Revolutions in Audio, Anyone?

This review was written in 2005, perhaps before. To see what comprises our current system, click here.

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We love the new VPI Super Platter. It’s a big step up over the acrylic platter, which makes records sound more like CDs, kind of thin, vague, edgy. The original TNT type Aries platter is a very similar design to the Super Platter, and so when I got my super platter it was obviously better after the first five seconds of play but not dramatically better. On a customer’s TNT with the acrylic platter it was huge.

The bigger and more powerful the stereo, the bigger will be the difference, because it has to do with weight and heft and solidness and those sorts of sonic qualities, the kind that too many modern audiophiles ignore. (The CD guys don’t even know what those things are because CDs so rarely have those qualities, certainly never in abundance the way good records do.)

It has been our experience that VPI upgrades tend to be actual sonic improvements over the earlier versions of their equipment, unlike so much of what passes for “better” audio in the land of Hi-Fi, which is often just different and in many cases actually worse. [I cannot back up that claim now, as we have been out of the turntable-auditioning business for more than a decade. I simply have no idea whether VPI’s products are any good these days. Caveat emptor, as always.]

These are the kind of upgrades we love to do, and the reason is no doubt obvious to all you audiophiles out there. Pop the new platter on and thirty seconds later you can hear the difference. Not sure about the change? Don’t like it? Thirty seconds later you can have your old platter spinning to see exactly what happened to the sound.

It’s the kind of testing we do here all day long with Hot Stamper and other pressings. [1] Take ten copies of any title and play them, making notes as to their strengths and weaknesses. Assign each one an overall sonic grade. Think numbers 2 and 7 are the best of the bunch on side one, but not quite sure which of the two is better? No problem. Take one of them, throw it back on the table, listen for a minute, then pop on the other. That kind of head-to-head shootout is the easiest, most reliable way to find out which record really has the Hot Stamper Magic and which one only appears to.

Not sure if your new turntable or cartridge does everything better than your old one? That’s a tough test. It’s practically impossible to quickly set up the old table or mount up the old cartridge for a head to head. Unless something in the sound is just plain driving you crazy, you’re not likely to want to go through the hassle of setting up the old system, and who can blame you — it’s a pain in the ass.

One of the reasons I had never upgraded from my original Aries is that after years and years and scores and scores of hours of tweaking the damn thing, the sound was so right I didn’t want to mess with it. Any new table would be starting from scratch and I just couldn’t bear the thought. I’ve set up a number of TNTs and new Aries 3 tables and to my ear they could not better what I was already hearing, for one simple reason — they hadn’t been tweaked yet. (And none of them had my Triplanar arm, which is pretty hard to beat with a JMW.)

Bottom Line — we love the new Super Platter and recommend everyone who owns the acrylic platter replace it immediately. If you are looking to buy a VPI table you can save hundreds of dollars by ordering it with the Super Platter installed. You will be glad you did.

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And one more thing: Aurios [2]

If you have a VPI table, even a TNT with the fancy feet, you have not begun to hear what it can really sound like until you put a set of Aurios under it. As I note elsewhere on the site, the single biggest improvement I ever made to my stereo was to get Aurios under the table. (Number two would be my first set of Hallographs.)

Considering that I’ve made many many hundreds of improvements to my stereo over the past thirty years, ranking number one is a pretty high honor, don’t you think? Having your table on a solid base is all very well and good, I have one myself, but it probably gives you about 10-20% of the benefit of Aurios. You need both if you are serious about hi-fi.

You may have noticed that we don’t carry the new improved feet for the Aries and Scouts, the feet that look a little like TNT feet. We don’t sell them because they don’t do much; they don’t work remotely as well as Aurios. If you going to buy something for your table, buy the real thing, don’t waste your money on something that looks cool and does little for the sound.

[1] We no longer audition “other pressings.” We only do Hot Stamper Shootouts.

[2] Aurios are no longer made, although they are worth seeking out in the secondary market. The Seismic Sink is what we recommend every serious audiophile put under his table these days (and some other equipment too). Once you hear it, we would be very surprised if you would ever want to go back. Contact us if you would like to order one, satisfaction guaranteed.