This afternoon, while at work, I was chatting with an engineer. I was rattling on about the virtues of this forum and how much fun I’ve been having with vintage audio. We were talking about vinyl and how we love the sound (another engineer present, who loves classical, has never heard vinyl –go figure).

Anyway..engineer #1 mentioned that in the ’80 someone marketed a laser “tone arm”, so to speak, to read vinyl records. It read the bottom of the groove and of course made no contact with the record. Has anyone heard of such a device? :scratch2:

Glenn

http://www.laserturntable.com/main.html

This is the newest offering.

Wow!:yikes: I can't believe I've never seen this before. It sounds really cool!:thmbsp:

WOW, thanks. Does anyone use one of these? How do they sound?

Glenn

I've read a few reviews. The records have to be spotless clean, and then it's quite nice.The incredible thing is that despite it being a laser, it's still a fully analog system.

That turntable is astounding! The only thing is that they need to get the decimal point moved over to the left one place. If they did, I could potentially see the comeback of greater fidelity LPs and the demise of bit-sampled CDs. Then like DVDs and BlueRay players, the more they sold the more affordable they'd become.

The only downside to it is that it won't play the original white vinyl, full-sized EP from my BeBop Deluxe "Live in the Air Age" double LP set.

WOW, thanks. Does anyone use one of these? How do they sound?

Glenn
I have heard one once. It sounded more like a really excellent CD to my ear than what I'm used to hearing out of vinyl. However these are even more sensitive to pops and ticks than is a regular TT.

Personally, I think that these are overated. You can get one hell of a good sounding analog front end for that kind of money. :yes:

Agreed on the decimal point...point.:D

Well,

Let's just say that they can be a PITA. I had the honer of auditioning one a few years ago and I can tell you that unless you have a MINT record collection, they are VERY picky. Any dirt or dust is read LOUDLY. I cleaned my records over and over and still had issues with noise. They will not read colored or clear vinyl...I have a lot of that stuff. Bottom line, records were ment to be played with a stylus, not light. I returned it and spent that money on a kitchen remodel (yeah, they are around $15k or so...I think pricing went up though?)

Joey1127

Well,

Let's just say that they can be a PITA. I had the honer of auditioning one a few years ago and I can tell you that unless you have a MINT record collection, they are VERY picky. Any dirt or dust is read LOUDLY. I cleaned my records over and over and still had issues with noise. They will not read colored or clear vinyl...I have a lot of that stuff. Bottom line, records were ment to be played with a stylus, not light. I returned it and spent that money on a kitchen remodel (yeah, they are around $15k or so...I think pricing went up though?)

Joey1127
He is absolutely right IMO. The one that I heard would make the tinyest spec of dust sound like a siginficant pop. The surface nopise of your records is much higher with these. Get a really nice TT instead. They are much more enjoyable.

When they get all the wrinkles ironed out and the decimal point moved, I'll be more interested.

Not only would it save wear and tear on vinyl, your stylus wouldn't need replacing, either. That is if the lasers can outlast a stylus. And if they don't the replacement for lasers would probably be half the cost of the TT.

my .$02

Rick

Unfortunately, the laser turntable does not sound as good as conventional tables. I listened to one carefully with my test LPs at the Stereophile show in 2005, and it is not even as good as an inexpensive ClearAudio or VPI.

Possibly the groove needs the physical pressure of a stylus to reproduce what the cutter originally put into it.