A Laser Turntable?

What do you vinyl enthusiasts think of this technology? The description states, "plays vinyl records with master tape sound quality and no wear."

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?anlgtabl&1117438458

 

:thumbsdn:

This thing looks like the one I saw a long time ago.
Too complicated, simpler is better in my opinion.
Too much dough.

What I've always wondered was this device probably gives you No choice as to how it will sound.

Whereas a Turntable would allow you to change cartridges, tonearms, capacitance, resistance and possibly some other things I bet you have no option here.

:thumbsdn:

 

Michael Fremer reviewed the ELP laser turntable a few years ago in his column in Stereophile. As I recall, he liked it when it worked right, but he found its ability to "track" records inconsistent and unreliable. Surprisingly, it played dirty and scratched LPs really well, but LPs in good condition sometimes gave it fits.

 

I remember reading that although the ELP Laser TT played worn and/or scratch records very well, it could not play dirty LPs. Because of this, when you buy the ELP Laser turntable it comes with a VPI record cleaning machine.

 

That's correct. Dirty records gives it fits.

 

Its not ther yet because it uses too mnay lasers to make it affordable, however, I fully expect to see a 1,000$ version of this machine in the next 3 years.

They need to simplify this machine to use one of two lasers and when they do that, it will become affordable. The problem, I'm told is that no big company is willing to fund the research because they view vinyl as being a dead format.

If Lps were to make a big comeback, that is sold at Best buy, CC, etc, then we might see an affordable version of this.

 

I heard them at CES as well, they sounded way too thin for me, not enough weight in the music.

 

I was actually looking into getting one. The first of many things that made me back off is it doesn't play colored vinyl. It also will "see" things that a regular needle will just slide right through. If it does come across something it doesn't like it sounds like a shotgun. BANG! Too much for my nerves to take.

 

It might also have trouble with those Mobile Fidelity discs that you can see through.

 

I wondered about that too.

 

Sounds like the records would have be spotlessly clean, but then again, thats not a bad thing, you would only have to do a good cleaning once.

 

Must-read threads:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=40184

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=47296

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=21396

 

Oops! Thank you for the additional threads, sharedon!

 

Seems like the ELP corporation has put their PR department into overdrive. I've seen numerous articles about their turntables recently.

Am I the only one who is perplexed that nearly 20 years on these turntables are STILL prohibitively expensive. I sure would like to have one, but not for $15K.

Kwad

 

Tony and I heard the ELP laser turntable at HE2005. It's performance was disappointing. Any dirt on the turntable produces distracting noise that IMO was not as easy to "listen through" as on a good conventional TT. Also, it did not have anywhere near as much detail as you would expect from a good conventional TT.

 

Hmmm...That's not too encouraging. There are VERY few reviews of the ELP turntable out there, so it's good to at least hear from someone else who's auditioned it...

I would think that if there was any real interest from the hardware manufacturers in this type of turntable (there appears not to be), that they'd be able to circumvent a lot of the problems people are reporting with hardware/software improvements. But who knows?

Kwad

 

Ditto.

 

I seem to recall reading somewhere that somebody suggested that something (a lot of help, aren't I?) like a sonar unit fishermen used could possibly be used to read grooves, but apparently nobody seems interested in developing it...

 

Sort of related... Our AES section had Carl Haber, a scientist at Lawrence-Berkeley Nat. Lab working on using digital imaging to directly digitize records, in for a meeting recently. They've developed two processes, one two-dimensional (for lateral-cut records) and the other three-dimensional. More at

http://www-cdf.lbl.gov/~av/

Their paper on the 3D process has been accepted by the JAES and is supposed to be published this summer.

Unfortunately, this is not a real-time process and no consumer implementation is planned. It is interesting though; needle-drops without dropping needles.

 

Too expensive. I've heard needle-based players that sound better. And it takes away the vinyl "warmth".

 

You could use ultra sound just like the do in medical imagining, but again where is the market? Are you going to spend a $1.0+ M on R&D for vinyl in today's market?

 

This is truly ingenious, reminds me of my thesis project. While not real time, I would think this could be used to make great needle drops from true analog sources when the master tapes are missing or damaged. If then SH did the remaster in DSD you might have something of value.

 

I can't help but wonder if the the technology is around that could make it happen without a million dollars development...I've mentioned this before, but I'd love to see some kind of a record scanner. I got a slight jeer for saying that before, but as much time as I have in at home versus in the car it'd be great to put something on to scan, hit a button, and later have a wav file. I realize that fellow did one with a desktop scanner, but, as that method (or others that rely on regular scans/photography are) only recognizes lateral movement, it's limited in possibility.

I doubt it will ever happen, but a man can dream, right?