Best Buy has this Pro-Ject turntable available for $11,999.98. It looks really cool, but $12K?? For that much, I want the live band to actually show up in my living room.
Anyone have a turntable like this? Is it amazing?
Let’s see…
No warranty-parts or labor
No cables
No speakers
No CD player
Output type not specified
Manual tone arm
Requires an in-store consultation.
I don’t see anything that would make it worth $120.
i think they do what ebay and other sites does when there out of something and they may not get any back in and that’s raise the price to some absurd amount so it doesn’t show up in most searches …
I think it’s more likely they play to the high end “audiophile” crowd who thinks that vinyl is somehow better than digital.
I guess the part where the platter floats magnetically makes it pretty pricey…
The platter does not float, per se, but it is magnetically coupled to the drive. It appears that the point of this is to isolate the platter from motor rumble. It is also a heavy platter, for largely the same reason.
Pro-ject’s hype says that each of these superhighend turntables takes two nerds three months to build, so, there is that. Presumably all the stuff they use to make it is pretty ok quality materials.
$2000 per nerd month? No way made in the USA.
They need a nerd or two to work on coding their website. It’s pretty much non-functional.
High-end audio kit, especially made-to-order and/or customized has always cost $$$$$. I’m sure the suspension and drive and calibration and hi-tech materials are all that.That said, for that kind of money I might start looking for a laser turntable instead.
Won’t someone think of the poor audiophiles? After all, they suffer from a horrible affliction that makes them them unable to enjoy music without spending thousands of dollars on specialized equipment.
Not sure which class of audiophiles you meant to disparage, but, e.g. I know someone whose pair of $30000 amplifiers does, in fact, sound pretty good (in case anyone was thinking all that stuff was cheap junk when it came down to it), and is rich enough for such sums of money to be meaningless.
As for the nerd factor, if you are familiar with digital signal processing, power electronics, machining, etc., you can easily put together what would be a $10000 set of speakers for, let’s say, $2000 in materials. If you are not, you have to shell out those large sums. Worth it? You be the judge; it helps to know what a good live performance sounds like to have a baseline for comparison. Nobody is saying you cannot enjoy your 19th-century gramophone or your compressed-to-hell mp3.
A turntable for $12K? Sheesh, that’s nothing. Have you seen the prices for ultra high-end audiophile equipment?
Here’s a pair of speaker cables for $50K. Oh, you want 3 meters instead of 2 meters? Well then that’ll be $71K.
This stuff is strictly for people with more money than brains.
Cool. I can save 4K.
Monocrystalline silver indeed. That one reminds me of the copper sphere made of $4 worth of copper being sold for $500, because why not. If someone has no idea what they are buying, they deserve what they get, I guess. There are still people out there trying to flog perpetual motion machines.
And I wouldn’t dare power my amplifier with anything other than a Nordost Supreme Reference Odin 2 Power Cord. It put me way behind on my mortgage, but it’s still the best $17K I ever spent.
• Velocity of Propagation: 88% Speed of Light
What a ripoff. For that price I expect at least 97%.
I was always going to flog (patent pending) superconducting cables. Any ancillary cryogenics are good, reducing the thermal noise floor.
Pffft. I’m still waiting for my warp drive cords.
It could automatically swap the stylus for a finishing nail whenever it detects an album by Imagine Dragons sitting on the platter. You can’t put a price on that…
If a person can tell the difference between a pair of $30000 pair of amplifiers and a pair of $3000 pair of amplifiers merely by listening, I will not disparage that person.
I have yet to encounter that person, but I will not disparage that person.