Turntable advice / opinion on setup / sound.

I try very hard not to let THE GOVERNMENT piss me off, but your story about not being allowed to fill your gas cans because they were the wrong color just sent me into a dark place.  In the teeth of a major storm no less.  Deliver me from people with that kind of mentality.

@faustuss 

Since this discussion is about turntables, could I suggest you familiarise yourself with the white paper on Wilson Benesch's Graviton tonearm.

As for knowing Roy did not have access to computer modelling from his get go, the date was around 1968.  Rega was not NASA.  I was working with state-if-the-art computing in the UK and it was very early days.  Arguably the world's first PC, the Olivetti Programma 101, had a memory capacity of 64 words.

My understanding was that Terry Bateman concentrated on electronics at Rega

In 1973, KEF became the first loudspeaker manufacturer in the world to implement the use of computers in loudspeaker design and measurement

@richardbrand 

"As for knowing Roy did not have access to computer modelling from his get go, the date was around 1968.  Rega was not NASA.  I was working with state-if-the-art computing in the UK and it was very early days.  Arguably the world's first PC, the Olivetti Programma 101, had a memory capacity of 64 words.

My understanding was that Terry Bateman concentrated on electronics at Rega"

Hm, did I say from the get-go? When I hit the ground in the early eighties, I performed a quality control function that supported a staff of MIT educated engineers and a manufacturing floor that produced 80 mega bit (which was extremely fast at the time) local area network cards for the likes of Cray, Sun Microsystems, Data General, Digital Equipment Corp the US Government etc.. These extremely complex boards might have a hundred chips of various types in addition to passive components and were modeled on the PCs of the day using "computer modelling and finite element analysis" to design their extremely critical circuits. Nothing like the 2-bit variety you were using but still not the most sophisticated standalone platforms of the time and you think Terry Bateman wouldn't have had access to them to design his circuits? Seems a bit short sighted for an engineer. Did you work for British Leyland or something? Killed by a lack of forward thinking and among other things.

@faustuss 

Hm, did I say from the get-go?

No, I did

They (Wilson Benesch) have an advantage over Rega - they could use computer modelling and finite element analysis from the get-go

Unfortunately (for me) you started in the '80s a couple of decades after me.  The "2-bit variety" I cut my teeth on actually had 6-bit addressing - hence 64 memory locations.

Finite element analysis has nothing to do with electronics or circuit design. It is mainly used in structural analysis, for example to predict the crash performance of a car body, or the propagation of vibrations in a tonearm.  To do this, the overall mechanical structure is modelled as a mesh, and forces for each link in the mesh are modelled as differential equations which very powerful computers can solve.  The finer the mesh, the more accurate the results, but the more compute power you need.

When Australia had a car industry, the boffins at Holden used finite element analysis to design and crash test a ground-up design, the Commodore, and go to full production, without creating any physical prototypes.

In my opinion, the memory address restrictions in computers were suddenly blown away by the release in 1978 of the 32-bit Virtual Address eXtension (VAX) by Digital Equipment Corporation. It could directly address 4-gigabytes of virtual memory.  Back then real memory was still extremely expensive - I agonised whether the two VAX-11/780s I needed should have one megabyte of real memory, or one and a quarter.  Each computer needed several full-size cabinets.  Most Australian universities at that time could afford to acquire one VAX typically supporting 100 time-sharing users.

By 1985 almost the same performance and exactly the same architecture could be had from the MicroVAX II, with a single-chip cpu, a cabinet you could carry and a price tag smallish companies could afford.  You could hook dozens of them up with your Ethernet cards and make a passable supercomputer.  But this was well after Rega was founded.

Did you work for British Leyland or something? Killed by a lack of forward thinking and among other things

I don't think British Leyland was killed by lack of forward-thinking engineers.  You only have to think of the Mini, which set the design parameters for almost every small car produced today - front-wheel drive, east-west engine, wheels at the corners. Then its bigger brothers, with Citroen-like suspension but without the expensive pumps, the 1100 and 1800.

In my opinion, it was killed by the difficulty of successfully managing mergers and acquisitions.  The heads of Morris and Austin had been fierce rivals, then were supposed to cooperate.  Add rivals Triumph and innovative Rover to the mix.  And try to make it work in a class-riddled country plagued with industrial disputes.

@richardbrand 

"Finite element analysis has nothing to do with electronics or circuit design. It is mainly used in structural analysis, for example to predict the crash performance of a car body, or the propagation of vibrations in a tonearm."

Oh please! It's just CAD with some proprietary modules tweaked for your particular application. The Commodor, is that the one that was crash tested into a fixed barrier at 35 MPH and the whole structure collapsed from stem to stern?

"In my opinion, the memory address restrictions in computers were suddenly blown away by the release in 1978 of the 32-bit Virtual Address eXtension (VAX) by Digital Equipment Corporation. It could directly address 4-gigabytes of virtual memory.  Back then real memory was still extremely expensive - I agonised whether the two VAX-11/780s I needed should have one megabyte of real memory, or one and a quarter.  Each computer needed several full-size cabinets.  Most Australian universities at that time could afford to acquire one VAX typically supporting 100 time-sharing users."

Yes, the 11/780 was the first main frame we chose to run ASK/MANMAN which was a material requirements planning software and that was all it could do for us. I was very influential during the implementation which gave me a broad view of a manufacturing environment from concept, engineering documentation, inventory control, WIP through finished goods, procurement, accounts receivable and general ledger.

The cards we produced were based on a unique at the time star shaped token ring topology and our engineering staff relied on the technology to integrate all of their standalone workstations and servers which also acted as a beta site for what they were developing. They could also interface with our MRP software to create indented bills of materials it required, engineering change orders and other necessary documentation to get a product through WIP to finished goods. As for the numerous available ports the VAX was still extremely slow. I would run my usual utilities and immediately swamp it's CPU bringing all other administrative functions to a complete halt throughout the company.

Regarding memory ROM and RAM (we were also implementing VLSI in one our products at time) was becoming more efficient but if we weren't relying on 3 or 5 inch floppies or cassettes it was large tape drives or multi-tiered disc drives. Wasn't long though we outgrew the 11/780 and acquired the capital to lease one of DEC's larger, faster and more reliable models, I think 7800 series or something. Still had the same problems with utilities though.

Interestingly, the technology we were developing in very short time supplanted main frames all together and a lot of the companies that thrived in our area, Wang, Digital, Data General, Prime and others went out of business and startups in the main frame arena like Sequoya never had a chance. 

"I don't think British Leyland was killed by lack of forward-thinking engineers."

It was also government ownership (or maybe Margret spun it off by then) and a joint venture with Honda to build the Sterling which all BL had to do was stamp and unit weld the body panels together and assemble all the parts and ancillaries Honda provided them and they still couldn't pull it off, hence the car was a complete disaster. Don't know how they saved Rover though, they were also certainly building crap at the time.