and Donald Fagan’s ‘Nightfly’ were particular favourites.
Still got my copies, the ‘Nightfly’ version is one specially pressed for B&W as a demo, ‘cos they were so impressed with the quality.
I really ought to get my turntable up and running. The speed controller has gone caput, and it could probably do with a new belt.
I’ll get round to it one day.
Oh, and you can’t really go wrong with a Rega Planar, absolute classic.

Manticore Mantras sometimes come up on ebay and go cheap – they are like a suspended planar 3 and worth of a decent cartridge.

Unless you already have a collection of LP’s I wouldn’t bother.

Why not?
Enough in the charity shops of Rawtenstall to keep you going for years. 🙂

They get some decent stuff in too.
Tod Market has a great vinyl stall.

Must be similar everywhere?

The projects have the benefit of being fully set up and ready for use. Simply place on a suitable surface check the platter (the bit the record goes on) is completely level, plug into your amp via a suitable phono stage, Cambridge audio make a great cheap one and away you go.

All the second hand or more esoteric options mean you will need a stylus balance, alignment protractor and very steady hands to set one up properly – Worth doing but not if you’re just wanting to play the odd bit of vinyl from the charity bins.

Also don’t forget to get a record brush and a little stylus cleaning brush too.

My advice as a 30 year TT addict with a pretty good understanding of them would be this – Put it on a wallshelf. A TT is bascially a measuring device working to really tight tolerances, a wallshelf makes that job much easier.

Thanks all for your comments, gets me more excited reading them! Eg

I can hear stuff I’ve been listening to on CD for nearly 20 years that I’ve never heard before.

I was thinking the same Rusty. I don’t currently have any vinyls, but I’m planning on buying some albums I already have on CD and love and look forward to hearing the difference.

I’ve not heard of any of these before as until yesterday it was a foreign world to me. The Rega Planar looks nice, although I think Mrs No. 18 would prefer the look of a Pro-Ject.

Also, this thread highlights to me how good this forum really is for any subject. I registered and posted a similar thread on a popular Turntable forum and haven’t got anywhere near as useful info as on this one. I’ll stick to this one in future.

Why not?
Enough in the charity shops of Rawtenstall to keep you going for years.

They get some decent stuff in too.
Tod Market has a great vinyl stall.

Must be similar everywhere?

It just isn’t worth the hassle. Everything is available digitally with far more convenience. I have loads of records but you would have to be crazy to get involved with the format from scratch these days. No matter how much of cool hipster it will make you feel.

Film cameras are dirt cheap these days too but you would have to be insane to not go digital wouldn’t you?

Not everything is available digitally, nor is it the same experience. It is also unlikely to be as cheap, or as fun as a car boot find.

I use a Rega Planar 3 🙂

JCL is largely right there is no sensible reason to own a turntable especially if you have no records already, but then does everything have to have a reason?

Yep, total madness to be buying vinyl.

People will be riding bicycles in the mud or even to the shops next.

I appreciate it’s not sensible, why spend £200 – £300 on a turntable when I could just listen to it on CD, or spend the money on my bike?

I’ve never downloaded an album, but I put all my CDs on an iPod for the car.

Music is of course available digitally, but on the whole it sounds rubbish. I much prefer to listen to CDs, it sounds better than downloads / streaming (more kbps) and I enjoy taking the tangible disk from the case and playing it. Listening to vinyl is the same but more so.

The main advantage of listening to ‘digital’ music is the easy access to lots of different music, but I’m not really in to that, unless of course I was seeing what it was like before then buying on CD or hopefully vinyl in the future so I can really enjoy it.

Do it, you can’t beat a decent record.

Plenty of good advice here already and you won’t go wrong with a Project, I think.

Riding in the mud is a good analogy. There is nothing sensible about vinyl at all. It’s all in the tactile side. Personally I think MP3 is awesome for convenience but absolutely love our vinyl system for the sheer enjoyment of listening. Crazy how good a rock dragged though plastic can sound – Absolutely daft way of reproducing music but you will love it! 🙂

sq – is that yours up above? Beautiful!

Those look sweet!

Yeh, that’s my little half breed, 50% Kuzma Stabi/s 12″ and 50% Linn Lp12, just messing round with a dual-mono, USB controlled sinewave regenerator for the PSU at the minute.

How’s the Roksan arm sound on the Lp12?

It’s rather timely that I should be reading this a short while ago:
http://www.vox.com/2014/4/19/5626058/vinyls-great-but-its-not-better-than-cds
Pretty much backs up what I was reading in HiFi News and Record Reviews many years ago.
Vinyl is fun to listen to, but it’s very nature means it’s compromised in what it can reproduce, as that article neatly sets out.

Happy Record Store Day! There are plenty of business-related grievances to be filed against the annual vinyl celebration, but it’s hard to argue with the spirit of a day encouraging people to explore and buy new music. Moreover, vinyl’s just more fun as a format than MP3s or CDs; there’s something viscerally satisfying about dropping the needle, and physically spinning the record back to rewind. And in a world where people feel all too welcome to hijack the playlist at parties they attend, it’s nice to have a harder-to-commandeer format on offer.

Let’s not fool ourselves, though. Vinyl is great, but the idea that its sound quality is superior to that of uncompressed digital recordings is preposterous. They sound different, and that’s exactly the point.

What vinyl can’t do

On a theoretical level, there’s just no reason it should be the case that vinyl sounds better. There are built-in problems with using vinyl as a data encoding mechanisms that have no CD equivalent. Vinyl is physically limited by the fact that records have to be capable of being played without skipping or causing distortion. That both limits the dynamic range — the difference between the loudest and softest note — and the range of pitches (or “frequencies”) you can hear.

If notes get too low in pitch, that means less audio can fit in a given amount of vinyl. If notes are too high, the stylus has difficulty tracking them, causing distortion. So engineers mastering for vinyl often cut back on extreme high or low ends, using a variety of methods, all of which alter the music.

For example, one common cause of high pitches in recordings is “sibilance,” or the hiss-y sound produced by pronouncing certain consonants, notably “s” or “z”s, in a quick, sharp way (ex.: “zip,” “shack,” “sap”). This creates enough problems for engineers working in vinyl that they often have to “de-ess” recordings, either by making the pronunciation less sibilant through editing or by straight-up asking vocalists to pronounce lyrics differently.

De-essing is a common technique outside vinyl too, but then it’s an artistic choice; vinyl forces de-essing upon you. If you want to keep aggressive sibilance in for aesthetic reasons, and want to press to vinyl, you’re out of luck. And when de-essing is achieved through re-recording vocals, it can alter the music in subtler ways, making vocalists deliver lyrics less intensely and lose a degree of artistic expression in the process.

What CDs can do

Since CDs rely on sampling an original analog signal being recorded, they do have some frequency limitations. While vinyl records, in theory, directly encode a smooth audio wave, CDs sample that audio wave at various points and then collate those samples. “No matter how high a sampling rate is,” Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk once wrote, “it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove.”

That’s true. CDs work by taking a bunch of samples from a source audio wave and stringing them together. But this criticism is misleading on two counts. For one thing, vinyl pressing is not error-free, and the analog groove of a given record is not a precise replication of the audio wave recorded in the master, not least due to extreme high and low frequency limitations. It’s true that CDs can’t exactly replicate the whole audio wave in a master, in every case (update: in many cases, the Nyquist-Shannon theorem means it can) — but neither can vinyl records.

More importantly, the volume of sampling that CDs do should be enough to get a replica of the original recording that sounds identical to the human ear. The sampling rate for CDs is 44.1kHz, meaning that CD recordings sample the master recording 44,100 times a second, and can capture frequencies as high as 20 kHz. That is about the limit of what humans can hear; at least one experiment has confirmed that listeners in blind tests can’t tell the difference between recordings that include frequencies above 21k and ones that don’t. You may think you can hear more than CDs are giving you. But you probably can’t.

And over time, engineers have come to make better use of those 44.1kHz. Scott Metcalfe, director of recording arts and sciences at Johns Hopkins’s Peabody Institute, explains that engineers have taken to “oversampling,” making digital files that use a much higher rate than 44.1kHz, and then compressing that back down to 44.1kHz for the actual CD. “It captures the signal at a much much higher sample rate and then mathematically takes it down to 44.1kHz,” Metcalfe says. “It does a really good job of preserving information.”

Metcalfe brings up another problem with this line of CD criticism. Even if an actual recording method can hold frequencies above 20kHz, that doesn’t matter if there isn’t a microphone capable of capturing them in the first place, or a speaker capable of playing them back. And most studios don’t have microphones that record above 20kHz, and it’s very rare for speakers to play frequencies above that. Indeed, most playback systems feature low-pass filters, which specifically cut off anything above that marker.

The fact of the matter is that CDs can create closer facsimiles than vinyl can.

What do people actually prefer?
Simply as a matter revealed preferences, the fact that Americans buy digital copies of songs at a much greater rate than alternatives suggests that they’d rather listen to digital music or CDs than vinyl. Taking both actual albums and track sales into account, the equivalent of 243.5 million digital albums were sold last year, compared to 165.4 million CDs and 6.1 million vinyl records. Given that compressed digital audio is considerably lower in quality than either CDs or vinyl, consumer certainly seem to care a lot less about audio quality than convenience.

But that’s kind of an unfair comparison, given exactly that convenience differential. You can’t fit thousands of tracks’ worth of vinyl in your pocket and listen to it while jogging. So what happens if you set all else equal, and have people compare digital and analog audio in a controlled setting?

Unfortunately, no one appears to have done a double blind listener test comparing vinyl to CDs, but there is a good study from Florida State’s John Geringer and Patrick Dunnigan doing that with CDs and high-quality cassette recordings. While cassettes sold to consumers often featured lower audio quality than vinyl records, there’s nothing inherent to magnetic tape requiring that, and the format doesn’t suffer from the frequency limits imposed by the risk of vinyl skipping. It’s not a perfect test for our purposes, but knowing how people feel about high-quality analog stacked up to high-quality digital should tell us something about comparing vinyl to CDs.

Geringer and Dunnigan used identical microphone and mixing board setups to record four different concerts, each time using both a digital record and a high-quality analog cassette recorder (the MR-3 from audiophile favorite brand Nakamichi). They then had 40 music majors listen to the recordings, either with loudspeakers or headphones, while letting them switch between each recording at will. The test subjects were not aware of which was the digital recording, and which was the analog one. They were then asked to record their preferences.

It turns out that the music majors had a significant preferences for digital. “Participants gave significantly higher ratings to the digital presentations in bass, treble, and overall quality,” Geringer and Dunnigan write. The results were weaker on some points than others (recordings of string orchestras were a particularly close call) but in no case was the average rating of the analog version higher than the average rating of the digital one. The most analog-generous thing to be taken away from the study is that there are some types of music for which people have no preference. But there were several where people had a real, noticeable preference for digital.

So why do people love vinyl?
Perhaps the best audio-based case for vinyl is actually precisely the fact that it does mess up the original recording. A lot of vinyl fans talk about the “warmth” of records, particularly of the low-end. But, as Pitchfork’s Mark Richardson puts it, “the ‘warmth’ that many people associate with LPs can generally be described as a bass sound that is less accurate.” The difficulty of accurately translating bass lines to vinyl without making grooves too big means that engineers have to do a lot of processing to get it to work, which changes the tone of the bass in a way that, apparently, many people find aesthetically pleasing.

“Warmth” also comes from flaws in record players. As the University of Waterloo’s Stanley Lipshitz once explained to Popular Science, speaker sound and the needle’s height fluctuations can cause the record to vibrate, which the needle in turn picks up and translates into a “warmer” seeming sound.

Is it wrong to prefer that “warmer” sound? Of course not! It would be as preposterous to rule that out as a legitimate source of aesthetic appreciation as it would be to discount distorted guitar lines for being “less faithful” to the original guitar sound. Audio distortion can be beautiful and there’s nothing wrong with liking it. But there’s also something to be said for listening to music as its creators meant it to be heard, and precisely because of their “warmth” vinyl recordings sound rather different from what artists hear in the studio.

“As a recording engineer, when I go to a digital recording, what I did is exactly what I get back,” Metcalfe explains. “When you record in the analog domain, what you’re hearing there is different from what you sent in.”

Should I stop listening to vinyl?
No! For heaven’s sake, no. Each format has its charms, and their overall differences in quality are often overwhelmed by differences in the quality of initial recording equipment, in mastering approaches, and in playback setup. But if you’re a vinyl collector, you also shouldn’t go around telling your friends how much purer your audio is. First off, that’s generally dickish behavior, but more to the point it’s false. Digital recording just is more accurate. That’s not the only thing worth considering by any means, but it does make the puritanism of some vinyl true believers look rather ridiculous.

People will be riding bicycles in the mud or even to the shops next.

It’s actually a more accurate an analogy to have the option to ride your bike on dry dusty trails or in the cold slop. Oh and the latter is far more expensive.

I’ve had Technics 1210 turntables with Stanton cartridges for far too many years I’m prepared to admit but have never gone wrong, really tough and great sound. Not sure if they are made any more but could be worth a look.

SQ: It was a huge improvement on the Basik LVX arm I had before. Probably as big a difference as any other TT upgrade I’ve made (which surprised me). I did find it a bit tricky to hand cue at first (being a uni-pivot) but I’ve got used to it now. Still a bit dicey when one is operating it in a “refreshed” state, though… 😀

That’s cool that you’re modding. I almost built a DIY geddon for the LP12 but a S/H Lingo came up and I was feeling lazy 😉 Really odd that the power supply makes such a difference – didn’t believe it until I heard it!

They are lovely things to own.

I’ve got an LP12 that sits there unused. I went through a whole load of effort to get it serviced and set up correctly, and it just doesn’t sound as good to my ears as the digital lossless versions of the same tracks. There is more detail, better bass, less hiss & crackling and less faff with the digital tracks, and that’s with brand new 180gm pressings, let alone all the old vinyl covered in scratches.

I love the idea of vinyl, but it just isn’t as enjoyable for me.

Each to their own, but IMO anyone who says vinyl is better than cd is just kidding themselves

Where are the naysayers getting their digital music from please. The sources I have come across seem to be quite limited on content, hence I have been looking at turntables and been rifling through the records in the charity shops.

The last new pressing I bought was shit – full of crackles and surface noise. Warped too! I was about to return it but I dropped the sleeve and damaged it.

Shame, some good tracks….

Naim label has lots of high quality (24/96) downloads, but I’m mainly just buying CDs and ripping them lossless onto my computer..

I think Linn puts out quite a bit hi-res audio too, but that’s more classical/esoteric audiophile stuff