i love the word 'plinth'

Y'know, all he really needs to do is start making all the parts himself (well, maybe not the arm but at least the platter) and he could be in the turntable business in short order. Most people can't hear the difference between CDs and LPs (or they actually think CDs are superior! LOL!), so it would be easy to tell people that these really cool-looking machines somehow sound better. No proof needed, some folks will fling money at you for a pretty turntable, especially since some of the really high-end tables out there, fascinating as they are, would only be considered "pretty" by some sort of gadget/engineering/machining fetishist. To semi-normal people looking to decorate their house, high-end tables are often just too weird. There's a niche out there for expensive tables that are both good and pretty. Good luck to this guy.

Addy has technics?

@Aaron Stein: Every time you say that the thing costs another 1000 bucks dude. Stop it.

Teres Audio... an example of someone who took this to the extreme (with wood, though) and built one heck of a business.

@benenglish: For someone (most people, as you note) who can't hear a difference between CD and vinyl then the CD certainly isn't inferior in terms of sound quality. and it's certainly superior in terms of portability, availability, etc.

And for those people who have an ear which can discern the warmth of tone that continues to elude the digital medium the fact is that barring a sever audiophile habit and a desire to spend far more than the average consumer on listening devices they won't hear a difference either.

However something that many audio snobs disregard is that while early wax transfer recordings have a unique sound only found in analog-analog recording, after the 70's pretty much all vinyl was mastered on some sort of digital system before being etched/cast on wax. Meaning almost anything you listen to on wax has been digitized prior to being formatted back into analog. So any ambient tone you hear is an artifact of the replay process and not the recording.

Dude I don't care I don't even like music. I just want a badass looking TT like this one in my living room

This is nothing new ... I remember seeing something similar 10 years ago

Who uses belt drive turntables? I mean really...

The shape is almost exactly the same as VPI HR-X turntable. Not very creative.
[www.vpiindustries.com]

@benenglish: @logruszed: Vinyl may have better sound initially [as analog essentially has an infinite sampling rate], but the sound is degraded with each play as the tonearm scrapes against the grooves.

I'll hold out for the laser-groove-reading tonearm.

@ideaman2020: You don't have to hold out for "laser groover reading" arm. You just need about $12,000.
[www.audioturntable.com]

@cygnusx8: Like I said, "I'll wait..."

@ideaman2020: Actually, there is one reason that vinyl is better - analog clipping is a lot better sounding than digital clipping.

In analog clipping, an input that is too loud is distorted non-linearly, but keeps its relative shape, and that sounds a lot better than in digital, where once you reach maximum, that's it. Digital clipping introduces a lot of unrelated harmonics just make the sound awful.

The same thing happens in transistors vs valves - valves don't clip, but you get less gain as the input gets higher, distorting without brick-walling.

Also, given that modern music mastering has the LOUDER IS BETTER mentality, vinyl actually can't allow that as a hotter mix takes more physical space on the disc, thus giving you shorter recording times (because overloading the input causes the needle to move more). So there's a chance that the vinyl will be better mastered, making it sound even better still. Modern CDs are mastered to the point where most of the music is clipped, making it very hard to listen to.

It used to be the purview of audiophiles that made the claim that vinyl was better. Now it's because modern music is mastered in such a way (due to the way CD works) that it just sounds awful, and vinyl sounds way better because you can't abuse it the way you can with CD.

I usually look at the image then read the headline. First impression...

"Ooh! That's a cool looking hard drive!" :)

@Worf: Well, on the other side of the equation, analog also has a higher signal-to-noise ratio and less dynamic range...

Like most things in life, it's a trade-off...

I also have to go on record as saying that I hate the "LOUDER IS BETTER mentality". Remastering these days means compressing the hell out of stuff.

It makes me sad that we have more dynamic range available to us than ever before, yet the signals are all squashed... AAAAARGH!!!

Does anyone remember dynamic range? Bowie? Eno?