The only thing actually proven to remove at least 90% of the surface noise of a record is to replace it with a CD. 👌🔥

Don’t buy an expensive record player, buy a good one

A music lover listens to their music on audio equipment. An audiophile listens to their audio equipment on music.

I said it once and I'll say it again. In the early 80s when a CD player cost a months salary audiophiles salivated over them, while turning their noses up at tape decks and turntables. Today they turn their noses up at CD players because they are cheap.

The actual quote is talking about "suface" noise, which is totally different than "surface" noise.

They should change their ludicrous statement to something more accurate such as one of their high quality belt drive turntables will remove up to 90% of the money in your bank account.

Audiophiles (et al) remind me of an article I read years ago about an experiment. They switched an army cook with a gormet chef. Unbeknownst to them, the soldiers got fine dining in the mess hall, and restaurant customers got army slop. Afterwards they were asked their opinion. The soldiers moaned, of course. Army food sucks, whereas the diners were mostly delighted. The moral is: you get what you think you're getting. Soldiers expect slop, they got slop. So if it's expensive and exclusive, people will believe it's better, even if you can get essentially the same thing in Walmart for a fraction of the price.

A few years ago I bought Rega Planar 1. Got it home and was disappointed to find it didn't sound as good as I was expecting. I also noticed it was running a bit too fast. I did a bit of research and find that it's such a common problem that a company is manufacturing replacement drive wheels that correct the speed issue. Apparently Planar quality control allow players through if they're a bit fast, which most of them are. Took it back to the store to swap it for another model. They didn't believe me until they actually tested it and used a strobe disc to see it running too fast. I asked if I could listen to some other turntables but they just said "no, we'll give you a refund. We don't have time to help you". I then noticed they had a big spender in their demo room and I wasn't worth dealing with. Ended up going to Richer Sounds (UK hi-fi company) and getting an Audio Technica AT LP120 which had been fantastic.

It's refreshing to see a vinyl enthusiast who appreciates the format for what it actually is instead of buying into all the bullshit about it being "superior" to digital audio.

Apparently a spell checker removes 90% of spelling errors.

You have to remember, even the most "low end" technics from back in the day was manufactured in Japan. It's pretty funny that it takes a modern $3,000 turntable manufactured in the U.S. to match the Technics specs.

I love Audiophile myths, they’re the gift that keeps on giving. 😂

I’ve suffered “audiophiles” in my family, and they’re basically expensive stuff junkies. Trying to reason with them is useless because they want to validate their life choices through an easy, watchable indicator: money. I basically have turtables that were second hand dj gear bought in the mid 2000s (Technics and Akijama) with replaced cartridges. I do LOVE vinyl because you find lots of historic records, and it sounds pleasant (not “better”) with all the dust and crackles… though for preservation I shop for cds and FLAC files. Tapes made me happy in my teenage years and mp3s/streaming keeps making me smile, instead of wasting precious hours comparing “the cables (or fuses) that allow audio to breath, to have more air”. They don’t care about the music. It’s just another aspirational thing

Audiophile turntable makers have the best scam going - the more basic features they remove the more "audiophile" it is and the more they can charge for it. It was amazing some of the cool things they were doing with turntables back in the 80s like programmable direct access linear tracking tables but we've gone backwards where even fully mechanical 50s features are too advanced and will somehow "cause noise" if added to a turntable.

Posters on the Steve Hoffman forums are generally insane. I cannot believe some of the nonsense grown men post there.

I got launched from those forums years ago for daring to suggest that glass CDs containing the same master as standard CDs will sound exactly the same due to the binary data being identical. Placebo is a powerful money making scheme.

Audiophile fuses!? That made me cackle at my computer screen.

Out of all the audiophile forums that I frequent, SteveHoffman has to be THE destination for this sort of nonsense. Imagine a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters hoping to one day come up with a definitive answer to "do 'audiophile cables' make a difference?" and you got stevehoffman forums basically

Your video explains, almost perfectly why I am almost totally obsessed with 1970's electronics but would never ever dream of stepping into the realm of an audiophile shop !

Audiophile Fuse... holy crap. This is some next level snake oil right there.

That Technics turntable sounds fantastic! Goes to show that the hi-fi manufacturers had turntables figured out by the late 80s, to the point that the lower end units actually preformed really well! That's exactly why I still use my thrift store Pioneer PL-8. But don't say that to the "audiophiles" who are justifying spending $2k on a turntable that performs worse than a $10 yardsale turntable. It's almost like it's more about showing off with expensive gadgets and following dumb trends than raw performance!

"High quality Goodyear tires remove 90% of the bumps on the road and allow you to drive through more states compared to Hankook tires"

If you're paying absurd amounts for "audiophile" equipment, you will convince yourself that you CAN hear the difference. Because no-one is going to admit they've been duped by marketing false claims. See also - premium HDMI cables.

I grew up in the audiophile world, it's nuts. Look on the right page from that catalog at that scale for 49,99. That's a 5 dollar ebay scale. I used to get into huge fights over all this nonsense with my dad's friends. From the green CD marker to iron filled wooden bricks they stood on top of everything to the 1000$ BS cables, it's a world completely dominated by confirmation bias.

Audiophiles are so damn obnoxious and boring. How dare we enjoy our basic gear as much as they pretend to enjoy their $12000 rca cables. Great video Kevin!

A high quality record cleaner can remove 90% of surface noise, though!

Personally, I like my audio to be imperfect and a little distorted - I guess it adds character. People seem to miss the point of listening to an outdated format. Music is supposed to be fun, and you should be impressed that the sound a tiny needle makes as it drags over a piece of plastic sounds as good as it does. If you're bothered by the fact your piece of plastic sounds somewhat like a needle dragging over a piece of plastic, you're obviously going about it the wrong way.

Audiophiles are crazy. I've even seen "audiophile" SATA cables selling for hundreds of dollars, for that extra-clean reference-quality data transfer! :o

I've had old Sony's and Technics TT's on my bench and they are indeed very quiet. Try this: record the noise with the tone arm raised versus an unrecorded portion of a quality disk. I think you'll with find that the majority of the rumble is transmitted through the surface of the disk as well. The quieter TT's have quieter motors as well as more massive platters and plinths and better damping. I enjoyed your perusal of the spec sheets and your logical presentation. Expect lies from advertisements always. I haven't found quality direct drive TT's to be any more or less noisy than quality belt driven TT's. Belt drive TT's are cheaper to manufacture though.

Man I'm in the wrong business. I should buy a Chinese tonearm assembly, some plexiglass and a chunk of mahogany and start making turntables. I'll call it the Cork Sniffer 9000! It's $4,000 for the main assembly, or $6,000 if you get it with an AT-VM95E stylus. 😁

My friend bought a Rega Planar 3 as his first record player, and when he said you can't even simply change the playback speed with a button, and it's all manual, I laughed inside with my fully automatic belt-driven Technics from the '80s that I've bought for around 30 bucks... I haven't heard his gear though (he couldn't decide on speakers...) It can be good, but this kind of barebones attitude is laughable at that price point. Anyway, I don't listen to records for some audiophile high quality sound reasons, it's just that vinyl makes listening to music a kind of ceremony, that I love ever since I've listened to some of my Mom's records as a kid. It's a warm, fuzzy feeling compared to digital audio, but that's very subjective.

You should do more videos like this. I love showing the bs in a lot of bougie audio equipment.

Joe Collins addressed the "audio phoolery" of "high end" turntables several years ago and he was pointing out the relatively high wow & flutter vs the old Technics TT's (namely the 1200). Most of the high end turntables are horribly overpriced for what you get, IMHO. It's an expensive rabbit hole to climb down into once one goes into "audiophile" territory. Those $50 "audiophile" fuses were the icing on the cake. I literally LOL'ed when I saw that. It's just as absurd when some sh*t for brains thought that CD's sounded better when you colored on them with a yellow highlighter pen. Wow, just wow! That BS went around in the late 1980's.

Ohhh, "moderator approval," that's soooo important.

VWestlife: "So the only thing that's actually proven to remove at least 90% of the surface noise of a record, is to replace it with a CD." I totally agree, and that's exactly why I did that 30 years ago.

When you stumble across a video in your feed and it’s playing your record! 😄 I approve of this video - mostly because it’s dealing with what I hate most: The quacks that is the audiophile society. So much hogwash out there. Take it from someone with years of experience in professional studios and rental companies. A $100000 cable or lifting them above the floor is not making the audio better! 🙈🤪🤷🏼‍♂️

The entirety of the Steve Hoffman forums memberlist can firmly grasp it.

Turntables do impact surface noise, though not by 90dB. Surface noise picked up by the stylus travels into the cartridge, arm and turntable structures. If those are flimsy and resonant, as they are with many very inexpensive decks, they resonate along with the noise, making this more audible. A turntable system designed to be inert, either through the use of stiff and non resonant materials or through the use of damping will sound quieter in terms of surface noise.

Even funnier is the fact that on the catalog page you are showing there's the "Revol Stylus Gauge" for 50$. But typing record scale into Amazon returns the exact same scale without the brand logo for only 12$. I even own one, they're pretty good.

Oh god, the Hoffman forums! A place where reason and technical knowledge goes to die! Cheers to you for getting put in quarantine there! (p.s. the Technics vs. Pro-Ject 10 db difference reveal genuinely made me LOL!)

My old Dual 522 with belt drive has a DIN-B value of 70 dB, the new price in 1979 was around $ 235 (US). I got it 20 years ago from the father of a friend who I helped with gardening. Still works fine and I use it almost every day. It also has many features that most of the new "high-end" turntables lack, such as an illuminated strobe, manual speed control, automatic start-stop, ... Would be a very smart choice to upgrade to one of these new models for as little as $ 2,000.

The whole audiophile industry is ridiculous.

Loving the Technics, it sounds so crisp and vibrant.

This is a fantastic and real world commentary about high end hi-fi products. It reminds me of Peter Aczel's Audio Critic articles who bravely stood up against many of the expensive audio equipment manufacturers and magazines of the day. I wish there were more of these articles today. There are many other areas in the industry right now that are bogus in all facets of the hobby - not just turntables. My hat's off to VWestlife.

Oh yeah, gotta add this for anyone who cares...I just got a collection of records from a friend's dad who passed that were covered with mold and cobwebs. I cleaned up a bunch of them with screen cleaner and a microfiber cloth and not a single one skipped. And I touched them with my fat fingers too!

Those fuses!. I made a point when acquiring my HIFI equipment to buy the best for my budget and leave it at that, those that never stop in the pursuit of the "audiophile sound" spend more time listening to their equipment than they do the actual music, what a waste.

Vinyl sounds best when the listener wears a tin-foil hat.

A good turntable will not ADD any rumble or vibration to the record whilst playing it. The quietest tables I've used were direct drives. The noisiest were rim drive, but there are examples of quiet rim drive, and noisy belt or direct drive.

This was posted on an audiophile website many moons ago.... "Can you hear the difference between -65db and -75db? Probably not, because ambient noise would mask any differences, and most records were not that quiet to begin with, and that was mostly due to the built-in rumble from the cutting lathe and even a worn stamper". The phrases "chasing a dream" and "diminishing returns" comes to mind when I read that.

Oh boy. The redditors will not like this one

Speaking of equipment, roughly one half of the SHF "regulars" are genuinely convinced that $10,000 cartridge/stylus and tube amps eliminate all inherent flaws in any record. The other half tends to be pulling the others' leg(s).

I agree totally with your comments. hilarious - marketing does not require a minimal education in maths. One thing I note (I have an AR legend turntable from 30 years ago - with a rumble of 73db - belt drive), is that the noise that can be heard out of the speakers of a system from a turntable source has 3 significant sources. 1) rumble - low frequency sound often removable with a sub-sonic filter (low band pass filter) - that is the one you comment and comes from bearing surface noise, pules modulation of a drive - often due to the multi-pole design of motors, "vibrations" in a belt drive. 2) true surface noise : clicks (transients), hiss. In the latter case this is the result of the component material of the record and wear of the needle; we know that during the oil crises in 1973 record quality took a dive and this, in particular, hit Tubular bells by Mike Oldfield due to its quiet and long instrumental piece. As noted, true surface noise can be helped by clearing the record and buying records that don't use cheep materials such as filler - good luck on that one especially with the current expensive resurgence of vinyl, they will sell you rubbish for cheap turntables. 3) The pre-amp quality. The main signal amplifier in a good system will often have a SN of around 100 db, often much better, but a pre-amp stage for MM for a good pre-amp is 70-90db and for MC cartridges is much lower at 60-75 db. This noise is generally pink-noise (white noise, but not full spectrum) and can be heard if you turn a power amp right up with no source sound. You will hear the difference in hiss as you switch between standard line in, MM and to MC. You cannot remove this with filters on anything as it "full" spectrum. Keep up the work.

Do they list placebo effect in the specifications?

I bet the turntable brands are Butt Hurt because the Direct Drive turntables from the 70's and 80's ARE STILL WORKING GREAT and sound better than most new models until you get too at LEAST $700 and can match $1500-$2000 models and can be had at an estate sale, flea markets or Garage sales for $60 maybe less of you are lucky

In experiments I have done, having no fuse in the plug (silver plated or not) removes all surface noise.

1:17 For an audiophile magazine, its editors are not very good at spelling since I noticed the phrase "SUFACE noise" instead of "SURFACE noise". ;)

That feel when i just listen to music for the pleasure and not the audio quality

The bottom line is that a needle is still being dragged through a groove. Those turntables you showed in the catalogue are way over engineered and they make them look like something from the future so the "look" of the turntable is supposed to make people believe that this is the perfect turntable. I'm no audiophile, can't tell the difference between a good clean record and a CD. Records have been around over a century now and have improved incredibly throughout the decades but some people are trying to make it as if this is some sort of new technology. When CD's first hit the market, they were up to twice the price of LP's but super cheap to make. Now that vinyl is making a comeback, the prices for these albums are very expensive compared to the CD counterparts! Probably because of limited editions, runs, etc.

I always find the videos you do on subjects like this refreshing. There are a lot of people out there that cannot afford the astronomical prices of some of these 'high end' turntables, and yet, once again you prove without doubt that getting a so called 'lower end' turntable is just what they need without either robbing a bank or remortgaging their house!

Forget audiophile fuses, audiophile POWER CABLES is where the REAL difference is!

Audiophile FUSES???? Literally the room was full of my booming laughter, the neighbours must have heard it!

The bottom line is that modern manufacturers don't have the expertise or money to develop a decent Direct Drive motor. They use off the shelf DC motors together with a belt because it's cheap and easy.

Looking at that catalog I noticed the Stylus Gauge for 50 bucks! Mine looks identical to that and I think I paid less than $10 for it.

Sanity is so refreshing. Thanks!

Who'd have thought disproving a claim from a source trying to sell you stuff would have been such fun. The tone of this video was outstandingly dry. So dry in fact, I think you altered the ionisation of the air in the room, which my turntable salesman says makes surface noise worse.

You're telling me forum moderators get sticks up their asses when proven wrong? As a Redditor of 5 years, I'm literally shaking. XD

Rega doesn't publish their specs because they're actually mediocre, if not flat out bad in some cases.

5:28 Now I may be a simple country lawyer but to my eyes that's the lid of a bulk tub of mayonnaise, not a turntable.

I did a side-by-side test of my second-hand 1980s Dual turntable, bought for 75 Euro, against a one year-old Linn LP12 which cost my buddy north of 6000 Euro. We used his audio system for the test. Much to our surprise and his chagrin, his Linn sounded only marginally better than my Dual. Yes, you could certainly hear the difference. The Linn produced a bigger sound stage, where my Dual sounded "narrower". But the difference in sound did not really line up to the (huge!) difference in money spent. I guess I was just really lucky with the Dual I bought :)

l guess because of the return of vinyl, there are many companies trying to cash in and they make all sorts of ridiculous claims to justify ridiculous pricing. As Techmoan recently stated, the so-called high-end turntable basically do nothing and the companies making them can charge whatever they want. What more, many consumers, as if by reflex, seem to make excuses for these companies, as if they work for these companies themselves. So you're better off getting an older used table and putting in a bit of money to fix it up.

An excellent informative post! As someone who has been a long-time audiophile with a vintage system it's great to read this, however, I must chime in with a comment too. I had vintage mid-range Technics DD turntable I purchased new, while I was a salesman at a high-end HiFi store back in the early 80's. It got extensive use over the next two decades, but by the mid-2000s I began noticing increased rumble between tracks and quiet passages that got progressively worse, to the point that by 2010 I was looking for an upgrade. I took it to the local Techinics repair station for a tune-up and was told there was nothing wrong with it. When I got it back I noticed little to no improvement, so I sold it, purchased a Rega P3, and haven't looked back. It was like a night and day difference. Turntables do wear out especially old DD rigs that have no provision for lubrication or maintaining them. This is unlike most higher-end belt-drive turntables that are designed to be periodically lubed and serviced. So it's quite plausible that many of these old DD turntables are 90% noisier than newer belt-drive models, if only due to decades of wear and tear. Just my 2 cents.

Vinyl TV made a really good video some years ago, also talking about audiofoolery, it’s great. I consider myself an audiophile, but spending hundreds of dollars in a belt claiming that it “improves the bass response” is simply absurd…

"Audiophile Fuses" *excuse me, what!?*

“Audiophile wall outlet” good laughs there.

Great vid on the reality of turntables. As a vinyl junkie and (yes I will admit it) audiophile, I have been playing with 'tables for the last 4 decades. Audio Advisor (AA) is doing a bit of a disservice to the vinyl crowd here, but they are also selling stuff, and they wouldn't be the first audio company to print, shall we say, misleading ad copy. I have several turntables, including a vintage Technics SL-M3 which was their top of the line linear tracker back in the day, and was listed in your spec sheet for Technics 'tables. Rumble is listed as -82 dB and it is probably one of the quietest direct drives out there still. I also have a vintage Roksan Xerxes belt drive 'table with similar rumble specs and can definitively say that the belt drive Roksan not any "quieter" than the Technics. Where the Roksan does greatly exceed the Technics is in it's ability to suck the smallest bit of information from the groove. This results in greater detail such as the ability to pick out individual performers from the mix, a bigger and more specific soundstage, deeper, tighter bass, yadda yadda yadda. It sounds miles better on my big system *on the right material*. (i.e. REALLY good pressings, excellent recordings, etc) Of course, this is with a tonearm, lo output MC cartridge, and a SUT that cost several times what the Technics cost back then, even adjusting for inflation. Don't get me wrong, the Technics is excellent overall and has a purpose. I use mine in my somewhat less resolving living room "party" system. The Technics looks killer, is far easier to use, is better isolated from footfalls, feedback, etc. and is practically "drunk person" proof. It also sounds great with an AT series V MM cart. on commercial pressing rock records, which is mostly what I play on it. You also mentioned the Rega Planar 3, a 'table I previously owned on a long term basis. The Rega is NOT a quiet table in terms of rumble, all (at least the older ones) run fast, and they are very poorly isolated from footfalls, vibrations, etc. This is also probably why Rega never publishes these specs. That said, I still think it is a good 'table, mostly based on the performance of it's excellent RB300 arm, which can do justice to cartridges several times it's cost. It's other flaws can be fixed or at least improved by a good isolation platform or wall stand under it, and a good speed controllable power supply to feed it. Of course, by then you've spent serious money. I'll add another sideline of my own here. I've started at digitally archiving my records. I use my Roksan set-up into a nice vintage tube phono stage, a high quality A/D converter, and the Vinyl Studio recording program. The resulting 24/96 FLAC files sound just like the record, but without the inevitable tics and pops of vinyl. (The Vinyl Studio program has a great noise reduction system) This, to me, finally makes digital better than analog. Remember, this is from a guy who finds at least *early* 16/44 digital recordings, CD's and CD players to sound bloody awful. Of course, this digital archiving process takes a lot of time, and I won't live long enough to do my whole collection. But I digress. Well, enough ranting from this audiofool. Thanks for the video, and keep at it. Subscribed!

My old ex-dj Technics SL-1210 Mk2 still measures better on all metrics compared to many "audiophile" TTs going for 10 times the price. The difference is that back then there was a mass-market catering to serious music listeners and they made hundreds of thousands quality decks on a large scale (open up an old SL-1200 and you'll be challenged to find anything better built that isn't bespoke and silly money) where-as now it's a mass market of ear-buds and smart-speakers so the "audiophile" market is much smaller and aimed at those with more money than sense.

I used to own an SL-QD33 turntable. It was probably the best sounding turntable I ever owned. I used to just play and enjoy my records, before I went "audiophile" and crazy. Now I have a simple AT-LP60, which I'm enjoying very much.

Seems they reduced the noise of "surface" by removing the letter "r" in both versions of that claimed quote, they do make me laugh though, it's like claiming that to reduce road noise in a car journey, you need a different and more overpriced car, instead of just replacing the tyres with better quality ones for much less money... :P

I remember a couple years back AA put in one of their mailings a totally incorrect explanation for the difference between class A and A/B amplifier circuits (I'd imagine the engineers at Bryston were cringing). They just pull **** out of their rear and slap it on paper.

You make me happy that I'm not an audiophile. I'm rocking an old Direct Drive Pioneer PL-250 I got from a garage sale years ago. It sounds wonderful to me and I enjoy my records. I also enjoy my CDs, tapes, MP3s etc. I wonder if audiophiles ever even listen to music for enjoyment.

I came across a post on an audiophool forum years ago where one poster claimed he noticed an improvement in sound quality when he slackened the screws on the cover of his amp. I’m sure he was messing with the dribbling morons… There was also a discussion about de-skinning the electrolytic capacitors, ie removing the plastic sleeve, to make it sound better. Then there’s pure silver speaker cables, bags of crystals to hang on your interconnects, special audio grade power cables that cost hundreds, the list goes on. They’re delusional to the point of being detached from reality. Still, if it makes them happy…

Unless a true direct-drive has a poorly-engineered motor, a direct-drive almost always has smoother speed and less vibration than a comparable belt-drive model. In most cases, either one is sufficient. Neither could possibly impact "record surface noise." That was elementary information when I was still a hobbyist -- some 30 years ago.

Thanks for another informative (and important, considering the prices of this stuff) video on audio. I have an old Technics SL-92 direct drive, quartz locked, linear tracking turntable and the specs for it are better than even the most expensive turntable in the catalog you showed. I am so glad I ignored all the "get rid of vinyl" nonsense that came out when CDs were released. I have a collection of very rare recordings that never even went to CD anyway. Of course, they didn't point this out back when the push to abandon vinyl was a hot button topic. Then, the claim was that all albums were being converted. Really, even those from small print, limited edition labels? Hmmm. Also, they never talked bout the often horrendous re -mixing that went on (and still happens) when an older title was converted to CD. Oh, and another easy way to remove 90% of record surface (suface ?) noise is to use one of those "record killer" devices (the van that runs around on the record). It will remove 90% of the surface noise because it will remove 90% of the surface! (sarcasm). Yet, people still buy these things and the prices on some versions are, as you well know -- well, rather insane. Thanks for calling out the obviously false catalog claims you found. Let the buyer beware!

I remember the Linn Sondek rep coming into our shop in the 70's and asking ask to do an A/B test with any one of our existing turntables. "There", he said, "does that not sound better'?" "No", we said. The BS started round about then. Now they tell us a new power cord will make your system sound more musical, and you must keep your speaker cables off the floor with little supports. I sure am glad I got out of that business, I don't think I'd be able to keep a straight face.

Record "sooface" sounds? (Trying to pronounce a ridiculuos misprint that even MSWord spellcheck should have caught -- makes you think about the quality level of the rest).

Please please for God's sake please make more of these videos!

78 (DIN-B) is also the given for my 1980s Sony linear-tracker (which is direct-drive).

That Technics DD actually sounds really good.

This is something that I noticed when looking at new turntables to compare to my pioneer pl-7. Many of them have higher build quality and a better platter, sure, but their SnR is terrible, and even worse is their wow and flutter. I can understand wow and flutter being slightly worse than a high quality direct drive turntable like mine, but there is no reason for a pro-ject debut carbon, a $600 turntable, to have a wow and flutter of almost .2% when Philips was making belt drives in the 70s with a wow and flutter as low as .025%. Another problem with today's turntables is the absence of auto mechanisms, since they supposedly increase noise somehow. I am almost certain that the only thing beneficial to not having an auto return mechanism is a reduced cost to the manufacturer. In fact, on the first page of that booklet in the video, there is this auto tonearm lifter down in the bottom left corner. Now instead of having a built in mechanism that has no risk of failure, you have to place some clunky $50 device onto your turntable to do the same task, just not as well. I don't know how the hell brands like Rega have convinced audiophiles that this is better than having an imperceivable hit to SnR, especially considering new tables are worse than old direct drive full autos to begin with in this regard, but I mean I guess anything is possible considering "audiophiles" are willing to buy "audio grade" fuses.

Rumble and surface noise are completely different phenomenon. The typical size of the dust motes that contaminate the record groove are 3-9μm. The average velocity of the groove past the stylus is about 600,000μm/s. Taking the size of the stylus into account a dust mote will pass the stylus in around 1/20,000th of a second. A single impulse of this duration is inaudible. What you hear as surface noise is actually the deck, mainly the arm, resonating in response to this impulse, the impulse being much higher in amplitude than the music signal. Higher quality decks control resonances better than basic models so they resonate less due to the impulses of the impacts with the dust motes. Therefore surface noise on higher quality decks is suppressed.

The thing is, when you know how CD are made, you'll see that it's as organic as a vinyl, and there's also many variations of the same CD depending on when it was made, who mixed it, etc. I love vinyl and CD too. They're both physical object on which the music is written on, but in different format.

I invested in a wind turbine in my back garden to solely provide me with the electricity to power my sound system. It only cost £10,000 but due to my electricity coming from a pure source and only having to travel a few yards and no having to share electricity cables with other houses nearby, it has completely revolutionised the nursey rhymes I love to listen to.

Very interesting -- I still use a Kenwood KD-600 (direct drive) that I bought in 1980. The rumble spec on this device is 75 db. No belts for me.

I have a cheap ION "DJ" turntable , cost me 15 quid from eBay , fully manual with a proper counter weight, bunged on a 25 quid audio technica cartridge and it sounds great for now, will replace with a vintage 70s or 80s deck when I get around to it and can afford it

Very informative, I honestly did not know what the specification was but I'm glad I found this. I have my dad's old Technics SL-Q2 from 1980, with the same rumble specs of -78db. I was actually looking at replacing it with a much more expensive table. Nice to know I can save some money!

Brilliant! I always enjoy your in-depth videos, VWestlife. :)

Man, back in the 80s, belt-drive turntables were like manual cassette decks. If you wanted the best, you got direct drive or full logic tape decks. This is a lot like the tube amp rubbish where older tech is now somehow better...

Nothing beats a good quartz locked DD turntable. No wow and flutter and to be honest, I dont hear any noise from my motor. The only loud turntables were the cheap ones with rubberwheel drive.

I think you're right, they're getting confused with drivetrain noise. Which is a thing for turntables.

Saw this from a top UK turntable manufacturer - ‘The weighted rumble measurements used by most manufactures are virtually useless in evaluating the performance of a turntable. Weighting systems effectively ignore rumble at very low frequencies. This subsonic rumble may not be as audible as rumble occuring at 200 Hz, but its side effects can be quite audible and even more serious than a little low frequency noise etc’. In short you can’t rely on quoted figures? There’s great pleasure in owning a nice turntable. There’s also great pleasure in CDs. Still to decide about streaming.