By Rod Easdown
Until a few years ago there were three basic building blocks in high-quality audio. Now there are four. The things you’ve always needed are an amplifier, a pair of speakers and a CD player. That’s a CD player, not a DVD or Blu-ray.
Number four is a turntable. Yep, for playing records. If you’re scoffing, here are four sound reasons to get one:
1 They sound great and vinyl is not going away.
2 The software is cheap and abundant. You can buy records at garage sales for a few bucks. They’ll introduce you to music from times before digital manipulation.
3 They’re fun. Slide the record from the sleeve, place it on the platter, clean it, lower the tonearm and be rewarded with pure, luxuriant music.
4 Turntables look great and mark you as a perfectionist.
So what do you need for fabulous sound? Start with the amplifier, a simple two-channel stereo unit with an inbuilt phono pre-amplifier for the turntable. I’d recommend Yamaha’s new AS201, a mighty performer for $400.
Speakers are personal and it pays to listen around. I think the best sound-for-dollar equation is presented by Focal’s Chorus 705s at about $700 a pair, but then I have my ears and you have yours. You might prefer B&W 686s, also $700.
CD player? It’s hard to beat Marantz’s CD5004 for $490. It’s built with all the traditional values of expensive Marantz offerings, and much of the technology.
And so to turntables. Pro-Ject is the biggest seller in Australia. Pro-Jects are so popular that the importer just paid $31,000 to airfreight a load of them in from Austria.
They start at $429 for the Essential II, but the $499 RPM 1.3 Genie performs better and looks more interesting. Appearances matter because your turntable is always on display. It should be a conversation starter and this one is.
If you want iPhone/iPod connectivity, budget another $180 on Yamaha’s YDS-12 universal dock.
Throw in some quality speaker cable and you’re at $2300-odd all up for a system that sounds rich, full and fantastic – likely way better than anything you’ve ever heard.
Final tip
Shop around specialist dealers because these guys know more than you do. Buy your system there and they might even come out and hook it up for you for free.
