You Say You Want a Revolution (at 33 1/3)

WHEN Melissa Walker, 31, was growing up, vinyl records were nostalgic artifacts. But when three crates of LPs were left in an apartment she had rented, a $10 thrift store record player turned those records into a kitschy novelty. And when her boyfriend bought her a Rega P1 turntable and a Bill Evans jazz album for her 30th birthday, playing the records became a daily ritual.

“Dave brought it home, and we dimmed the lights and sat on the couch with a glass of wine, and I felt like we were in a jazz club,” Ms. Walker said. “I could hear the musicians breathing. It felt like I could hear them smoking.”

Now she holds listening parties in her Brooklyn apartment, introducing friends to the rich sound of vinyl. “There is something I like about the process of listening that way,” she said. “Having to listen to it in the order the musicians intended, and turning it over. There is something social about it.”

Sales of new LPs show that Ms. Walker isn’t the only one rediscovering vinyl. While CD sales dropped last year, sales of records were up 36 percent, although they are still a minuscule part of the music market.

All those records have to be played on something. And when it comes to turntables — no one would dare call them record players these days — there are many options, from bare-bones $99 models to ultra-high-end audiophile equipment with price tags of $100,000 or more.

There are so many choices, in fact, that it can be tough for a shopper to know where to begin. “You can buy too much turntable or too little turntable for the rest of your equipment,” said John-Paul Lizars, marketing director at Sumiko, which imports and distributes turntables. He recommends investing about a third of your equipment budget in a turntable. “I urge people to get the best turntable, cartridge and phono preamp as they can,” Mr. Lizars said, “because if you don’t capture the content at the source, no other component can enhance it.”

A turntable is a basic piece of equipment — a motor turns a platter on which the record sits, and a tone arm holds a needle and a cartridge. The needle wiggles as it rides the record’s groove, and the cartridge converts those vibrations to electrical signals that go to an amplifier.

But in those few parts lies a world of variation.

Modern turntables are usually either direct drive or belt drive. Direct drive has been popular with radio and club D.J.’s because the record gets up to speed very quickly. The downside is that motor rumbles can be audible on lesser models.

Belt drive is more common, with a rubber belt insulating motor noise from the platter. Belt drive turntables can require maintenance (belts occasionally wear out), and they can be less precise, causing speed variations heard as wow and flutter. But that is not a problem in audiophile-quality equipment, said Ed Dorsey of Soundscape, an audio boutique in Baltimore. “The wow and flutter is so small, the average person isn’t going to hear it, only the musician with perfect pitch.”

Less expensive turntables, like the Denon DP-29F, which lists for $150, and the Pioneer PL-990, which lists for $130, generally come with permanently installed cartridges. That means no souping-up the turntable with aftermarket parts.

But adding a new cartridge is the most common way to improve a stock turntable. “Most of the time turntables come with an entry-level cartridge,” said Ken Bowers, manager of Needle Doctor, near Minneapolis. A better cartridge will get more information from the record groove for more detailed sound, he said.

As prices go up, the quality of the parts improves. The turntable bases, instead of hollow plastic, are made of metal or dense wood, which dampen vibrations. “You’ll get tighter bass, better imaging, more detail,” Mr. Bowers said.

On high-end equipment, motors tend to be heavier and more precise, the bearings in the tone arms present less friction, and the level of craftsmanship is higher. “You are buying build quality, you are buying precision,” Mr. Lizars said.

Once again, more precision means more detailed sound. The price of turntables with solid bases and replaceable cartridges generally begins around $300. Ms. Walker’s Rega P-1 and the Pro-Ject Debut III, which is imported by Sumiko, both list for $350 to $400.

To those audiophiles returning to vinyl, that may seem like a small price for high-fidelity quality, but like all things technological, turntables have become cheaper and better. “The $300 turntable of today is vastly superior to the $300 of 20 years ago,” Mr. Lizars said.

Those who want to spend more can do so easily. “Our turntable lists at $46,000, but we are far from being the most expensive,” said Lloyd Walker of Walker Audio in Audubon, Pa., who handcrafts the company’s Proscenium Black Diamond turntable. “They go up to a quarter of a million.”

For $46,000, Mr. Walker said, you get 250 pounds of turntable with a platter and tone arm that float on a nearly frictionless cushion of air. And Mr. Walker comes to your listening room to tweak every setting for optimum performance. “Setup is extremely important,” he said.

That is also true of less expensive turntables. The cartridge must be correctly aligned and the tone arm weighted properly. Some cartridges or tone arms come with an alignment tool, but they can be bought separately for $5 to $275. Likewise, a stylus force gauge, which measures the pressure of the needle on a record, can cost $25 for a weighted balance or $450 for a precision digital model.

To check your work, there are test LPs that play a series of signals that let you hear, for instance, whether both channels are equally loud. Such recordings can cost from $30 to $100.

Of course, for a fee you can usually get the shop that sold you the turntable to set it up.

Among the pleasures of turntables are the tasks and rituals that surround preparing to play a record. That means cleaning off dirt and dust and removing static. Mr. Walker said that nothing less than a machine that vacuums a cleaning fluid from the record would remove the manufacturer’s release agent — a lubricant that makes a record come out of a mold. “It will sound 30 to 50 percent better,” he said. “It’s a big difference.” Such devices can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars.

Others may be satisfied with an inexpensive carbon fiber brush or the classic Discwasher cleaning fluid and pile brush for $20.

But Mr. Bowers warns against fixating on minute technical details. Better to spend your time at thrift stores finding music that will never appear on a CD. “Playing records,” he said, “should be fun.”

[NY Times]