Recommendations for a good turntable?

dudeman said:

PJ_Soul said:

Zod said:

I bought a Denon DP-300F w/ Ortofon Red Cartrdige. I was going through all the reviews online and this one got really good review except the cartridge it comes with isn't very good. I bought a combo set of this player with the Ortofon Red Cartridge.

I've been really happy with it. It's an entry level Audiophile player but it's fully automatic I loathe manual players

I've got the same set up, and am also very happy with it - I also loathe manual players! It is very frustrating to me that hardly any TTs are automatic, so those of us who consider it a requirement, as I do, are kind of pigeon holed into buying what we might not necessarily buy otherwise. I have read that the justification is that automatics don't have as steady a tone arm because of the extra mechanism involved. That seems like a massive cop out to me. This day and age, they are more than capable of making an auto TT with a nice solid tonearm, I mean come on.

They're definitely capable of making them, they just haven't found a good way to do it cheaply. IME, most automatic TT's under $500.00 have too many concessions in quality of materials and design.

The Denon DP-300F is an exception. That's a nice, well rounded table. One would have to spend a lot of money to get a little improvement.

Vintage gear is the exception, generally speaking. There are plenty of great sounding, reliable and affordable automatic turntables out there.

PJ_Soul said:

dudeman said:

PJ_Soul said:

Zod said:

I bought a Denon DP-300F w/ Ortofon Red Cartrdige. I was going through all the reviews online and this one got really good review except the cartridge it comes with isn't very good. I bought a combo set of this player with the Ortofon Red Cartridge.

I've been really happy with it. It's an entry level Audiophile player but it's fully automatic I loathe manual players

I've got the same set up, and am also very happy with it - I also loathe manual players! It is very frustrating to me that hardly any TTs are automatic, so those of us who consider it a requirement, as I do, are kind of pigeon holed into buying what we might not necessarily buy otherwise. I have read that the justification is that automatics don't have as steady a tone arm because of the extra mechanism involved. That seems like a massive cop out to me. This day and age, they are more than capable of making an auto TT with a nice solid tonearm, I mean come on.

They're definitely capable of making them, they just haven't found a good way to do it cheaply. IME, most automatic TT's under $500.00 have too many concessions in quality of materials and design.

The Denon DP-300F is an exception. That's a nice, well rounded table. One would have to spend a lot of money to get a little improvement.

Vintage gear is the exception, generally speaking. There are plenty of great sounding, reliable and affordable automatic turntables out there.

Fair enough, but I was talking about higher end TTs. There are almost none of those that are automatic either. They are actually nearly impossible to find at any price. I.e. needledoctor has only 8 auto TTs altogether, and almost all of those are total crap (and the most expensive is simply the DP-300F with a bronze ortofon upgrade). That is 8 TTs out of 154! And there is not a single high end auto TT. So it doesn't seem to me that cost has anything to do with it at all. They have TTs costing up to $170,000, and the most expensive automatic setup available is $750 or so. To me it almost seems like some kind of stubborn audiophile snobbery in the TT design community or something, lol. I am really hoping this gets better before (if) I get my next TT.

tempo_n_groove said:

PJ_Soul said:

dudeman said:

PJ_Soul said:

Zod said:

I bought a Denon DP-300F w/ Ortofon Red Cartrdige. I was going through all the reviews online and this one got really good review except the cartridge it comes with isn't very good. I bought a combo set of this player with the Ortofon Red Cartridge.

I've been really happy with it. It's an entry level Audiophile player but it's fully automatic I loathe manual players

I've got the same set up, and am also very happy with it - I also loathe manual players! It is very frustrating to me that hardly any TTs are automatic, so those of us who consider it a requirement, as I do, are kind of pigeon holed into buying what we might not necessarily buy otherwise. I have read that the justification is that automatics don't have as steady a tone arm because of the extra mechanism involved. That seems like a massive cop out to me. This day and age, they are more than capable of making an auto TT with a nice solid tonearm, I mean come on.

They're definitely capable of making them, they just haven't found a good way to do it cheaply. IME, most automatic TT's under $500.00 have too many concessions in quality of materials and design.

The Denon DP-300F is an exception. That's a nice, well rounded table. One would have to spend a lot of money to get a little improvement.

Vintage gear is the exception, generally speaking. There are plenty of great sounding, reliable and affordable automatic turntables out there.

Fair enough, but I was talking about higher end TTs. There are almost none of those that are automatic either. They are actually nearly impossible to find at any price. I.e. needledoctor has only 8 auto TTs altogether, and almost all of those are total crap (and the most expensive is simply the DP-300F with a bronze ortofon upgrade). That is 8 TTs out of 154! And there is not a single high end auto TT. So it doesn't seem to me that cost has anything to do with it at all. They have TTs costing up to $170,000, and the most expensive automatic setup available is $750 or so. To me it almost seems like some kind of stubborn audiophile snobbery in the TT design community or something, lol. I am really hoping this gets better before (if) I get my next TT.

"drop, drop, dropping it down, oh so gently"