"You spent how much on that cartridge?"


Should there be a ratio of the amount of vinyl to the cost of your playback system? A recent thread implied that you should not have a nice rig unless you own a lot of albums. Almost like one does not qualify.

I want to enjoy listening to the relative-to-some few that I own without compromising. I agree that if you have little to no familiarity with the format, you should enter gingerly. But once you've decided you like it, why accept mediocrity?

 

 

tcutter

Does it make sense to put a $15K cartridge on a $2k turntable? I haven’t heard of anyone who has tried that.  The other way around, vice-versa, in reverse, might be better.  Unless that’s backwards.

A Koetsu Platinum stone on a vintage 1980s SOTA Star w/ FR64fx arm sounds amazing. That's not exactly 2K / 15K but it's close. I've done the reverse too: $2K-ish cart on 15K or 30K table, and it was great too but I'll take the old SOTA / Koetsu in those instances. You can do this equation a million different ways with other makes & models, and observe great variance in the results. As I was taught early on in Computer Science at GA Tech in the 1990s - the answer is always: "it depends". 

Post removed 

I am British school. First you get PRAT and dynamics right and then do the rest. And to accomplish that you do need great table to begin with. And this great table unfortunately cannot cost $2k new these days. Probably starts with $4k or $5k. Then you might want to put your $15k cartridge in, not forgetting excellent arm, of course. I would not do it but there is no reason why it shouldn't sound good. 

Post removed 

If you need someone to validate how much you spend on your system, you’ve got some soul searching to do.  Follow your heart - if your ears want to hear a certain musicality or detail in music get yourself setup.  Who cares about someone else’s idea of when you should have a ‘good system’.