New acquisition - EMT 950 turntable

Great going Anil. I would love to hear them sometime. Have you tried the cartridge with any other phono stage other than the inbuilt one? I understand that the 950 is the top of the line EMT.
 
Visited Anil's place earlier this week along with Dr.Bass for a listen. I had heard the EMT950 at Anil's place while he was waiting for the Tondose to arrive. Must say, it is a substantial jump in SQ. There is a clear improvement in detail, speed and soundstage. Noise floor is absolutely low. Paired with the Altecs, they sound great!

Want to drop by again to listen at a lower SPL. You guys listen way to loud :)

Thanks Anil for your hospitality, was a pleasure and as always time well spent.
 
Thanks Anil for the invite. It was a wonderful evening spent with you guys. The EMT 950 is definitely the best EMT I have heard till date. Both resolution and scale was better than 938 that I have heard earlier. Superb stuff! It will be interesting to use the 950 just as a turntable and use an external phonostage. Only you can do it:eek:hyeah:
 
Thanks Anil for the invite. It was a wonderful evening spent with you guys. The EMT 950 is definitely the best EMT I have heard till date. Both resolution and scale was better than 938 that I have heard earlier. Superb stuff! It will be interesting to use the 950 just as a turntable and use an external phonostage. Only you can do it:eek:hyeah:

Dr. Bass, thanks. Your inputs are invaluable. I have already replaced few critical interconnect cables. I keep telling people that you have a golden ear.

I will definitely try an external Phono stage. I am planning to build a Pass Pearl 2 (which Om, Joshua and few others have built) soon and will try with that. I am not into spending thousands of dollars for a commercial phono stage.

Cheers.
 
Golden ear is a big word:p.

You are fortunate to have the skill to build what you want. Spending money and trying things is quite frustrating anyway. I have seen way too many cases on audiogon where audiophiles admitted to have been chasing after a particular sound for decades so it is clearly a red herring.

Unless you do an external phonostage it will always remain a mystery whether the SP10 is a better TT than EMT or not. I have not yet found a comparison between them.
 
I don't think the two can be compared. SP 10 has a better flow but dynamics is recessed. EMT is lightning quick and more dynamic. They cater to a different set of needs. It's a lot like Lowther and Fostex. Fostex is like SP 10 and Lowther like the EMT:)
 
I love two different sound signatures of these two TTs. I don think I can make one sound like the other. It is fun playing one particular LP on two different setups and enjoy the reproduction. One cannot find fault with one or the other, both are enjoyable in different ways. EMT by and large does not allow any flexibility and produces house sound, SP10 can be mated with different plinths, tonearms and cartridges, which can alter it's character dramatically.

Cheers.
 
I have 2 SP10 MK2s and interestingly both sound almost the same. One has a custom plinth built by a broadcast station while one is in its stock plinth. As prem rightly mentioned, there is a lovely flow to the music when compared to the punch of the Garrards. I used to listen to a lot of orchestration on the SP10 and music with beats or double-bass on the Garrards. I love the warmth and accuracy of the SP10. Being a person who tends to be over critical about perfection, the SP10s speed/pitch accuracy is outstanding which means, a bell sounds like a live bell ringing and a piano sounds like a live piano playing. I would believe that one cannot find anything more accurate.
 
I don't think the two can be compared. SP 10 has a better flow but dynamics is recessed. EMT is lightning quick and more dynamic. They cater to a different set of needs. It's a lot like Lowther and Fostex. Fostex is like SP 10 and Lowther like the EMT:)

Hi Prem,
What you say about EMT is true in an all EMT setup. The electronics inside give it the majority of its house sound and it also sounds tonally very different compared to the Technics/Garrard/Lenco and such. But when it is used only as a turning table the playing field is much more level. It will be interesting to see/hear which table actually sounds more neutral, poised, timed and dynamic. They will sound different anyway but two well engineered turning machine should have things in common too.:licklips:

Many of them who use 930 and 927 actually use them with other tonearms and carts. On audiogon there is a big discussion on this and some of the most dyed in wool emt users have agreed that using the stock EMT electronics does'nt do justice to the turntable.
 
Agreed Dr Bass but one doesn't buy an EMT if one does not like the house sound. I strongly believe one should not mod an EMT. A few very senior guys I have spoken to also are of the same opinion. As it is one is paying a huge premium for the EMT. If one wants to mod it am sure there are better turntable options. It's like buying a Mac. Nobody really attempts to mod it. If you want to mod you start with a windows based comp
 
Agreed Dr Bass but one doesn't buy an EMT if one does not like the house sound. I strongly believe one should not mod an EMT. A few very senior guys I have spoken to also are of the same opinion. As it is one is paying a huge premium for the EMT. If one wants to mod it am sure there are better turntable options. It's like buying a Mac. Nobody really attempts to mod it. If you want to mod you start with a windows based comp

Unfortunately Prem, there is a huge dearth of good direct drives today. I feel a TT like EMT might do really well as a direct drive turntable. Most of the EMT users never use the whole gamut of features that the electronics inside the EMT provide so the only thing remaining is to try out a phonostage. Moreover EMTs are expensive only if bought from the German refurbishers who actually work a lot on the electronics side of things too. Otherwise an EMT deck can easily be found for a similar price as a well maintained SP10 or Garrard 301 grease bearing. If one is just collecting for its vintage value then I guess modding it is a bad idea. But for the best sound I do feel it has tremendous potential outside its own electronics too.
 
Dr. Bass, from a personal experience I can tell you that it is not easy to create a Phono amp which is good enough to match the EMT phono preamp, if not in sound signature, but in quality. Any high quality phono amp of that caliber will cost easily multiple 1000 dollars. Hence I believe that what EMT gives is a very good deal and there is no point in going around the circle to create similar quality sound using lot of money. SP10 is a different matter, as there is no other option but to add the external stuff.

Cheers.
 
Anil, there are two parts to it:

1. If you use the EMT tonearm and TSD-15 then you must also use the internal step-up transformer of the EMT. It is not only well matched to the TSD-15 but also a very good SUT. You just need a MM phonostage after the SUT. Any decent MM phonostage will equal or better the internal MM phonostage of the EMT. I have heard the EMT phonostage (MM stage) in isolation few times in Singapore and I found it to be somewhat rolled off and grainy. IMO the MM phonostage of your Yamaha preamp should be superior.

2. If you use a different cartridge then ideally you would probably do better bypassing the internal SUT too because it may be a mismatch. So the cartridge should see an external active MC phonostage directly. Maybe your Yamaha or the Pass Pearl MC stage.

For academic purpose, for a cartridge to match an SUT there is a calculation (taken from vinylengine):

Lets do some calculus! If a step-up has a gain of say 1:10, this means that the output of the cartridge will be multiplied by 10. If the output out of the cartridge is 0.3 mV, youll have, after the step-up, 3 mV, perfect for a MM input. Now, your MM input has its own impedance generally equal to 47 Kohms. The signal emitted by the MC cartridge must be in accordance to that 47 Kohms. A step-up modifies the impedance of the output by a factor equal to the square of the amplification ratio. This is known as natural impedance. A word of caution: by itself, a step-up doesnt have any impedance. The natural impedance is directly linked to the impedance of your MM entry and to the amplification ratio.

So, a step-up with an amplification ratio of 10 has a natural impedance and load impedance of 470 ohms (if your MM input impedance is 47 kohms: 470=47000/10). Now, lets go back to our DENON AU320: on the 40 ohms position, since the amplification ratio is 1:10, the load impedance is 470 ohms.

Youre not convinced? Lets do more calculus. If your load impedance was 40 ohms, your amplification ratio, in that case should be equal to (47000/40)^0.5 = 34.3. With a cartridge output of 0.3 mV, you are sending 0.3*34.3 = 10.28 mV to your MM input. This is important; you may be overloading your MM input. Lets do the same calculus on the 3 ohms setting. If it were your load impedance, the gain in that case should be (47000/3)^0.5=125.16. Again, with a 0.3 mV output cartridge, youre about to send 37.5 mV in your MM input: this IS overload! A MM input is generally designed to accept an output between say 2.5 and 10 mV, not 37.5 mV! And the amplification ratios calculated here have nothing in common with the step-up specs given by manufacturers (as well see in a few moments).
 
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Dr. Bass,

This is how a SUT meant for say DL-103 will be. Nearly 400 ohms of input impedance and a output impedance of nearly 4K ohms due to gain factor of 10. Check out some of the SUT like Jensen for DL103. The EMT TSD15 will obviously require a different type of SUT.

My Yahama preamp has excellent MC and MC sections and have tried the EMT 938 with a DL103 in that manner earlier. Ofcourse I did continue to use the EMT 929 tonearm and not a different tonearm.

Will mount a Jelco one of these days and check and invite you.

Cheers.
 
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