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Worth Reading?
Seriously, I remember this slab of tech from, like, twenty years ago on Tomorrow’s World. It’s a laser turntable for your vinyl, you sexy bearded classic audiophile – don’t put up with wretched scratching on your favourite Val Doonican LP, allow the five carefully focused lasers to caress the grooves and extract every last sod of music.
Careful tracking means the music isn’t affected by twists or warps, and since it apparently reads at a tiny 10 microns from the top of each groove it’s actually aimed at areas of vinyl untouched by needle.
So if this is such old tech, then why post about it now? Well, if you’ve been holding off on buying a laser turntable (what, really? It’s actually on your shopping list?) then you’ll be pleased to know that ELP have slashed a third of the asking price off and reduced ownership to under $10k. I’m sure it’s not because of the move to digital music and ensuing failing profits for “old tech” industries, oh no. They’re just generous.
So I went to the ELP website to check ot out. I happen to have a rather large vinyl collection. Anyway, the site offers a ‘free CD’ to help convince the skeptics that the original analog sound is really better the digital. Does any one else see a problem with that?
Well, a CD faithfully reproduces whatever is recorded on it, even if it is lossy compared to analogue. If you recorded two samples onto a CD, one from a traditional turntable and the other from one of these $9999.99 beauties you could hear any significant differences between the two. Some subtle differences might be lost, but it should be enough to be able to distinguish between the two samples. Assuming, that is, the laser doohicky really is that much better.
That’s if they kept all variables the same during the recording. However, too many variables to basically put faith in listening to a CD recording of the A/B test. Best have a showroom do an A/B or let you audition it at home in your own rig.
Nifty idea though.