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The Vinyl Anachronist: Crème de la Crème

By Marc Phillips

September 2009

I’ve settled into my new digs in Austin, Texas (Live Music Capital of the World), and I’ve also settled into a new analog rig that reflects the current global modes of frugality and thrift. Yes, I’ve actually gone back to owning a Rega P3, just like I did from 1992 to 1998. This P3 is a slightly different animal, however, than that Plain Jane black model with the dark-tinted dust cover (which I always felt was tacky). My new Rega is the P3-24, with the TT-PSU power supply upgrade. I’ve added the Reference subplatter from GrooveTracer, the one with the sapphire thrust plate. Oh yes, I forgot… the plinth is high-gloss, unlike my stodgy old P3. It’s also lime green.

All in all, this is pretty much the same P3 I described in my column Super Rega! While it is certainly an extraordinary turntable for the money, I have been spoiled over the last few years with some truly stellar analog rigs. I wondered if the lime green P3 would truly provide the same long-term satisfaction as the Michell Orbe SE, Rega P9 and other “super tables” I’ve had in my home over the last decade. I’ve also had plenty of exposure to tables from SME, Continuum, Spiral Groove and TW-Acustic in the last couple of years. I started thinking about what those big tables do that my new P3-24 can’t. In other words, in these days of financial instability, is it wise to plonk down $50,000 on a quality analog rig? Can you find true happiness with a Rega, Pro-Ject or even… God help me… a Technics SL-1200?

Well, I have to be honest. While it’s certainly fashionable to bash high-end audio these days, those super rigs definitely do many things that their less fancy brethren cannot. Whether these accoutrements are worth the extra cash is up to you. But in many cases, the improvements are far from subtle and do not subscribe to the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Big love

The most obvious quality these analog rigs possess is size. As you go up the audio food chain, you’ll notice that everything starts to sound bigger. I don’t mean that piano keyboards are suddenly a hundred feet across or that Edith Piaf sounds like she’s seven feet tall, but it’s just that the boundaries of the soundstage feel unlimited, and you can truly “see” beyond the walls of your listening room.

The Continuum Criterion

For instance, the Continuum Criterion offered soundstage and imaging that was almost spherical, resulting in sonic information that could be sensed throughout the listening room. Spatial cues were present in front of the speakers as well as behind, providing a sense that I was truly immersed in a live performance. With a powerful amp such as the conrad-johnson Premier 350 and full range speakers such as the Martin-Logan CLXs, the Criterion often made me feel like I was standing at the edge of an abyss and staring into the infinite.

Silence!

You have heard audio reviewers and hardcore audiophiles talk about silence when discussing quality analog, saying such ethereal things as “the silence between the notes is just as important as the notes.” That sounds goofy at first until you realize that the better the silence, the deeper the dynamic swings, which results in more musical goosebumps. Part of the original thrill of hearing music is that contrast of a very deliberate sound against total silence or the random ambience of nature. The best analog rigs are extraordinarily quiet, and easily deliver these contrasts.

Cartridges such as the Koetsus are also able to lower the noise floor considerable and push pops and clicks further into the background. I once had a heated argument with a vinylphobe who insisted that a better cartridge should reveal everything in the grooves, including surface noise. He maintained that the Koetsus were therefore hiding something, which went against the true notion of fidelity. The Koetsus don’t hide surface noise, they just seem to know the difference between musical information and recording artifacts and excel at emphasizing the former. I’ve asked several engineers and designers why this is, and no one has supplied a decent explanation, so don’t ask me. It just is.

Go deep!

If you’ve been in the audio world for a while, you know that good, accurate bass is expensive. It’s easy to get cheap, boomy bass that shakes the floor, but it’s quite different to find bass that accurately reproduces the woody rumblings of a double bass or captures the sound of the room flexing and reacting to the physical movements of the musicians.

Now I’ve seen the measurements and heard the arguments about how digital has a much wider frequency response, but for me the most impressive, natural bass comes from a quality analog rig. The bass seems to feel like it’s rising from the earth, not generated from a computer file. When you get a high-quality analog rig, you have to worry more about the amplifier and the speakers. The source is never the limiting factor.

I call that a bargain…

In addition to tonal accuracy, midrange purity and greater detail, these three qualities define the sound of a truly great analog rig. In most cases, the more modest rigs tend to sound smaller, noisier and often gloss over the details. Many of these turntables, like my new P3-24, still provide a completely believable and natural musical presentation that can satisfy for a lifetime. But you’re kidding yourself if you think ‘tables such as an SME 30, Wilson Benesch Act ONE, Spiral Groove SG-1 or the Shindo Garrard 301 are only offering marginal improvements over the average $2000 rig.

Then again, it’s all about your priorities. Like I’ve said before, if I had $50,000 to spend, it wouldn’t be on a turntable. I’d travel the world for a month, or buy a vehicle that goes really, really fast. But if I returned from the French Riviera, put the BMW M3 in the garage and still had money left over, I’d buy a nice turntable. Probably the Shindo.

Marc Phillips has been writing about hi-fi and music under the Vinyl Anachronist banner since 1998. You can discuss vinyl with Marc at Vinylanach@aol.com