1. Home
  2. analog
  3. 198813-3976

The Love of Turntables and The Organization Of An Audio Room

This is an area that has been a challenge for me, stretching over a number of years. Well specifically since we moved to this house about 10 years ago. My listening room is our closed off living room, and its primary purpose is music but we do have friends over occasionally. If you can limit your number of friends in your life, then this becomes a somewhat minor problem.

My system is somewhat complicated, and there are a number of boxes. My real dilemma is turntables. I love them. I try to limit myself to two, but I have not been successful. Currently have four. Well 3.5 as one needs a tonearm and cartridge. The third turntable becomes problematic because if I put it on my credenza, then I do not have a space to reach over the back to get to cabling and pre amp or phono stage. When things are neat and tidy it looks like this

But it is on the verge of getting out of control

Sometimes I envy those folks who can be content with one turntable. The black table with the DP80 on it will never leave because the plinth was machined by my son. But sometimes I do wonder if I sold all the others and combined things to one upper tier table, what could I have? But conversely I really wonder if my system and room could really show the benefits of the next tier of record spinner.

neonknight
oberoniaomnia
361 posts
 

I am also more in line with @ghdprentice but respect those who want more TTs. I think one of your problems is the many small pieces of furniture. If you want to go all in on multiple TTs, have the furniture that helps with it. I would get rid of the credenza and the couple of short vinyl shelves, and have a long support built. possibly 1-2 rows for records below, on top the TTs. You may even consider putting TTs on top of one another on different levels of floor standing shelves, or have some floating wall mounted shelves.

Fewer furniture items will make for a cleaner look and in the end be more space efficient.

If you are somewhat handy, making some support structure out of hardwood is not that difficult. Or maybe your son can help with it?

motown-l
355 posts
 

I am grateful to have an understanding wife who knows how much I love having a dedicated audio space. That being said, the space is small and I also love having other gadgets on my audio rack, besides turntables. With that in mind, I have always had only one table in my system at a time. I rely on having removable headshells, despite the added mass and etc., so I can indulge my tastes in different sounding multiple cartridges. I would love to have more than one turntable, but it's easier to store a second or third headshell with a mounted cartridge.

lewm
14,688 posts
 

When I had the dp80 side by side with sp10 mk2, I preferred the dp80 by a narrow but audible margin. (Both were fully serviced calibrated, recapped, etc. The late Bill Thalmann did the work and also replaced the OEM transistors in the dp80; there are modern equivalents with better reliability.) That led me to sell the Technics, but I subsequently acquired an NOS MK3. I admit my motivation in addition to that of music lover is vintage gadgets.

gkelly's avatar
gkelly
1,040 posts
 

More cowbells and get a bigger credenza. Just be glad you are not one of those guys who have 40 vintage monster receivers in their basement collection. but if you do find yourself going in that direction, remember the difference between a hoarder and a collector is a collector curates their stuff. 

neonknight OP
529 posts
 

@lewm  Did you ever make a comparison between the DP80 and the SP10 MK III? If so, would you share what the differences were? 

More to discover