Sansui Auto Direct Drive Turntable FR-D35
It's thanks to having dragged this turntable and my declining collection of vinyl around for a few decades, unused, that I decided to put a vintage "audiophile" system together, as recounted here. Now that I've done so and have a working system, what is the reward for this long-suffering unutilized turntable? To be cast aside for something else immediately!
The whole idea behind this stereo system build was to put together the best sounding system that I could, while spending the least amount of money. Or at least an ongoing battle between amount spent and quality achieved. It's very typical in many endeavours that you can get some pretty good bang for the buck without spending a lot of money. It's also typical to fairly quickly reach a point of diminishing returns, where the more money that you spend, the improvements become ever more miniscule. The trick then is to bump right up against that point--at least to your own personal tolerance level. For some, no improvement is too small. That's not me.
With this Sansui turntable, though, while it was good enough to spark my interest in doing this; it's just not good enough to be a regular part of this system. Let me explain: I now have a system that is capable of reproducing music with a great deal of resolution and clarity. The stylus here isn't capable of extracting high resolution and the cartridge not capable of turning everything sensed by the stylus into a good electrical signal, so it fails in terms of resolution: It's been fairly good in terms of extracting detail where it was pretty clear cut (rock music with a few instruments and really clear mix).
When I tried listening to some classical music where there was a lot going on, it quickly became clear that it was just overwhelmed. As an example, I tried listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Right from the very first movement when the instruments all come in, and rise to a crescendo, it just becomes a smeary mass of sound, where it is not easy to distinguish the instruments. A comparison listen of the same Herbert von Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic recording via Apple Music Lossless (via the Belkin Soundform Connect Airplay 2 receiver hooked up to the same system) demonstrated that the resolution of sound coming from this album should be much better. Given the relative pedigrees of everything in the signal chain, it's pretty logical to blame the turntable.
Ok, so much for resolution, what about fidelity? Well that's where the rest of the turntable joins the cartridge and stylus in being a bit of a letdown; and also indicates that replacing the cartridge would only go so far. There are a couple of objective performance indicators that can help you measure how well your turntable is at reproducing sound: Wow, Flutter and speed in RPMs (revolutions per minute). Wikipedia provides a good technical description of Wow and Flutter, but the tldr is that these are variations in the turntable speed. A regular album, as we know, is played at 33 1/3 RPM. If the turntable cannot consistently play at 33.3x speeds it will not reproduce the music at the correct pitch.
If the turntable cannot hold whatever speed without too much variation this will show up in the Wow and Flutter numbers; and if high enough you will hear it as a "warbling" or wandering in the tone of the music. This will be most readily apparent when listening to music with long sustained notes, such as you will typically find more often in piano or classical music. There are apps available for IOS and Android that will let you measure these numbers using the accelerometers in your smartphone.
What kinds of things have I already done, to ensure that I was getting the best possible sound out of that turntable? Good sound starts with clean albums. I got a cleaning kit--not one of those expensive album washers, just your basic kit with brushes and fluids--that I'll discuss in an upcoming post. I religiously clean my albums before playing; and regularly clean the stylus as well.
What about setup? I used the level built into my phone to get the turntable as flat as possible. I ensured that it was on a surface that would not overly pick up resonation from the speakers; and the speakers are on a hard basement floor with padded flooring between them and the concrete, so there will be minimum resonation feeding back into the turntable from the speaker. I replaced the rubber platter mat with an acrylic one that was supposed to bring more detail and less static. The static was indeed noticeable reduced, but I didn't hear any more detail, compared to the rubber mat. Lastly, I used a stylus weigh scale to set the weight to a conservative 1.4 grams: Heavy enough to stick to the grooves and track well, without being so heavy as to cause premature wear of the album. These measures were already all in place when I decided that much improvement would be needed; and that I would be better off to start with a new platform.
What are good mass-market audiophile turntables? The beauty of the vintage audio market is that there is so much choice out there. I wouldn't be looking at anything super-exotic; but rather looking for a turntable that will become the reference device in that area. In terms of technologies that I'm looking at, it will be the big 3, in order of what I currently consider to be their relative desirability for audiophile gear: Idler Wheel Drive, Belt Drive and Direct Drive. Some good vintage brands include Thorens, VPI, Dual, Rega, and many more.
It is also possible that I end up with a couple of different turntables. I will almost certainly end up with multiple cartridges with different characteristics. We'll see. I do have a candidate on the way that I should have my hands on by the end of the week. Hopefully it will be in good condition, as I will be getting it well used and not serviced; but the other nice thing about vintage gear is that they are well understood and parts availability is still generally good; so servicing should be readily available; or maybe I'll roll up my sleeves and tear it down myself as a learning opportunity. We will see. More to come.
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