I am not one of those who believes vinyl is inherently superior to CDs, but I have enjoyed the use of a laser turntable (called Finial originally) for a number of years. In response to an offer of an upgrade from ELP in Japan I sent my turtable to Japan and a few weeks ago I got it back.
It is like a miracle. It produces almost no clicks and pops or certainly no more than any cartridge. I used to have to clean records ad infinitum to optically play them and sometimes there were skipped grooves or discs that just would not play. Now I have played almost one hundred discs, all classical and even without washing them there is little noise. I use a tick and pop eliminator but now even with this bypassed this laser groove reader performs better than my normal turntables ever did and I don't have to worry about record wear or needle replacement not to mention hum, or dust since the ELP has a high level output and is almost airtight while playing. Talk about perfect sound forever. My measurements with test records show a normal flat frequency response although the RIAA curve is fixed. It also works a lot faster and the remote control is like a CD player's.
Of course, this acomplishment is thirty years too late and I doubt ELP will be in business much longer. I also appreciate that this unit is not affordable for most on this or any list.
Again, I have no problem with CDs. But I have perhaps 1000 LPs, all classical, mostly baroque, and most not available on CD. This ELP unit also plays 78s, some one hundred years old, without wearing them and you can pick the best groove wall and depth to avoid the worst wear.
Now for the technical part. Listening on the ELP to LPs of large ensembles like opera, organ, or a symphony, I obtained a stage of up to 180 degrees wide from almost every LP I tried which could logically have such a wide stage. CDs can also produce a similarly wide stage but not as consistently. Of course, I always listen to recordings using Ambiophonics rather than stereophonics so if a recording has captured the Interaural Level Difference and the Interaural Time Difference of the original live sound and this has been impressed on the medium (LP or CD) without loss, then I can hear such a wide and deeper soundstage using this or similar binaurally correct reproduction method. The moral of this is that in the LP era, the recording engineers did not have humongous digital pan potting consoles at their disposal, used fewer spot mics, and so, in general, delivered the ILD and ITD picked up by the mic's undisturbed to the record cutting lathe. I believe the fondness for LPs over CDs is really related to this lower level of mixer processing and simpler mic usage than any inherent difference in media or analog versus digital storage.
But why does laser playback seem to provide a stage with such enhanced width, depth and ease of localization compared to cartridge playback. I believe the answer is that each wall of the disc is read independently by its own laser and so there is no interaction between each channel and both the separation and the timing are almost ideal. In a cartridge the needle essentially combines both grooves and then the moving end of the cantilever undoes this addition via coils and magnets. If the groove walls are truly orthogonal and likewise the coils and magnets, and the cantilever does not bend, and the needle tip is symmetric, then the ILD and ITD are well preserved. Also if the cutter did not really have a 45 degree angle or the needle is too low or too high there will be error. In contrast, the optical reading method does not care about the original cutting angle. It still reads each groove wall regardless. Thus in a high resolution system, where small differences in ILD and ITD are audible as changes in stage width or realism, the ELP has an advantage. Another interesting phenomena is that when a tick does occur, it sounds way off to the side. This is because the ticks are usually only picked up by one laser and so being all left or all right they reproduce at the far side and not on top of the soloist.
But if you stick to CDs/SACDs, etc. or your LP collection is all one voice with a guitar or small combo then all this is of no concern.
Ralph Glasgal
