I have been listening to LPs since the mid 1960s and I think that they can sound great and they can also sound awful. Nearly everyone is getting onto the turntable band wagon. Hi-Fi magazines and forums are full of praise for the new rise of analogue music. Most of the comments that you will read are exaggerated or untrue.
The first mistruth is that technically LPs are more proficient at Hi-Fi sound reproduction than CDs or "HiRes" digital files. This assertion does not stand up to scrutiny; the whole system of LP sound reproduction (and 45s and 78s) is flawed from start to finish and introduces excessive harmonic distortion and clicks and pops and timing errors and that is before you slide the LP out of its cover and play it. Vinyl pedants claim that analogue sound reproduction can be perfect - no it cannot - clicks and pops are unavoidable. And, from a pedantic point of view if you hear one pop which should not be there then you are not listening to Hi-Fi.
I love listening to LPs on occasion but when I do it is for fun and for the different sound from "digital" music. For serious musical appreciation I choose digital sources.
Deciding what equipment to buy can be a nightmare for the uninitiated. There is so much exaggeration and hyperbole written about the subject of turntables and LPs that it is difficult to find sound advice.
Most of the budget turntables are perfectly capable of giving good sound reproduction. The likes of Pioneer, Project, Marantz, Sony, Music Hall etc. all have reputations to maintain and they are not going to sell you a product which does not sound good. Some of these turntables are made of plastic and are a bit flimsy but if you place them on a solid rack or shelf they will perform well. The cheap turntables will suffer from quality control issues so that the odd one will suffer from wow or flutter or speed variations; in which case you return it to the supplier. To get reasonable sound reproduction ensure that your turntable has a moving magnet cartridge rather than a ceramic one.
Most of the criticism on forums relates to the fact that the cheap budget turntables are made of plastic. Well consider this, vinyl is plastic and many expensive decks have acrylic plinths or platters and what is acrylic if it is not plastic? The solidity and weightiness of a good deck helps to reduce vibration but if you site your budget deck on a solid platform its flimsiness is mitigated.
On many forums budget turntables are dismissed as junk or rubbish but a budget turntable maybe all you can afford so do not let this opinion put you off. Try them for yourself and if they are no good return them to the supplier.
When you buy a turntable, you do not want to damage your records because of excessive down force or stylus pressure especially if you have bought an expensive 180gm vinyl record. Many audiophiles get anal about this and constantly tinker with down force and may even reset it every time they play a record. Some set this to the minimum; my cartridge has a down force range of 1.5gms to 2.5gms. I have set mine to 2.2gms and I see no reason to change it. Many budget tables use a pre-set or unchangeable down force of 3.5gms. Such a force would be traduced by an audiophile but I do not think that this will damage your records even after repeated playing.
If you digitise your records properly to a 16/44.1 Wav file using a good USB deck or USB phono-stage then you can reserve playing the LP for special occasions to avoid wear and tear. The digital file will sound almost exactly the same as the LP.
Many contributors to forums and magazines criticise turntables with built in phono-stages. Well I have got two such turntables and they both sound fantastic. When I use an external phono-stage they hardly sound any different. Phono-stages use electronics to amplify the weak signal of a moving magnet cartridge and they also equalise the sound according to RIAA standards. When a record is cut the bass is attenuated and the treble is accentuated this is reversed by the phono-stage. RIAA equalisation has been around since the mid 1950's so there has been plenty of time for Pioneer, Sony, Project, Teac and Denon etc. to get this right. You do not need to spend hundreds of pounds for a simple phono-stage.
There is so much exaggeration and unjustified criticism I could go on forever. Just remember that the commentators on forums and in magazines rarely make comparisons to a standard in fact they almost never do. When they are making their judgements, they never do so on the basis of double blind testing . All the comment is mostly based on asserted hearsay rather than facts established by the scientific method.
If you want to then you can buy a moving coil cartridge that will playback ultra-sonic sound up to 45khz; but the trouble is no-one can hear sound with a higher frequency than 20kHz (reserved for children) and for many adults their highest frequency is much lower. So you may well ask what is the point of a moving coil cartridge? Many audiophiles do not ask this question. Most LPs do not have musical content above 15khz.
When you read a forum that traduces your potential purchase just remember this: when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones first started making records we played their music on Dansette type record players with poorly produced and specified ceramic cartridges with a down force of about 10gms. The music still sounded good enough for the Beatles and the Stones etc. to sell millions of records.
The other day I was at a market where someone was selling second hand records and he was playing them on a real budget job - less than £100 pounds. It sounded better than our Dansettes. Why not try a cheap turntable if you cannot decide if the medium suits you or not but buy some second hand records to play on it? You can always upgrade later.
Also consider this, a £30,000 pound turntable can sound marvellous and I would never criticise someone who bought one. However, the £30,000 record player gives you the ultimate in sound reproduction which includes the music and the clicks and pops and surface noise which cannot be removed no matter how much you spend, because the system is flawed sonically from start to finish. Try listening to a 180gm acoustic music vinyl LP but with headphones and then you will see what I mean.
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