[Shaddim]

ELP Laser Turntable: Plays Vinyl Records without a Needle
Bill Gaw AA Chapter 55: ELP Laser Turntable

I've watched this for a while and thought it was a clever idea, albeit a bit pricey ($10,000). However, one of my hi-fi loving associates has picked one up and I'm going over to his house tomorrow to see if it's worth the greenbacks, or yen as the case may be. Seems to me that it just may eclipse any other turntable in the world, and for less than half the price of some exotic setups.

I have a considerable amount of vinyl, some of it is extremely rare and/or no longer produced, something like this could make those LPs last indefinitely.

[Cold Warrior]

I'm seeing ELP Laser Turntable as a Google text add on MacNN right now.

What a coincidence.

Or is it?

[Eriamjh]

I thought I saw a system that used a laser for reading LPs back in the mid-80s.

According to Wikipeia, it existed in 1986.

The laser turntable was first conceived by Robert S. Reis, a graduate student at Stanford University (his Master's thesis was "An Optical Turntable"). In 1983 Reis and fellow Stanford engineer Robert E. Stoddard founded Finial Technology with $7 million in venture capital. A year later servo-control expert Robert N. Stark joined the effort. A non-functioning mock-up of the optical turntable was shown at the 1984 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), generating much interest and a fair amount of mystery, since the patents had not yet been granted and the details had to be kept secret. The first working model, the Finial LT-1, was completed two years later and presented at the 1986 CES. The prototype had an interesting flaw: it was so accurate that it played every particle of dirt and dust on the record, rather than pushing them aside as a conventional stylus would. The projected $2500 street price (raised to $3786 in 1988) limited the potential market to serious well-heeled audiophiles.

[analogika]

Last I heard *of* it, the sound is pretty MEH as high-end turntables go, but the geek factor is extremely high, and the fact that it doesn't wear down your vinyl is cool.

But what good is indefinitely conserving your vinyl if you're not actually enjoying it?

[Buckaroo]

Could they run it through a filter or computer to fix the sound?

[Shaddim]

I've heard the opposite, many have said the sound is superior. Well, I'll find out today, I've got my 10 favorite platters packed and ready to go.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Buckaroo 

Could they run it through a filter or computer to fix the sound?

That would invariable have precisely the opposite effect.

"Fix" a crap signal is by definition just adding more crap to it, because EVERYTHING you do to a signal comes with a trade-off.

**** in, **** out is the universal rule in audio.

[residentEvil]

Originally Posted by analogika 

**** in, **** out is the universal rule in audio.

that is universal rule for ALL of life

[Railroader]

Originally Posted by Shaddim 

I've heard the opposite, many have said the sound is superior. Well, I'll find out today, I've got my 10 favorite platters packed and ready to go.

Please report back your experience. This technology seems like a good thing™, but I am not totally convinced. Not that I am going to buy one, It's nice to know such a solution exists.

[Shaddim]

I want to preface this by saying I think the ELP is a fantastic product. Although it's not the most attractive piece of hi-fi gear, it's well constructed and very solid. Kinda reminds me of early Sony Laserdisc players.

The thing is, I think it may be too good.

"What do you mean, professor?"

I mean it's too accurate and possibly too revealing.

The Bad:

First, you must absolutely positively clean each and every record you place into it, no matter if it's only been a day since you played it last, you have to run it through an LP cleaner. Why? Because it tries to play the tiny specs of dust and lint on the vinyl surface. This is bad because it always, always results in tiny clicks and pops. To me, this isn't a huge deal, because I always clean my records before play anyway, but others may find it a bit irritating. Same thing for scratches, it will try to play the scratch. In fact, no matter what it is, if it's on the record surface, it will attempt to play it. You can add a nifty gizmo, called a declicker, that limits such popping, but it softens the overall sound by a very noticeable degree (we tried it), and that just won't do.

Second, it'll reveal a mediocre pressing so fast it will give you whiplash.

Third, it won't play anything but opaque LPs. That means no clear vinyl, no picture disks, no funky colors. Yes, that included my limited pink edition of The Wall, that I'd taken. Also, it won't play 200g media either, too heavy (180s are okay). So, that eliminated my import pressing of Zenyattà Mondatta, which I'd also taken. The last part realing pisses me off, because I have a substantial number (50+) of limited, 200g imports.

Forth, if part of your hobby is tinkering around with your turntable, you're out of luck. There are a couple of controls for rotation speed and laser reading depth, but other than that, there's zilch. I'm not like that, so it doesn't bother me at all.

The Good:

First, holy mother of God... when a disc is clean, scratch free, and falls within spec (grrr), it is the best sounding turntable ever made. Period. No question. Best. It sounded like a CD, only with superior dynamics, better resolution, and a soundstage that had no limits. We switched back and forth between LP and CD and there was no comparison, LP won every time. Also, no hiss, at all, at any volume. Silent parts of a track were truly, well, silent. Possession (Acoustic) by Sarah McLachlan caused goosebumps, I had to listen to it several times. We also switched between the ELP and his Transrotor ZET 3, w/ Transrotor 9.1 tonearm and new Clearaudio Concerto cartridge, and there wasn't even much of a comparison, the ELP trounced it. It wasn't even close. The Transrotor rig, despite being much more expensive, sounded cheap and noisy by comparison. I suppose, however, it all comes down to accuracy. See, one limitation of a physical phono cartridge is that it mixes ~20% of the left and right channels. This can't be helped and it limits the soundstage. Also, even the most advanced cartridges miss the smallest pits, and that limits detail. The most telling difference, however, is there's physical contact itself, and that creates a certain degree of background noise, no matter what you do. None of these are factors with the ELP. Some tracks did sound a bit "sanitized", almost too clean, but I suppose that's another trade off.

Second, being able to control it via remote is just pure trick. Drop in an LP, wait 20 seconds for it to scan the tracks, and it acts just like a CD player, even labeling the track number on it's display.

Third, your prized LPs will last forever with this thing.

Four, no more pricey cartridge replacements. Sure, this doesn't happen too often, unless it's your thing to collect carts, but it is a consideration.

The Ugly:

First, it's ugly. I'm old fashioned, I like the aesthetics of a well built premium turntable. His Transrotor job was gorgeous and I couldn't stop staring at it. Compared to it, the ELP looked like, well, sh*t. I know, there's something to be said for high "geek factor", but it really does look like an early 90s Sony Laserdisc player, and that's neither sexy or modern.

Second, it's $10k with shipping. That's still not cheap, or even reasonable, for most people. Sure, it's the best sounding turntable on God's verdant Earth, but most people still won't shell out that much cabbage for it.


Overall, it's quite impressive and better than I'd imagined it could be... within it's limitations. I would recommend it in a heartbeat to a hardcore audiophile looking for the best sounding turntable. It delivers. Otherwise, it just depends on whether you can live with certain trade-offs. Me? I'm thinking about it, the whole "no 200g media" thing bugs me, along with being restricted to black vinyl, but I'm intrigued and tempted.

[vmarks]

I have a turntable with a linear tracking tonearm. It still uses a needle, but the arm moves perpendicularly to the platter. My understanding is that this is how the platters are cut in the first place, so there's less wear to the platter resulting.

My particular turntable uses a light to scan the positions of the tracks and then allows control like a CD player (skip back to beginning of track, prev track, next track, pick track number.)

Not as advanced as a laser, not as expensive either.

Honestly, I'm not a turntable guy anymore. I will agree that the dynamics of a recording produced for vinyl are better than those produced for CD - the limitations of the medium are what influenced that. In the quest for more gain and normalization, vinyl held producers back from that. CDs do not have that limitation, and so recordings are produced with higher gain, less dynamic range in my observation.

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

I have a turntable with a linear tracking tonearm. It still uses a needle, but the arm moves perpendicularly to the platter. My understanding is that this is how the platters are cut in the first place, so there's less wear to the platter resulting.

Any physical contact causes wear, some experts say that even the most advanced contact based systems will reduce a record's fidelity after 50 plays.

My particular turntable uses a light to scan the positions of the tracks and then allows control like a CD player (skip back to beginning of track, prev track, next track, pick track number.)

Very true, I've seen such systems, though they're rare on high-end tables. But, when I say "like a CD" I mean it's almost as fast as a CD player when switching tracks.

Not as advanced as a laser, not as expensive either.

I completely understand, this type of product is way outside the norm when considering price. Originally it was designed to aid libraries, and those with ponderous collections, in archiving. The fact that a few audiophiles have picked up on it and are taking advantage of certain benefits doesn't change the truth, it's a product with a very small niche market.

Honestly, I'm not a turntable guy anymore. I will agree that the dynamics of a recording produced for vinyl are better than those produced for CD - the limitations of the medium are what influenced that. In the quest for more gain and normalization, vinyl held producers back from that. CDs do not have that limitation, and so recordings are produced with higher gain, less dynamic range in my observation.

It's my understanding that, even today, analog sources are still more accurate.

Originally Posted by HSW article

In your home stereo the CD or DVD player takes this digital recording and converts it to an analog signal, which is fed to your amplifier. The amplifier then raises the voltage of the signal to a level powerful enough to drive your speaker.

A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. This means that no information is lost. The output of a record player is analog. It can be fed directly to your amplifier with no conversion.

This means that the waveforms from a vinyl recording can be much more accurate, and that can be heard in the richness of the sound. But there is a downside, any specks of dust or damage to the disc can be heard as noise or static. During quiet spots in songs this noise may be heard over the music. Digital recordings don't degrade over time, and if the digital recording contains silence, then there will be no noise.

Howstuffworks "Is the sound on vinyl records better than on CDs or DVDs?"

[vmarks]

IEEE Spectrum: Slideshow: The Future of Music

IEEE Spectrum: The Future of Music

Mastering for vinyl was always a balance between loudness and playing time. The louder you wanted a song to be, the wider the groove needed to be in order to accommodate the larger amplitude of the transcription. Since there's only a limited amount of usable surface area per vinyl disc, gaining loudness meant sacrificing playing time, especially on a long playing (LP) record where upwards of six songs were often fit on each side of the disc.

In order to save the cost of manufacturing an excessive number of vinyl discs per album, playing time usually won out over loudness. Live music typically has a dynamic range of 120 dB, peaking at about the same loudness of a jet engine (though some concerts have gone even louder). Vinyl records tend to have about 70 dB of dynamic range. This meant that in order to fit a song onto a record, it either needed to have its overall amplitude reduced or it needed to be compressed—have its peaks brought down to a lower level—to fit within the given range. How much of each was done varied from record to record and defined the art of mastering. However, the tools of analog signal processing limited the amount of compression that was possible.

Analog compressors of this era were basically voltage control amplifiers that varied the level of an output signal based on a control voltage, similar to the devices that regulate signals in AM radio. Such compressors were typically used on individual instrument tracks (vocals, guitar, etc.) to add clarity to a sound or to change the sound of an instrument for effect. However, in some cases, such as with the hit singles put out by Motown Records (for example, “Want Ads” by Honey Cone), compressors were used to boost the loudness of songs to higher-than-average levels. Mastering engineers accomplished this by reducing the dynamic range of a song so that the entire song could be amplified to a greater extent before it pushed the physical limits of the medium. This became known as “hot” mastering and was typically done on singles where each side of the record only contained one song. Generally, however, the average level of songs and albums stayed relatively the same throughout the period.

“CD” Behavior

“The invention of digital audio and the compact disc became a new fuel for a previously existing loudness race,” says Bob Katz, a renowned mastering engineer and one of the first outspoken critics of dynamic-range overcompression. “The reason is that the analog media did not permit what we would call ‘normalization' to the peak level.”

[Shaddim]

However, with digital you're always approximating the wave form, even with the best DACs there's a degree of fudging going on.

I'm not an engineer, but I do know that the best vinyl sounds better and fuller than any CD.

I appreciate the articles, I'll check them out tomorrow, after I've caught a bit of sleep.

[vmarks]

I and the author of the articles agree with you that vinyl sounds better - and the reason is that, despite the lowering of the total dB level, the dynamic range is better because the medium limited producers from mastering everything at a consistently high gain level.

CDs have no such limitation, everything is mastered high gain and normalized, so the wave form looks consistent, no ups and downs - and it's tiring to listen to.

[analogika]

Actually, the overcompression of CDs has merely been an increasing trend in CD mastering over the past fifteen years.

It happened in parallel to the same trend in radio broadcasting.

There is no inherent reason why a CD can't be mastered to sound like music, rather than noise with a beat - except that record company execs and ignorant customers/musicians think that something that ain't as LOUD AS THE NEXT THING ain't worth buying 'cuz it sounds like crap.

Can o' worms.

[vmarks]

Sure, but the limitations of vinyl prevented the worst of it.

So, it sounds better.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

Sure, but the limitations of vinyl prevented the worst of it.

So, it sounds better.

No - it just wasn't the *expectation* at the time.

There's plenty of vinyl around today (they never stopped making it, you know) that sounds at least as bad or worse as/than the CD counterparts.

Remember that most vinyl today is played on those total-crap Technics 1210's, with needle weight set to vinyl-raping 2.5 grams for maximum LOUDNESS and PHATness. (Unfortunately for those of us searching out used copies of vinyl legends, a single playing on a DJ system is perfectly adequate for completely ruining a piece of musical history.)

(Side fact: Rumor has it that the second pressing of Dire Straits' "Brothers In Arms" was deliberately remastered to sound worse when it became apparent that the original vinyl version sounded drastically better than the award-winning CD.)

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

I and the author of the articles agree with you that vinyl sounds better - and the reason is that, despite the lowering of the total dB level, the dynamic range is better because the medium limited producers from mastering everything at a consistently high gain level.

CDs have no such limitation, everything is mastered high gain and normalized, so the wave form looks consistent, no ups and downs - and it's tiring to listen to.

My apologies, I was more than half asleep when I was posting last night, I get what you're saying now.

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by analogika 

(Side fact: Rumor has it that the second pressing of Dire Straits' "Brothers In Arms" was deliberately remastered to sound worse when it became apparent that the original vinyl version sounded drastically better than the award-winning CD.)

It's the truth. I have a first pressing, stolen from my uncle, and it's embarrassingly better than CD. And no, he's not getting it back. Not that he cares, he hasn't used his turntable in 15 years.

However. There's good news for those who want the original pressing goodness, there's a 180g 2LP limited release that rivals the original, plus all tracks are at full length. Rejoice!

Musicdirect - DIRE STRAITS - BROTHERS IN ARMS (2LP 180g)

[Eriamjh]

Originally Posted by analogika 

There is no inherent reason why a CD can't be mastered to sound like music, rather than noise with a beat - except that record company execs and ignorant customers/musicians think that something that ain't as LOUD AS THE NEXT THING ain't worth buying 'cuz it sounds like crap.

I think you're confusing the garbage that passes as music nowadays with real music.

I'm just kidding, I love rap.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Eriamjh 

I'm just kidding, I love rap.

I can't stand rap, but I have a fairly large amount of recent music.

Some of it even sounds decent.

[Shaddim]

I wish I could find more of it that sounds decent, especially on vinyl.