It's because you're bypassing turntable's isolation by tapping the plinth. The main purpose of integrating an isolation solution to a turntable is to prevent air-borne and structure-borne vibrations from speakers and room reaching to cartridge.
Upcoming Nagra turntable
- Thread starter matakana
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I share your views. The great thing about this comparison between the Nagra and the AF1P is it comes from a retailer that carries both brands and one of their customers (who owns both). Therefore, it’s unbiased.
Regarding Nagra’s ability to pull it off despite never having made a turntable: this is possible. Consider:
- drive mechanism is not that different from a reel to reel
- other high end inventors have entered the field with a successful first time product, such as SAT. And Nagra has a lot more resources than SAT. If you have smart people and are willing to invest the time and effort, you can come out with a world class turntable from the start.
I would personally rather have the harmonic and musical turntable, since vinyl is inherently not the most accurate medium anyway.
What’s also interesting about this comparison is that the Nagra cartridge was not used, and I’m hearing fantastic things about the cartridge.
I’ve been to dealerships where there’s a clear bias about which product they would rather sell you. In that case it had a lot to do with margins.
Yes, 100% agree. Been there done that, when I was a young 'green behind the ears' 18 year old a looong time ago....cost me quite a bit of money (that I took out a loan for) and thereafter being very sad listening to not so good music whilst paying for a big loan and therefore said hifi equipment was not used as much as it should have been....ended up selling this particular hifi equipment at quite a loss a few years later (when I had paid off the loan) !
As the old saying goes....'once bitten twice shy' !
The design of the Nagra turntable is interesting, and the build quality, from the photos, looks impeccable.
But isn't it risky to spend that much money on an unknown and unproven tonearm?
And it seems like the tonearm is not replaceable?
But isn't it risky to spend that much money on an unknown and unproven tonearm?
And it seems like the tonearm is not replaceable?
Borrowing money for depreciating assets can be quite dicey.
$790,000!!!
*faints*
I am sorry, but that is either bad engineering or price gouging. Why should a turntable cost more than SEVEN Porsche 911's?
*faints*
I am sorry, but that is either bad engineering or price gouging. Why should a turntable cost more than SEVEN Porsche 911's?
The tonearm is designed by the same person who designed the Kronos arm, Andre Theriault. It's not the same arm and an improvement to the Kronos arm in many ways (e.g., easily adjustable azimuth, VTA); but it's not an unknown or unproven design.
You can certainly replace it; but would need a mount to be made. I doubt Nagra would make it; but I don't see why someone else couldn't. That said, it was designed as a system, and I think that's really important, especially for a high end product. Ideally you want the table, arm, and cartridge to come from the same company, or at least be selected and recommended as a good match by the same company.
This is not the price of the Nagra table, its about $180K USD list. Including tonearm. This makes it considerably less expensive than the Air Force 1 Premium and a lot less expensive than the SAT table and arm.
Except the Air Force One is more expensive and one of their customers has both. So again, the feedback is objective.
Hi Ron, what do you mean by "not replaceable?" Are you referring to installing other manufacturers arms? My dealer has 2 Nagra armwands, for two different cartridges. So this arm can be easily interchanged for another Nagra arm. As others have mentioned, this is a system approach, table and arm are integral as a unit vs many other tables that you can do what you want regarding arms.
Correct.
But if tapping on the record doesn't get to the cartridge, anything airborne or via the feet won't, either.
On the other hand, if the isolation system is wonderful but you can hear taps on the record, that means every bass note and general audio will get back into the system unless the turntable is in a different room.
Why do replacement parts for a military aircraft cost more than multiple 911s?
Small batch runs of esoteric parts are expensive.
I'm sorry but tapping on the record is not a checking method of turntable isolation and has nothing to do with airborne vibration or feet's isolation.
I don't know how you reached that conclusion but receiving no feedbacks on the cartridge by tapping on the record is only the indication of a well damped record, nothing more. A well damped record is good to prevent ringing but overdamping should be avoided. Otherwise you end up damping stylus movements and diminish transients read by the stylus (ex. soft felt mat). Not overdamping is very critical. Anyway it's only related with record mat but that's another subject.
As a result turntable isolation can and should be checked by tapping the platform that turntable sits not tapping the record itself.
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Tell me why.
If bass propagates through the air it can cause vibrations in the LP that are then picked up by the stylus as extraneous noise.
Not necessarily through the feet or suspension but via direct vibration of the vinyl itself, and if the record is solidly damped suspension isolation becomes a mostly moot point.
There have been arguments about this for some time.
To me - it's obvious you feel differently - any vibration of the medium in any way is wrong and it is impossible for a record to be "overdamped."
You are trying to pick up the signal pressed into the grooves, not the vibration of the medium itself. To say otherwise akin to saying that analog tape hiss is an integral part of the playback sound of analog audio tape when in reality it's extraneous noise. Some people did not like digital when CDs were released not because of the harsh sound of digital audio itself, but because the lack of background noise of some type - tape hiss, ticks and pops of a stylus - was disturbing to them.
When a record is mastered, to the best of my knowledge it is not mastered to account for the fact that the vibration of the vinyl itself will add extra bass, for example.
I understand where people may like the euphonic effect of extra unintended reverb or echo added by a sympathetically vibrating playback medium, but it's not what was intended and not what was present in the original recording.
It's much like if you have a favorite tube amp that adds warmth to the sound. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but that in no way means that warmth was present on the original recording nor that the additional warmth is a more "faithful" reproduction of the signal.
But it's a sonic preference and there's nothing wrong with it, and that's how a view sympathetic vibration of the record itself during playback.
Speakers are one area where we make this choice regularly. My dealer and I have had regular discussions about how in high-end audio you can chase pure, unrevealing merciless accuracy to the source or whether you just want anything you play to sound good.
Some would say Wilson Audio and Boulder are brands that tend to come down on the side of accuracy where Sonus Faber and McIntosh have long focused on making anything you play sound beautiful. Franco Serblin-era Sonus Faber in particular made everything played through say the Amati Homage Aniversario sound absolutely exquisitely beautiful at the cost of the last bit of accuracy.
Neither approach is wrong, they're just different and only you can decide which is your end goal.
Guess I heard it this past weekend in the WIlson/Nagra room at the Montreal Audio show. With it's cartridge. Heard "A Soldiers Tale" Believe it was a Fidelio recording - or something by Nagra.
Absolutely transfixing. By far the best sound at the show. Imaging / Air - insert your own verbiage. Defines what 2-channel audio reproduction is capable of. Certainly in relation to a lot of the "noise" at the show.
Talked with Bill Peugh(sp?) from Wilson who was supporting the Dealer. Charming fellow. Said something like this TT was a "special edition" of some sort.
Forgot - Yep it DOES have the obligatory NAGRA meter - no idea what it measures - probably accumulated RPM. Never saw more meters in a Hi Fi room before.
Absolutely transfixing. By far the best sound at the show. Imaging / Air - insert your own verbiage. Defines what 2-channel audio reproduction is capable of. Certainly in relation to a lot of the "noise" at the show.
Talked with Bill Peugh(sp?) from Wilson who was supporting the Dealer. Charming fellow. Said something like this TT was a "special edition" of some sort.
Forgot - Yep it DOES have the obligatory NAGRA meter - no idea what it measures - probably accumulated RPM. Never saw more meters in a Hi Fi room before.
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ideally you want the armboard and the platter to be connected together to maintain perfect synergy to properly navigate the groove. the plinth is the method to do this connecting. so tapping on the plinth should cause noise through the speakers. it's a problem if it does not do that.
OTOH you want the plinth, platter and armboards to be decoupled from the motor and the rack if possible, to avoid feedback from the musical energy and motor resonance.
it's not that complicated.
there are particular designs with stand alone arm-board towers, or custom versions. but these have their own sets of challenges related to this separation. and there are air bearing and air float platter/plinth designs that might not work the same. but the concept of a consistent solid platter-plinth-armboard connection is the ideal. those three have to be aligned and synergistic one way or the other.
certainly all pieces are subject to air borne energy, unless you remove the tt from the room, which complicates things in different ways. but when i listen with headphones compared to my speakers, i don't hear anything different. so the degree of air borne music energy effect is minimal on the platter/plinth/arm. not saying zero, just not relevant to my enjoyment. i do have a concrete floor, good racks, and well engineered turntable designs. so YMMV.
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Great feedback, thanks for your impressions!
I think the Nagra Anniversary Turntable will be turning a lot of heads as reviews start to get published. Nagra was probably waiting for their cartridge and HD phono stage to be ready before sending it out for reviews.
Don't make the mistake of outright dismissing this TT because it's their first (as I initially did). It's not technically a pure belt drive, and leverages much of Nagra's R2R experience.
The Nagra meter shows rotation speed in two scales.
the Esoteric Grandioso T1 is also a first effort. like Nagra, Esoteric has some serious engineering chops behind it as a subsidiary of TEAC, also with reel to reel tape deck experience. Esoteric also builds the best digital disc spinning mechanicals. their innovative patented turntable magnetic drive system has some serious technology and execution too.
Esoteric did decide to use an Ikeda arm, and allow for other arm boards to be added, so the efforts are different in that way.
but agree that we should not dismiss first efforts out of hand.
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