Laser Turntable; buy one now for only $9000!

[Shooshie]

The Laser Turntable never touches your records. It reads a part of the groove that has never been touched by a stylus (according to the makers), so you get pristine sound even from moderately worn records. It's a great idea, until you get to the price. At $9000 for the basic model, and $19,000 for the "ultimate" model, I think I could listen to a few albums with an old turntable.

I have a collection of about 750 vinyl records which I have not heard in 30 years. Of those, there may be 50 to 100 that i'd like to hear again, and most of those probably once. Maybe 25 or 30 I'd listen to repeatedly. That's about $190 per play. (or $90 per play on the basic model)

Just a matter of priorities, I guess. I'll have to look for a nice turntable with a stylus.

Shooshie

[mikehalloran]

At last, a setup not likely to jump grooves while trying to play the Telarc recording of the 1812 Overture.

http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/84480 ... nyl_Record

[Shooshie]

At last, a setup not likely to jump grooves while trying to play the Telarc recording of the 1812 Overture.

http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/84480 ... nyl_Record

LOL! Of course, it might split a few photons, bust out a few quarks, or split the universe in half, but you're right, it wouldn't jump grooves!

Shooshie

[David Polich]

If I bought a $9000 turntable, my wife would throw me out of the house along with it.

[bongo_x]

It's a little hard to understand the $9000 part. Isn't this pretty close to being a CD player, which sell for $15? So, at 10x, 20x, or even 100x that I could see it, but come on.

[bayswater]

You can spend twice that on a Teac, and still scratch your records.

[James Steele]

I have a friend in San Diego who has a boutique audiophile business. He showed me a turntable that was more expensive than that. I think it was 12 or 16 thousand dollars. I can't remember. It was clear acrylic and had a conventional needle and cartridge, but some sort of ungodly expensive one I imagine. The tone arm was attached to a column that was seated in a socket containing some sort of clear viscous fluid and suspended in it, to supposedly isolate it from anything mechanical I guess? I think the upper platform the turntable was on was also suspended the same way. The actual platter was belt-driven and had a very small belt that was clearly visible on the side of the platter that looked like a thin rubber band. Apparently the builder of this turntable angered the supplier of these belts, complaining that the thickness of the bands varied by too many microns along the length of the belt—apparently thicker in some places than others. The supplier of these belts told him they could not guarantee to his tolerances, so he developed a machine that shaved these belts to get them the same thickness the entire way through.

Anyway, I was polite when I was shown all this stuff and I listened to it thorough this system. I try not to say that I think a lot of it is BS. They even have little trestle type blocks that are meant to keep your speaker wires from touching the carpet. Again, I can't remember the theory behind it. I'd invite someone to try and justify some of those audiophile "fetishes" but we have a policy against religion on this board. I'd love to see some of these audiophiles submit to a double-blind test on these $6,000 interconnect cables and other nonsense like that. My understanding is most of them refuse to participate in those things, since I suspect they aren't really confident they'll hear the difference.

[kgdrum]

I was in the EXTREME high end Hi-Fi business for 11 years,occasionally we'd sell stereos ranging from $100,000 to $200,000,systems for $40,000 to $50,000 were not uncommon
We were selling turntables from $300 to over $40,000.

If the client purchased a really good high end tt,they'd then have to add a moving coil cartridge often ranging between $4,000 and $10,000 which would also necessitate a phono preamp that would do this setup justice(between $5K & $10K).
Setting up and calibrating this kind of turntable would also require a really good tt tech adding ( about 3 hours @$150 per hour).
So while $9000 is a lot of money for a turntable, it could actually be much more expensive!! lol

As someone with this background my biggest objection with the $9000 laser turntable is that it's not keeping the vinyl record playback in the analog domain,so in my opinion besides it being expensive it defeats the entire purpose of playing a record on a great analog system. If you ever listened to a great turntable in an amazing high end stereo(most people haven't) you'd never want a laser turntable.
The whole idea of a high end turntable is to avoid the digital domain with the associated digital to analog conversion.
If the person has the money and they love the sound of records $9,000 is really not expensive in the world of turntables when you truly get into the realm of high end Hi-Fi.

[bayswater]

As someone with this background my biggest objection with the $9000 laser turntable is that it's not keeping the vinyl record playback in the analog domain,so in my opinion besides it being expensive it defeats the entire purpose of playing a record on a great analog system.

Exactly what I was thinking as I read it. The A/D-D/C conversions going on would do pretty much the same as the process to make ADD and AAD discs. But even that could be useful to an archivist where all you have is a vinyl copy and originals are lost.

[mikehalloran]

Two things.

It is possible to build a laser pickup and keep it in entirely the analog domain. This has been done before -- I remember reading about it in the 1980s -- and I have wondered why it never made the market. Too expensive for the audiophiles seems absurd.

Monster was a very successful attempt at taking ordinary welding cable and selling it as high end speaker cable at outrageous prices. That was the original product. When I first saw it and recognized what it was, I bought some from the hardware store, replaced the 12 gauge I was using and couldn't hear the difference. I have read their literature with great amusement ever since.

[James Steele]

On the subject of Monster, I think a few years ago I posted a picture of the packaging of their guitar cables that were *optimized for music genre*. They had a "jazz" guitar cord and a "rock" guitar cord, etc. Ridiculous.

[Shooshie]

As someone with this background my biggest objection with the $9000 laser turntable is that it's not keeping the vinyl record playback in the analog domain,so in my opinion besides it being expensive it defeats the entire purpose of playing a record on a great analog system.

Exactly what I was thinking as I read it. The A/D-D/C conversions going on would do pretty much the same as the process to make ADD and AAD discs. But even that could be useful to an archivist where all you have is a vinyl copy and originals are lost.

I think it's entirely analog. You could do it. They use two beams, a reference beam and a reflector beam, and while I don't know how they did it, it appears that they are doing something that recognizes variations in power. Many photonic-interfaces of that nature exist, such as the one in the L 1011A compressor/limiter which uses the sluggishness of the photo interface to ameliorate peaks, or something like that. I've probably got it all screwed up, but I don't want to figure it out right now.

Anyway, an analog device is not out of the question. Of course, lasers themselves are pulsed, so it's going to depend on the number of pulses per second in the laser. I dunno... maybe it's NOT possible.

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

On the subject of Monster, I think a few years ago I posted a picture of the packaging of their guitar cables that were *optimized for music genre*. They had a "jazz" guitar cord and a "rock" guitar cord, etc. Ridiculous.

You mentioned that a while back, and it blew my mind. It makes you wonder if those guys even know how audio works. Especially digital audio.

Shooshie

[mikehalloran]

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MJazz12A

Now I could see a specialized Rock instrument cable if they could guaranty things like

a) will survive a Keith Moon style hotel room trashing

b) cannot be lost by a roadie ever – I'd settle for a FindMyCable.app on my iPhone

c) never comes unplugged if a drunk pulls on it during a bar gig

d) delivers non-fatal knockout jolt if bass is handled by unauthorized person

e) …

[bayswater]

Yes, of course, Mike and Shooshie are right. Analog should be possible. But you'd be missing all that great groove noise that swirls around the room. Or maybe it can do that too.