DrBA Analogue Test Bench: The Turntable

Let me start this article with one of my favorite motivational sayings:

Everyone said it couldn’t be done! But then someone came along who didn’t know that —and just did it.

But we’ll get to that later. I would like to extend my blog writing about analogue music sources. This applies to both equipment and outstanding recordings. Vinyl records have been my great passion for decades. I think that many people strive for optimizing their own HiFi equipment over the years. The most important component in this context is of course the record player or many say simply turntable. This involves three essential components: the turntable itself (just spinning the records with constant speed), the tonearm and the cartridge. There are only a few manufacturers who produce these three components themselves and then also offer a complete product that can play at the highest level. Therefore, this hobby is often about putting together the best components yourself. This may also be a reason why it never gets boring, because combining different setups can produce very different sound results. For people who have nothing to do with this hobby, it may seem strange that there are a variety of turntables available for purchase, and the only features is to rotate the record at a constant speed and to provide the option of mounting different tonearms. I know three different drive methods to spin the platter: belt drive, rim drive, direct drive. For decades I have always used belt drives units. The belt provides a very good isolation to motor noise but it’s own flexibility is a problem when it comes to speed stability and dynamics and the belt needs to be replaced regularly. So already a while ago I decided to replace my belt drive turntable with a direct drive. I had also decided that it would be my “last” turntable. I know what some people are thinking now and I have to admit that they might be right. You tell this yourself as justification and in the end things turn out differently…

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Buying used Compression Drivers – What Condition is acceptable?

Some days ago, I bought a pair of used JBL 2447J compression drivers at a well known German selling platform. The seller rated the condition of the drivers as very good but showed only one photo in his sales advertisement:

Offered JBL 2447J

I contacted the seller and asked for more photos to show the condition. However, the seller refused, saying that the drivers were built into his setup and that the drivers would only be removed after the sale. However, he literally assured me that the drivers were in perfect original condition. In retrospect, I’m obviously annoyed with myself for not insisting on taking more photos, but so far I’ve had consistently good experiences. Until now…

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A True Grand Cinema Horn

Recently, I was involved in a private discussion with a guy who introduced himself as expert for home cinema setups. The topic was about a horn that could be used for a really large home cinema setup. Not what many would imagine immediately like a small room for 2-3 people. No, truly large for 10 or more people and the listening rows / seats have a third dimension in the vertical direction the more far away they are from the source. For such a setup, the horn should have very good directivity control. The person tirelessly promoted the TAD TH4003 as the ultimate solution for such setups. At that time I only knew the TH4003 horn from some pictures. But over the last years I have developed an eye for whether a horn profile meets certain requirements or not. That’s why I expressed my biggest concerns about the vertical pattern control of the TH4003. However, since I had no mesh file or STEP file of the TH4003 available at the time, no final assessment could be made. The discussion then more or less fizzled out. Some months later, a STEP file for TH4003. A few months later, a STEP file literally “fell off the back of a pssing truck” ;-), which gave me the opportunity to examine the horn more closely. I also remembered one of my first William Neile waveguides and the experiments with gentle diffraction slots and realized that I actually already had something much better in the drawer.

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