D (9:54)
Now, most of these turntables that I've talked about are what are called belt drive. So there's a there's an elastic belt that goes around the platter which you put the record on, and then it goes around a much smaller spindle which has the moat which is attached to the motor. And as the motor spins, the belt moves the platter and that works fine. But that belt can wear out and needs to be replaced once in a while. So you have to keep that in mind. More expensive turntables are often what are called direct drive, so they don't have a belt, but the motor sits under the platter itself and moves the platter directly. This is generally a more expensive thing. Now some of these turntables are automatic, so you put the record on and you hit go and it automatically moves the tone arm over and sets it down, which is fine for most people, but audio files prefer a manual turntable generally, which means they have to pick up the tone arm and place it on the record. Like I said, that's, that's more of an audio file thing. Now preamp in addition to the turntable itself, you need a phono preamp to connect the turntable to an audio system. Now some turntables have a built in preamp. Most of the Audio Technica ones seem to have a built in preamp. The ones I looked at certainly did, which means you can then take that output and connect it directly to a sound bar or another audio system with left and right analog cables. One of the reasons I suspect your turntable sounded poor when connecting it to the sound bar was maybe it didn't have a built in preamp, although the fact that it also played CDs implies that it maybe did. So I don't really know. In any event, whenever you have a turntable you need a phono preamp because the turntables electrical signal is not at the same level as that from a CD player or another what's called line level audio device. So it needs a preamp in order to boost that signal up to where it's the same level as other audio components. And as I said before, some turntables like from Audio Technica have A built in preamp and in some cases you can buy a turntable but the preamp costs extra. I'm going to give you a couple of examples of that in a minute. Now if you have an AV receiver with a special phono input, then the preamp is in the receiver and you can connect your turntable without a preamp directly into the AV receiver and it will act as the phono preamp. There aren't that many receivers anymore that are built with that. But I guess, yeah, I'm not 100% sure about that because even if the receiver doesn't have a lot of analog inputs anymore, which most receivers don't, they might still have a phono input because a lot of audiophiles still like vinyl records and they still have turntables and they're going to want a phono input. So this is what I'm, I'm saying here for you. I would look at the Audio Technica turntables. They have good quality, reasonable price. Most are in the 200 to 500 range. There are some that are over that they have built in preamps as far as I can tell. And if you want to digitize your friends records or any other record, you want to get one with usb. And I've included a link to the Audio Technica page that has all their turntables which go all the way up to $2,000, but I know you don't want to spend that much. I'd also look at the Fluance turntables and I'll include in the show notes a link to their turntable page as well. They range in price from 250 to 550 bucks. So within a similar ballpark to the Audio Technicus, some have a built in preamp, others Fluance gives you the option of buying a Preamp for an extra hundred bucks. So you want to take take that into account. I didn't see any on their website that had usb. So if that's important to you to want to digitize vinyl records into a digital form, you're going to need to get one with a usb. And Fluance then might not be the best choice for you. Audio Technica certainly does have models that do that, so that's probably the first place I'd look. Anyway, that's what I have to say about that. Good luck. Now if you have a question for me, send it along to HTG and I'll answer as many as I can right here on the show. And as you know, all of TWiT's programs are available on YouTube for free but with ads. If you want to go ad free, join the club. Go to Twit TV Club Twit and sign up today. Until next time, geek out.
