Phono/Line & Feedback/Damping issues on turntables - advice

[Minos Kritikos]

Hello good people of the mixvibes community, I would like to share with you some advice if you are looking to buy turntables.

I've been a pro vinyl DJ for about 15 years now and I own two technics mk5 back home in another country and was in the market to buy new turntables for (DVS and just plain old vinyl mixing), not technics as there are viable alternatives out there for less money and I don't want to risk shipping mine here.

Scouting the internet, I made a list of 'super oem' turntables (the only viable comparison to technics in my humble opinion) based on the original hanpin DJ 5500. I noticed all of them (except from two, more on this shortly) use a phone/line swicthable output at the back. Now for me this is just a gimmick, even though some might find a good use for it, but it actually gets theoretically worse than just been a gimmic;. Problem with this is the following: A phono only output turntable has a "pure" (using generic terminology to not get into detailed electronics rants) signal path from needle to output. All these turntables that have switchable phono/line, incorporate the use of a pcb board based preamp, which whether it is of good quality or not is irrelavant, as what actually matters is that even when the phono output is selected, the signal goes through the pcb board which introduces various capacitors in the signal chain that increase the resistance load for the audio signal resulting in a loss of treble output (this is the generic version). Now call me an audiophile snob or whatever, but this actually bothers me.

Now, when doing my homework, i found only two turntables within the 'super-oem' turntable league that don't do this and maintain the traditional signal path direct from cartridge to output. Funnily enough, these two models each lie on the opposite extremes of price cost. The most expensive is the newly released Pioneer PLX-1000 (Pioneer us doing some heavy advertising about the 'purity' of the audio signal and i am not willing to spend this money right now, i don't have it. The second, and also the cheapest 'super oem' out there, is the Ominotronic DD-5250. I ended up buying two of these instead of the any of the others as it was the cheapest, "purest" super oem i could find (sense of irony eh?, cheapest also being the best). Keep in mind that all 'super oem' turntables are of high and equal quality, no matter what each brand charges for them.

While all this probably doesn't make much of a difference for DVS, reason i'm saying all this is that if you are someone who chooses wav's over mp3's, valve amplifiers over solid state etc..then you're probably an ocd cursed/blessed audiophile or you just have more money than sense! If you don't care about or don't hear such differences then please go ahead and ignore/abuse my post! i bought two excellent turntables with a "pure" and traditional audio signal path for about half the price of all other 'super oem' turntable and i am not sharing this information to boast, but rather for the joy of sharing, informed consumerism, good karma etc..

Omnitronic make the exact same model in black (DD 5220L) but with a phono/line switch, which would serve as an ideal experimental environment to prove/disprove this point where the only difference would be the output board. Unfortunately, because i'm not loaded with cash and spare time, i chose two 5250 as i wish to spend my limited free time spinning vinyl. This would be a good experiment: Omnitronic DD 5250 vs omnitronic DD 5220L using same cartridge/record/cables etc.. through a recording software with recorded samples.

So, for those of you in the market for turntables, I hope this was useful and I recommend buying the omnitronic while it's still cheap!

Peace


P.S. I'l be posting pictures soon

[daniel clark]

liked that posting ,,

[LukeAnnett]

Got to say I agree with you.

I have 6 Stanton str8-150s and 2 st-150s that I picked up cheap. ALL of them have excessive noise issues when on phono AND line.

The top of the line reloop apparently has wow and flutter equal to the technics but again, I don't like the idea of changeable to line.

I've reverted back to Technics to be honest after tiring of the super-oems. None of them hold their pitch as good as technics imho.

[Minos Kritikos]

Got to say I agree with you.

I have 6 Stanton str8-150s and 2 st-150s that I picked up cheap. ALL of them have excessive noise issues when on phono AND line.

The top of the line reloop apparently has wow and flutter equal to the technics but again, I don't like the idea of changeable to line.

I've reverted back to Technics to be honest after tiring of the super-oems. None of them hold their pitch as good as technics imho.

Hey buddy, what kind of noise are you referring to? 50/60 Hz? feedback?

[Minos Kritikos]

Loving them (maybe even more than my technics!). No noise whatsoever, beautiful feeling platter and feedback from these decks! Very happy my research paid off

10604592_809578115777162_3177665607127911122_o.jpg

[djdubc]

i just checked them out...awsome turntables mane

[Stormcaller]

What are they like for torque? I've had turntables where the platter slowed down when holding the record still even with a felt slip mat and 2 layers of carrier bag sheets under it. All the signal path purity in the world won't help that.

Also, to the guys with noise on their stantons: it's a bit ghetto but you could always wire the cartridge straight into some phono leads zip tied to the tonearm. That's exactly how technics are inside. There is literally no circuitry between the cartridge and the phono. Failing that you can mod the turntable to bypass everything inside the same way.

[Minos Kritikos]

torque is awesome on them, only slows down when i press hard on the platter...I would take these over my techincs any day (don't shoot me purists!!) but for the money these are selling for they are a steal...also no noise issues whatsoever ..go get yourself a pair!

Glad to see at least some of you found this useful

[UncleVibes]

I use since ten years Vestax turntables without any problems. But Vestax is dead now and my turntables still work

[DJ Vintage]

Torque on the super OEMs is higher than on the original Techics, so that should not be an issue.

I want to pitch in on the line/phone bit here. Not wanting to fan the flame on the "is it relevant" discussion (our audience really won't notice the extra capacitor load :-) introduced into the signal path), I do feel that it's somewhat of a mute point, since many mixers and most controller will do the exact same thing with your phone signal that is done if the preamp is in your TT.

There is NO way to get sound straight from needle to your channel fader, period. You need the RIAA correction and you need preamping. Always.

The only point would be that if you use a TT with a preamp built in in phono setting, the sound goes through the pcb/preamp (assuming you are right here, you seem to have done your home work, and it's logical as there is usually one set of output connectors) and this adds some things to the signal path it shouldn't.

My argument on the flipside to that is to use the built-in preamp and have a high signal level going into your mixer/controller and bypassing it's preamp. I have had more problems in the past with the low phono signal picking up annoying noises (and don't even think about using phono outputs without hooking up the ground cable LOL) than with anything else.

So, while a true -nothing in between- phone signal might not be contaminated leaving the TT, the moment it does leave, it's like a giant antenna carrying a very low level signal to your mixer.

At the end of the day, TTs are just not the best way to get a sound signal from a carrier to a mixer/controller. Whatever way you hook it up. IMHO of course!

From a purely technical point of view, vinyl (not DVS, the actual music) is not the best medium for sound anyway. So starting with a sub-par carrier and then worrying about what happens to a less than optimal signal in the rest of the sound path seems a bit odd. If sound quality is the only true measure here, then you'd have to switch to the purest digital sound path you can find, starting with a high level lossless digital source, all sound processing in the digital realm at the same bit rate and only at the very end of the signal path ONE high end DA conversion taking place.

It is truly good to know that if I ever want to start lugging ungainly, heavy, sensitive gear around again (i.e. TTs), I can just go out and buy the cheapest stuff out there!

With musical and respectful greetinx,
Chuck