Are Transients the Real Case for Vinyl?

Not Just a Collector’s item.

This may annoy you. It’s either well-trodden ground or simply tone-deaf; after all, does a case for vinyl need to be made when it’s currently the highest-grossing format on the market?

But this is not a case for vinyl as physical media, which is burdened with tropes about tactility, collectability, and offline sentiment. As great as those things are, this is a case for vinyl’s superiority with respect to its transients, and that is probably what will annoy vinyl critics the most. 

So, apologies for what is to ensue as I hitch up my waders and get into the longest-running debate in audiophile history: analogue vs digital.

Coming to Terms

If you’ve described vinyl’s appeal as “warmth,” you may have fallen into a common trap. Media often uses “warmth” as a catch-all explanation for vinyl’s resurgence. It hints at a difference between analogue and digital without explaining what that difference really is.

That’s understandable. Most people rarely experience a decent vinyl system, let alone compare it directly to digital.

Can we expect casual observers of the vinyl revival to dig deeper? “Warmth” is valid, but it’s only the surface. In my view, it’s not even the most important or convincing factor, since it’s often poo-pooed by vinyl critics as distortion.

Despite booming sales, many buyers still need convincing to actually play the records they purchase. If we want analogue to thrive long-term, we need to explain vinyl’s benefits more clearly and precisely. So let’s talk about the crucial term here: Transients.

Transients

This case is about transients. There are many other aspects of sound to be claimed by the digital or vinyl camps. But when it comes to transients, I am firmly planting the flag in the analogue territories. 

To qualify, this isn’t about whether you can digitally model an analogue signal and its transients. You can. But perfect computer modelling and real-world playback are different things. So Shannon and Nyquist be damned, this is an argument that analogue creates an audio signal more efficiently, with less corruption, resulting in audible differences in transients.

For those new to the game, a transient is a short-duration, high-amplitude burst of energy occurring at the very beginning of a sound waveform. It represents the initial “impact” or attack—such as a drum hit, guitar pick, or vocal consonant—before the sound settles into its sustained phase. Transients are crucial for perceived punch, definition, and rhythm, but a lot more on that to come..

When Vinyl Sounds Better.

Walking around Hi-Fi shows, visiting dealerships, and in my own system (and friends’), one difference always stands out between analogue and digital: analogue’s superior soundstaging.

Soundstaging is how the various elements of the music present themselves in a 3-dimensional space. We use the terms ‘sound stage’, ‘stereo image’, or ‘imaging’ to refer to the sonic presentation of height, width, and depth, and the position of sounds in that space. 

Vinyl systems deliver a greater sense of 3-dimensionality, especially in the depth of different elements of the sound, while digital presentations are closer to a 2-dimensional left-to-right pan. This stems from how transients are handled.

Digital lovers, why trust me, a chip in the game vinyl evangelist? Hear the argument from your own side:

In a 2024 Munich High End interview with John Darko, Chord Electronics digital consultant Rob Watts said of his M Scaler products:

“The big problem with digital is the timing of transients” 

Now, to begin to understand what Watts is saying here, we first need to understand exactly what transients are.

What are Transients?

Transients refer to the initial rise and peak of a sound wave. This is the sound of the strike of a cymbal before the note sustains and decays. These are the consonants or emphasised vowels in the words of a vocal.

These are even the enunciated parts of a word that make it make sense. “I’ve got you under my skin” without its transients would sound something like: “i’e oh oo uner ay ih”. The sound no longer makes sense; everything is slurred and can’t convey the line’s meaning. 

In the same sense, a drum snare would no longer sound like a snare, or a guitar like a guitar, maybe uncanny psychedelic ones at best. And uncanny is a good term here, because without the transients, the phrase is unable to sound natural or real. 

All music has transients, so even Aphex Twin’s otherworldly ambient techno masterpiece ‘Selected Ambient Works 85-92’ would lose its airiness, its sense of beat, texture, and space without some level of transients during playback.

In a stereo mix, several instruments and or vocals are combined, each delivering their own transients that rise and peak in the music. But transient’s dont just control attack, and don’t just make things sound accurate, they also control the space and time of the soundstage.  Watts explains this well: 

“Transients are used by the brain so that we can perceive instruments as separate entities, locating those instruments in space, the timbre and pitch.”

So transients control our understanding and recognition of different words, and notes delivered by voices and instruments. As part of a waveform travelling at different speeds and amplitudes, they also control how we perceive space in the music, as well as any sense of timing, and the dynamic range.

How This Relates to Hi-Fi

The speed, efficiency, and control with which the playback system creates and delivers transients determine how you experience the dimensionality of your music. 

Personally, I’m more engaged when things sound more three-dimensional, “In the room” and expansive in all directions. 

The Problem with Digtial Transients

Watts assesses digital audio with refreshing, if not brutal, honesty: 

“The big problem with the current digital is the timing of transients, and when you put the digital signal into an interpolation filter, and every single DAC on the planet has got an interpolation filter, the timing of transients is all wrong. They’re shifting backwards and forwards continuously, and this shifting backwards and forwards of the timing of transients confuses the brain, and as a result, your instruments lack separation, you don’t get timbre variation, and you can’t locate instruments in space’ 

Watt’s is revealing all of this of course, because the Quintet M Scaler is his, and Chord Electronics solution to this problem. But taking that aside, one of the keys to the argument for vinyl was in his next answer in the Darko interview. John asks Rob: Why is the Quintet able to do this and not the Dave? (the model below) Watts replies that the reason the Quintet can deliver improved transients is:

“Simply because of the amount of processing power. The more processing power you’ve got delivers much better sound quality because you can more accurately reconstruct the timing of transients. If you wanted to perfectly reconstruct the original timing, you would need an infinite amount of processing.”

 Watts goes on to say that the algorithm used to reconstruct perfect transients is more important even than the infinite processing power required. The total development time for the proprietary coding in the Quartet took 6 years of development.

With digital, better transients are beginning to be delivered by using large amounts of power to process the digital source through an extremely complicated algorithm to enhance the digital signal. Watts’ endeavour is remarkable, innovative, and to be applauded.

The Case for Vinyl

Vinyl contrasts sharply: no conversion needed. No DAC, no interpolation filter, no timing corruption from digital processing.

Digital requires huge amounts of electricity for that processing. Here’s something we can all agree on: Mains power is noisy, so designers obsess over power supplies to reduce interference that blurs transients. It only takes a bit of time spent with an oscilloscope to see the evidence for yourself. Even batteries carry inherent noise.

Vinyl’s signal? Mechanically generated at full resolution. No electrical power required to create it

Digital playback takes electricity; vinyl playback makes electricity.

Your Cartridge Generates Brand New Electricity.

The cantilever attached to your stylus moves a magnet in coils (MM) or coils in magnets (MC), inducing current via electromagnetic induction. The cartridge is a tiny generator creating fresh electrical signal—left and right channels—without any prior power input.

Only after the tonearm wires does the signal hit its first electrical stage: the phono stage’s RIAA EQ, done with simple analogue electronics. No digital-to-analogue conversion, no upsampling, no special transient processing.

The cartridge is a transducer: mechanical energy → electrical energy. The tonearm has no power supply, no mains dependence. It delivers a raw analogue waveform.

Vinyl needs negligible power for EQ in the phono stage—but nothing to “enhance” or correct transients. Good analogue playback lets transients flow untampered from the source.

Interference with the source in vinyl systems is mostly mechanical (hence the need for premium gear), not electrical mains noise.

This is why good analogue playback is able to deliver such effective transients. In contrast to the slightly confused transients that Watts describes as endemic to basically all DACs on the market, the analogue signal delivers transients untampered straight from the source material. There is essentially no electrical interference of the kind faced by the rest of the mains taking system.

Sound of the police

I’m sure the measurements police will be after me for this one, with some kind of number that points to digital superiority. What’s more, I have no measurable data to provide you with. I can only point to the facts regarding electricity, and talk about the subjective experience I have after decades of being raised in the industry, of experiences in our listening room comparing CD to vinyl, streaming to Vinyl, and high-res to Vinyl.

I hear the same thing at every Hi-Fi Show I go to yearly in my job role, and every dealership I’ve visited who have been willing to make the comparison. For the digital crowd, this is unlikely to be enough. You’ll likely think I have probably developed some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, having been indoctrinated into vinyl from birth.

I’ll point out again that Rob Watts himself is the one pointing to a weakness in digital. Weakness in contrast to what? In contrast to an analogue signal. Without an analogue signal, we probably wouldn’t even know that depth could be such a sublime part of stereo playback, or just how good separation and soundstaging can get. And it’s not just Watts either. There are many developers in the industry who unexpectedly favour analogue, but wouldn’t make such comments on the record. 

Rob Watts makes the case that more attention needs to be directed to the handling of the waveform itself for advancements in digital, rather than resting on the laurels of measurable figures (that may be quite irrelevant to an analogue signal). We listen to sound waves, not numbers. Every employed speaker designer will tell you that numbers always supplement listening. Be brave enough to listen with your ears and consider what a real musician, band, or orchestra in 3-dimensional space would sound like. If you need a reference point, heck, maybe get out of the listening room and attend a concert.

Not all vinyl beats digital. A Crosley is enough to dispel that idea. And this isn’t the case to say only listen to vinyl. There’s fantastic music only available digitally, and there’s fantastic music only on vinyl. Some of my favourite music is poorly mastered and pressed to vinyl. Some of the music I discover listening digitally sounds far better on vinyl. 

Nor is it the case that even all high-end vinyl playback sounds better than digital. Some eyewateringly expensive vinyl systems had some of the driest sounds I heard at Munich last year, and I promise you it wasn’t down to room treatment. But even in those cases, the delivery of the transients still had that signature separation and 3-dimensionality that lies squarely in the ownership of vinyl. Better vinyl systems at the Munich show presented listeners not only with the transients we’ve discussed, but also rich tonal quality and pinpoint timing. The ‘just right’ that vinyl-loving Oldilocks would recognise, and newcomers are trying to understand.

Older readers please take that as a compliment. At 30 almost everyone in the Hi-Fi industry is older than me. It takes the openness of a Rob Watts for me to articulate what I hear in a vinyl system compared to a digital one, to begin to understand what transients are, and to think it through. 

If there’s one takeaway from this, let’s be more open-handed with our knowledge. Many older Hi-Fi aficionados have helped me to understand our terms and concepts in Hi-Fi, in its design and its playback. Conversations that clearly explain what Hi-Fi terminology means help to draw attention to what is happening when we listen. That is crucial for my generation’s understanding of the industry, and equally so, its ability to thrive for years to come.

Thanks for reading. 

– David Baker

An Overlooked Factor

In high-fidelity vinyl playback, the goal is to faithfully reproduce the original sound. Yet there is an often-overlooked factor that undermines that goal: ground noise! This electrical interference creeps into your system and obscures the signal from your cartridge, robbing the music of clarity, dynamics, and life.

The Unique Nature of the Vinyl Signal

Unlike most audio components that draw power from the mains, a phono cartridge operates differently. As the stylus traces the groove, it generates a fresh electrical signal through electromagnetic induction between magnets and coils – a miniature generator at the end of your tonearm. This signal is inherently electrically clean, free from wall-power noise, and often floats relative to ground. Interference with vinyl signal quality is primarily mechanical, stemming from poor bearings, materials, and design.

However, electrically clean, that low-level output is extremely delicate. Moving-magnet (MM) cartridges produce around 5 mV, while moving-coil (MC) designs can drop to as little as 0.1 mV. To transmit this fragile signal through the tonearm without adding mechanical issues, manufacturers use thin, generally unshielded wires inside the armtube. The tube itself serves as shielding but also as an antenna, picking up unwanted radio frequencies (RF), electromagnetic interference (EMI), airborne noise, mains AC hum, and even microphonic vibrations from components.

Any electrical waveform needs a 0V reference (ground) to exist. Your system’s ground, which is tied to the mains earth and component chassis, is bombarded by these disturbances. Standard grounding helps reduce noise, but it’s rarely perfect, leaving residual interference that obscures the music.

How Ground Noise Degrades Sound

The audible effects include a subtle haze or veil over fine details, reduced texture in instruments and vocals, poorer separation between musical elements, and less precisely defined instrument placement within the soundstage. A higher noise floor compresses dynamics, making quiet passages feel compressed and less impactful. True black backgrounds disappear, replaced by a faint interference that reduces overall engagement and realism, particularly in high-resolution systems, classical recordings, or low-level listening, where subtlety is key.

Introducing the Origin Live Ground Anchor

Origin Live’s new Ground Anchor targets this exact problem. Developed in close collaboration with UK noise specialists Puritan Audio Laboratories, it’s a compact grounding tool (160 × 65 × 40 mm) that connects between your tonearm cable grounds and the phonostage’s grounding post.

Inside its enclosure, advanced noise-absorbing technology converts disruptive ground-referenced interference into harmless heat, effectively removing it from the signal path.

The improvements are meaningful. The Ground Anchor provides clarity in detail and texture, deeper black backgrounds, better separation of musical elements, and more precisely defined soundstages. It’s particularly effective with step-up transformers (SUTs), where you often trade detail for space and richness.

A standout feature is the three cartridge-side grounding posts. Origin Live’s premium tonearm cables use multiple grounds (for arm structure, shielding, and optional signal reference) to minimise hum across varying phono-stage designs. This makes connections easier and less cumbersome, with the added benefit of supporting up to three tonearms from a single unit.

Universally compatible with any tonearm and phonostage, the Ground Anchor reflects both our and Puritan’s shared conviction that products must be developed by ear, through real listening tests. 

Hi–Fi History: Why the Tonearm was Invented

As we step into 2025 there are a whole host of upgrades available on the market for your turntable. We make many that get more out of your vinyl grooves. In this article, however, I wanted to explore the origins of the first significant upgrade to the turntable. I’m writing, of course, about the humble then, and maybe not so humble now, tonearm. We have great respect for the early pioneers of audio. If things we now take for granted hadn’t been invented, the high-fidelity experience may have looked very different to how it does today. To look at how tonearms came into existence, we need to look all the way back to 1870, when a German immigrant Emile Berliner landed in New York. He worked menial jobs while spending his evenings conducting experiments with telephone transmitters in a makeshift lab set up in his boardinghouse. Berliner caught the attention of the Bell Telephone Company and began employment there. He soon lost interest in the telephone and instead pursued the creation of a machine for recording and reproducing sound. It was during this time he was able to create the gramophone, which used a horn to acoustically amplify the vibration of a needle (connected to a diaphragm) running through the groove of a shellac record. By doing so, Berliner realised an idea first conceived by French Inventor Charles Cros from the work of French scientist Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville. Berliner realised and developed many of the fundamentals of the turntable and the recorded disc we recognise today, such as the spinning platter and the black disc with its recorded spiral groove. We’d even recognise the metal stamping process used in production today That Berliner invented to mass manufacture recorded shellac discs. At this point in the tonearms story, though, we turn to one of Berliner’s American employees; Eldridge Johnson. Once a machinist, Johnson aided Berliner’s design, improving engineering on the hand-cranked motor and improving the sound box. The sound box was the round assembly pictured below that contained the needle necessary to play through the grooves. Here’s how the gramophone works: Vibrating according to the record’s groove, the needle’s movement causes a diaphragm attached to it to make larger corresponding movements. Much like a speaker driver, as the diaphragm moves, it continuously changes the air pressure in the base of the attached horn. The horn then acoustically amplifies this into a (semi) listenable volume. We might think about this as a very proto cartridge, though the cartridge is, of course, its own groundbreaking invention. See this illustrated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tmWIb-7_no If you consider that the entire assembly of the large horn balances on the sound box and the needle, you begin to wonder how the needle managed to move at all. It was counterweighted to some degree, so we could think about the whole assembly as a quasi-tonearm (what’s the effective mass of that eh?). But really the tonearm was invented in 1902 when Johnson developed an additional tube at the base of the horn that could hold the sound box in separation from the weight of the horn and rest with a lot less weight on the record surface. The invention of the tonearm vastly improved the sound quality of the gramophone and hugely reduced the wear and tear to the recorded shellac disc, meaning that users had a closer fidelity to the recorded sound and could use their records for longer! Here’s how the gramophone works: Vibrating according to the record’s groove, the needle’s movement causes a diaphragm attached to it to make larger corresponding movements. Much like a speaker driver, as the diaphragm moves, it continuously changes the air pressure in the base of the attached horn. The horn then acoustically amplifies this into a (semi) listenable volume. We might think about this as a very proto cartridge, though the cartridge is, of course, its own groundbreaking invention. See this illustrated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tmWIb-7_no If you consider that the entire assembly of the large horn balances on the sound box and the needle, you begin to wonder how the needle managed to move at all. It was counterweighted to some degree, so we could think about the whole assembly as a quasi-tonearm (what’s the effective mass of that eh?). But really the tonearm was invented in 1902 when Johnson developed an additional tube at the base of the horn that could hold the sound box in separation from the weight of the horn and rest with a lot less weight on the record surface. The invention of the tonearm vastly improved the sound quality of the gramophone and hugely reduced the wear and tear to the recorded shellac disc, meaning that users had a closer fidelity to the recorded sound and could use their records for longer! What’s so interesting here is how freedom of movement for the needle to track the groove resulted in a huge improvement in the sound. This is still much the same today, and alongside freedom of movement, there are many more things a tonearm can do to improve sound quality. Our developments may not have been as fundamental as Berliner and Johnson’s, but we have been researching and developing tonearms for over two decades here at Origin Live. We came up with a few innovations in the tonearm realm ourselves, such as the dual pivot bearing for stable vertical freedom of movement, as well as developing highly decoupled gimbal bearing assemblies, multi-layer counterweights, high-performance arm tubes, high mass yokes, and so much more, All painstakingly developed through careful analysis and listening tests. Questions like, ‘Which material out of 20 sounds the best?’ Or ‘How should those components be shaped, weighted, treated, arranged and joined?’ Have been crucial to finding the best performance from vinyl playback in price points ranging from affordable to cost-no-object. Our products come about through engineering principles applied, tested, revised, and tested again, exhaustively, until we find what we’re after: something closer to the original sound of live music. The only absolute sound reference is live music (not amplified live music). Some systems get much closer to this than others. A better tonearm will always help to make this possible. Many notice that a truly high-grade vinyl system has more depth, more dynamics, and more life to it than a digital counterpart. There are many reasons for this. A fundamental reason is that the stylus creates an electrical signal mechanically by electromagnetically inducing a voltage. The cartridge signal pre-phono doesn’t rely on any electrical power for its creation. Digital, unfortunately, does, and no matter how much filtering and regulation goes into treating the power source, many polluting elements such as voltage noise, always remain in varying degrees.  This affects the creation of the digital waveform, its transients, and its subsequent performance. It is also a fact that the analogue signal doesn’t suffer from the digital artefacts created in algorithmically converting signal from CDs, large formats and streaming. Digital artefacts  are distortions and errors that occur during the recording, manipulation and playback of digital audio. Some might argue this is ludicrous because many vinyl records are made from digital recordings, but the dynamic range compression of the master used for making vinyl often tends to be better than its digital counterpart. Not only this however, since this objection overlooks the significance of converting the digital signal into mechanical movements to create the record stamping plate. It is this mechanical movement which filters out many artefacts and is much closer to natural analogue which the ear loves to hear. It is just as true today as it was in 1902 that the tonearm greatly improves the sound quality of your records. Tonearms need to be designed not only to minimise unwanted vibrations, but designed and tuned by ear to take care of the effect on the cartridge signal. There are many subpar examples on the market. Origin Live tonearms offer better performance than any other at an equivalent cost. We pride ourselves on years of development, awards for the results, and, subsequently, more development in our pursuit of higher fidelity. A better tonearm surprises so many with the dramatic level of sonic improvement achieved. Simply providing a rock-solid platform for your cartridge enables it to perform at a whole new level. Of course, a better signal to your speakers, in turn, enables them to perform at a whole new level, with increased separation of instruments, the soundstage widening and deepening, and the timbres of the music hitting you with natural dynamics throughout the whole of the frequency range. You can find out more about our award-winning range of tonearms for every budget here: View Tonearms £480 – £26,000 > If you’d like to contact us for more information or advice, please get in touch via originlive@originlive.com All the best, David Baker

Sovereign Turntable: ‘It’s Like Having a New Album‘

Listening to the Sovereign Turntable, two seasoned audiophiles, David Price & Mike Evans (who have heard countless high-end turntables), agree: “It’s like hearing a track for the first time”. When such high praise comes from a long-standing editor, and long-time retailer alike, you know they’re talking about a truly special product. The effect isn’t just limited to our super high-end decks either, and many customers echo the same sentiments about the breathtaking performances of Turntables and arms much lower in our range. When I read equipment reviews, I usually like to know a little about who is conducting the review because it helps to know a specific reviewers’ tastes and whether they are trustworthy. For those of you who may not know David Price, it may help to say that he is one of the most respected Hi-Fi reviewers in the industry. Currently the editor-in-chief of Stereonet, he has also been the editor of Hi-Fi World for a decade. He conducted many of the group comparison tests in Hi-Fi Choice for years and, to this day, is a regular contributor to both Hi-Fi Choice and News. Mike Evans has experience retailing Hi-Fi and contributing to Stereonet UK. Recently, David and Mike have been sitting down to discuss all things audio on Hi-Fi Riff, which is a YouTube channel run by the pair. In one of their recent episodes, they extolled the virtues of the Sovereign-S Turntable and Agile Tonearm. Listen to their thoughts on Origin Live, founder Mark Baker, and most importantly, experiencing vinyl playback like never before.

Video Below: Watch David Price and Mike Evans of Hi-Fi Riff on the Sovereign-S & Agile

Transcript Highlights:

Mike Evans on hearing Synchronicity on the Sovereign: “We’ve been listening to Synchronicity by The Police. Now, I’ve always thought that album’s not particularly well recorded. I don’t play it very often for that reason. As much as I quite like the music, it doesn’t really do it for me. But wow I mean, I’ve just heard it for the first time. And that’s kind of what this sort of system can do. And I’m really, I’m still quite blown away by the separation between the instruments, the level of detail. The way I can now understand what the producer was trying to do in the studio. It’s like having a new Album!” David Price on Dual, Rega & Linn vs the Sovereign, and how it compares to the Technics SL-1000R: “We’d have both got that Police album Synchronicity and we’re playing it on our Dual CS505 or whatever that we had; Rega Planar 3, and you think well you know that’s pretty good, sounds nice but it’s not amazing. And then you upgrade to a Linn and then you think well uh it’s kind of better. But it’s much less better than I expected and maybe it’s not such a good album after all in terms of recording. And then you get to something like this. Which is, you know, a very expensive high-end arm and cartridge and turntable, and then suddenly it just unpeels, doesn’t it, it just opens up. The overall result is that you get incredibly detailed sound, but it’s not a detailed sound in a kind of forensic way or a kind of Hi-Fi way; it’s very organic.” “The Technics SL-1000R is about the same money. It’s 18 Grand and it’s an amazing turntable. It weighs about 60 kilograms. When we tested it for Hi-Fi News three or four years ago it was the best measuring turntable Paul Miller had ever measured. Incredible speed stability, really architectural sound, loads of detail Etc. But I think the Technics is slightly less musical, it’s less kind of natural and organic sounding. They’re both fantastic decks you know it’s kind of Ferrari or Lamborghini, and you know we’ve talked about this quite often. If you get the opportunity to, you know compare these products. If you’re in that market I think you have to try to do that. It’s been an absolute privilege being able to listen to this lovely turntable, tonearm and cartridge set up through your system here with the Kerr Acoustics. That’s been brilliant, but if you are in this market then you’ve got a short list this turntable.” Ok we’ll say it: The Sovereign is probably the best turntable in the world at this price (and often at much higher prices too). Interestingly, this isn’t the first comparison we’ve heard between the Sovereign and the SL-1000R. A few of our customers have had the chance to compare the two, both reporting a ‘clinical’ sound from the Technics, and deciding to opt for the Sovereign turntable after hearing its separated, open performance, and that natural, organic sound that David and Mike rave about in their discussion on the turntable.

Origin Live have released images of the latest entry in their turntable range: the Swift. Among the Mk5 upgrades announced at the Bristol Hi-Fi show came the news that a new turntable would be entering the range.

On top of the motor/power supply redesign, one of the major upgrades in the Origin Live Mk5 line is the Multi-Layer Platter (MLP); trickle-down tech from their flagship Voyager turntable, now incorporated as standard on all turntables above the Aurora. The Swift is essentially an Aurora turntable with a Multi-Layer Platter. Why include the MLP as standard? Because it sounds too good to simply be an optional extra, says Mark Baker our company’s founder.

The addition of the MLP as standard has increased the cost of the Calypso and Resolution turntables. To keep the range as accessible as possible Origin Live have filled in the price point between the Aurora and the Calypso comes the Swift.

The Swift features the basic design of the Aurora turntable, with its cantilevered design. The platter and tonearm are balanced in equilibrium on a high mass sub-chassis plate. Something that equates roughly to a rigid, mechanical suspension. Origin Live claim this not only avoids both the softening of leading edges often found in suspended designs and the hardness in many non-suspended designs.

It also features their low friction bearing, which the company report now consistently takes at least 2:30 minutes to come to stop from 33rpm when belt less.

This all comes alongside the Mk5 Multi Layer Platter, featuring an intricately designed top with over 1000 individual slots laser cut through the top layer. Combined with another composite layer underneath and carefully screwed on to the acrylic platter (not too tight we are told) the multiple layers work to diffuse surface resonance through vibrational interference. Having spent countless hours laser cutting hundreds of different line profiles to test on the top layer, the Bakers at Origin Live also opted for a label sized hole at the centre of the platter which they claim has added Bass detail and depth.

The Origin Live Swift Mk5 Turntable is available now priced at £2,290. The accompanying Zephyr Mk4 Tonearm pictured is £1,080

Introduction to Good Sound Quality

If you are interested in good sound quality, this article aspires to help. My thanks must go to the outside assistance given by four professional designers and reviewers who have contributed and proof read the ideas included. This was necessary in a subject which can be confusing for a number of reasons which will become clear as you read.

At face value, good sound quality seems like an easy thing to evaluate. We say things such as:

“I know what I like”

“My system sounds great”

“This item got a great review on sound quality”

“It’s either right or it’s wrong”

Most people want a system which gives you the feeling of “being there” at the original performance – of hearing the singers and instruments as if they were right there in the room in front of you. In the process of both hearing and conducting many equipment auditions I have found that what seems simple is far from it! 

Origin Live has won around twenty “product of the year” awards for their designs. This article seeks to pass on and distill over three decades of professional listening experience into easy to understand concepts:

1. 1. Things to watch out for when evaluating sound quality
   2. Knowing how people listen differently
   3. How to figure out your priorities in sound quality
   4. How reviews and recommendations may come from particular standpoints

I often discuss with clients how they wish to upgrade the equipment in their audio system. Many have great systems which they are happy with but are also aware that they have heard better.  This leads to interesting conversations involving the pros and cons of various options. One of the most common difficulties expressed is that the range of choice is massive and pretty much everything is recommended by one source or another.

There are many stories of clients trying different items of equipment in an effort to address a particular shortcoming in sound quality. For example in a search for more detail in the sound, you may have purchased a pair of speakers, thinking they had great clarity in the audition. However, after a while you recognise that there is no bass warmth and listening becomes a fatiguing experience – tonally these speakers have too much treble. So you duly acquire another pair of speakers without such an “insightful” treble – these are OK for a while but eventually you notice that the sound is not very exciting or involving. If truth be told, it’s boring because the dynamics are poor!  This story is the syndrome of swapping one set of problems for another. All part of the learning curve in achieving good sound quality. Whilst this may be fun for some, it is often too expensive and time consuming for others.

You can usually recognize good sound quality instantly. However it’s prudent to go further than initial impressions as there are many common pitfalls which need to be avoided. If you are relatively new to Hi Fi you may find it  challenging to describe in detail what you are hearing. It’s like learning about computers or smartphones – flashy looking products can have underlying issues, and there are  unfamiliar words and ways of describing the things which are not always consistent.

Why You Need to Evaluate Products to Your Own Satisfaction

Businesses are told by skilful marketing companies that it’s not about the product, it’s about the marketing! There is a lot of truth in this. Just because something is popular and marketed well does not mean it’s the best product out there. Putting claims to the test yourself through audition is the only way of knowing whether something really lives up to the hype. Opportunities to audition equipment may occur at a dealer, hearing a friend’s system, Hi Fi shows or products ordered on a money back guarantee. When these opportunities occur, it is extremely helpful to be on the lookout for key aspects of sound quality and know why they are important. 

Remarks on listening to Hi FI

I used to think that unless someone had severe hearing loss, most people had similar hearing. I put down variations in the way people respond in listening tests as a matter of experience. When new to Hi Fi, I myself used to find comparison tests of different systems quite demanding in terms of always understanding people’s comments. This was usually because I was particularly focused on one aspect of the music. Over time I have learned to tune in to things in a more holistic way rather than just being focused on certain aspects of the music.

Hearing varies from person to person in the same way that some have 20/20 vision, others are short sighted, others long sighted etc. It’s estimated that only 1 in 10,000 people have absolute pitch perfect hearing (meaning you can tell what key is played without a reference note). More commonly 1 in 50 have relative pitch perfect hearing (meaning you can tell whate
ver key is played relative to a reference Key played). 1 in 50 are tone deaf so everyone else is somewhere on the spectrum in between.

These facts tell you that designers, reviewers and listeners vary in their ability to hear tonal correctness. Some will pay a lot of attention to tonal quality and others will value different characteristics. Technical measurements are of value but have limitations when assessing sound quality for reasons that have been well documented over the years. 

People have differing preferences in what they like to hear in music. If you are not used to hearing live music (un-amplified), you might not be so aware of how things should sound. It’s then easy to simply accept mediocre sound quality. We quickly get used to the sound of our system without realising how much it can be improved. When you listen to a piece of familiar music on a different system, it can often shed a different light on things. It takes time, experience, and critical listening to improve how you identify what makes good sound. Reading reviews or listening to sales people doesn’t guarantee you will end up with the best solutions.

I for one, have made many seriously poor buying decisions by listening to the enthusiastic opinion of others before listening for myself. So when reading reviews or listening to recommendations it helps to have a charted map of what great sound quality really consists of. 

Three Main Categories in Good Sound Quality

At Origin Live we find that the elements which make up good sound quality mostly fall into 3 core categories: Clarity, Dynamics and Tonality. What follows is not necessarily the most perfect way of looking at things but it helps to simplify and clarify a complex subject.

The Winning Combination for Good Sound Quality

It is surprising how you can demonstrate 2 systems to a room full of listeners and there will be different opinions as to which is best. You can then carry out a similar demonstration between 2 other systems and the room will be unanimous on the winner.

The most likely reason for this is that in the first instance, one system appealed only to listeners with a given preference for clarity (by way of example) whereas in the unanimous verdict, one system appealed to all types of listener. This can be illustrated in the diagram below where you can see the sweet spot of truly good sound quality.

“Best Sound” which finds Universal Acceptance

An evaluation of good sound quality will not only look at individual aspects in the music but also appreciate things holistically.

One way to do this is to score the above diagram. The intersection of the 3 circles in area CDT represents the overall score. The perfect sound is one which would score 100% in all three categories. The score at intersection “CDT” would be averaged to  100%      [100C + 100D + 100T]/3 = 100%.  Where C is Clarity, D is Dynamics & T is Tonality

The value of seeing the individual scores 100C 100D 100T – is that you may have a particular preference for clarity (for example), and not care too much about tonality. So if the score was [100C + 100D + 30T] / 3 = 77% you would be happy and the system may come at much less cost.

Of course no such scoring system has been formalised but it gives a concept of how reviews on good sound quality could score things to arrive at their conclusions.

It is interesting to note that the quality of Clarity/ Dynamics/Tonality can be enhanced or diminished by every component in your system – from source to loudspeakers.

Basis of Observations

In 35 years carrying out listening tests, hearing demonstrations, giving demonstrations and sitting on professional blind test listening panels, it’s very clear that an understanding of what people like and why, is of supreme importance. This understanding helps avoid a myriad of pitfalls which may occur in:-

Design. Evaluation, Reviews, Your Choices etc.

Observations on Preferences

Everybody, even reviewers focus on different things when listening to music. Just as people prefer different genres of music, so we have particular preferences on aspects of what we consider to be good sound quality. Different aspects of sound draw different people in.

A  parallel to what people like in good sound quality, is the type of books or films people like. Genres such as thriller, detective, romantic etc, all have their equivalents in music and equipment sound. Some people are more analytic in their listening and looking for the fine details in playback. Others are looking for the thrill you get with quality dynamics. Some most enjoy great tonality and the pleasing effect on the ear of wonderful harmonics in the music. The all round listener will latch onto all three of these while listening to music.

If you  are not particularly sensitive to tonality, you will probably pay a lot more attention to things like dynamics or clarity. If on the other hand, you are sensitive to pitch and harmonics (e.g like a musician) then you may find tonal anomalies extremely irritating and will not rate equipment which is poor tonally. Tonal anomalies can include things like singers sounding flat, piano harmonics sounding unnatural etc. Knowing what you like in good sound quality is an important key to making the best equipment choices.

Magazine reviews are often very helpful in shortlisting products for audition as they often discuss sound quality in depth. However it’s worth recognising the following:

1. 1. A huge number of products all receive the same rating (number of stars or % score etc)
   2. Scoring systems don’t rate absolute performance of products. For example a £200 product will get 5 stars which means that it’s good in it’s class. What this score does not tell you, is how it compares to a £1000 product. The truth is that there are products which outperform others at over 10 times the price.
   3.  It’s natural that any review will be coloured by the reviewers hearing and personal tastes. Ignoring the overall rating, good reviews still give a picture of a product’s characteristics which helps.

Food for Thought on Good Sound Quality

Hopefully this article has provided food for thought in what makes good sound quality from a subjective point of view. This is a huge subject of course but sometimes new ways of looking at things can provide all sorts of breakthroughs.