@rauliruegas, thank you for the explanation. English is not my native tongue, so perhaps I was ignorant of the correct meaning. I stand corrected!
I’m not a member of the ’Congregation of MS Acolytes’ and their products are not at all sacrosanct to me. Even so, trial and error have convinced me that even the humble RX-1500 sounds better TO ME than the various modern turntable I’ve tried. These had cost me more, albeit nowhere near the $40k of the table you endorsed. For the people who are prepared to invest that kind of money in a turntable I should hope they get better sound than the RX-5000 or its derivates that cost less than $10k. But such a comparison doesn’t make any sense (I can think of 40.000 reasons why......).
About those Micro plateaus. When I first installed it I was horrified about the ringing. As expected, when used ’naked’ it really sounded terrible. Adding the standard issue DISK-SE rubber mat ’killed’ the ringing to some extend, but it effectively ’killed’ the music too. So at first I was very disappointed about the sound quality (and about the purchase I might add).
Then someone was kind enough to inform me that I really needed to add the CU-180 (or CU-500) copper mat. It took some effort finding it, but I’m glad that I did. Things immediately fell into place. The uncontrolled and restless sound of the ’naked’ plateau disappeared, while retaining the liveliness and dynamics that were killed with adding a rubber mat (or cork, or leather, I tried all usual suspects). The resulting sound of this gunmetal/copper ’sandwich’ (a kind of constrained layer damping avant la lettre?) must have been fully intentional.
Many manufacturers in the 80’s were using various materials to dampen their plateaus (e.g. my Pioneer PL-70L II has some bituminous material underneath it). We can safely assume that Micro was perfectly aware of this and apparently decided against it.
So my assumption is that they left their gunmetal (and stainless steel) plateaus undamped on purpose. My listening experience suggest as much, BUT I do think that these copper mats should have been an integral part of the package and should never have been sold separately as an ’add on’ accesory.
The unfortunate result of this faulty marketing strategy is that there are probably many Micro owners out there who do not hadve the copper mat and consequently have no idea what their table is supposed to sound like.
I’m not a member of the ’Congregation of MS Acolytes’ and their products are not at all sacrosanct to me. Even so, trial and error have convinced me that even the humble RX-1500 sounds better TO ME than the various modern turntable I’ve tried. These had cost me more, albeit nowhere near the $40k of the table you endorsed. For the people who are prepared to invest that kind of money in a turntable I should hope they get better sound than the RX-5000 or its derivates that cost less than $10k. But such a comparison doesn’t make any sense (I can think of 40.000 reasons why......).
About those Micro plateaus. When I first installed it I was horrified about the ringing. As expected, when used ’naked’ it really sounded terrible. Adding the standard issue DISK-SE rubber mat ’killed’ the ringing to some extend, but it effectively ’killed’ the music too. So at first I was very disappointed about the sound quality (and about the purchase I might add).
Then someone was kind enough to inform me that I really needed to add the CU-180 (or CU-500) copper mat. It took some effort finding it, but I’m glad that I did. Things immediately fell into place. The uncontrolled and restless sound of the ’naked’ plateau disappeared, while retaining the liveliness and dynamics that were killed with adding a rubber mat (or cork, or leather, I tried all usual suspects). The resulting sound of this gunmetal/copper ’sandwich’ (a kind of constrained layer damping avant la lettre?) must have been fully intentional.
Many manufacturers in the 80’s were using various materials to dampen their plateaus (e.g. my Pioneer PL-70L II has some bituminous material underneath it). We can safely assume that Micro was perfectly aware of this and apparently decided against it.
So my assumption is that they left their gunmetal (and stainless steel) plateaus undamped on purpose. My listening experience suggest as much, BUT I do think that these copper mats should have been an integral part of the package and should never have been sold separately as an ’add on’ accesory.
The unfortunate result of this faulty marketing strategy is that there are probably many Micro owners out there who do not hadve the copper mat and consequently have no idea what their table is supposed to sound like.
