Here is MORE then you ever wanted to know about a Laser Turntable!!
:-) :-)



The ELP Laser Turntable 
Perfect Analog Sound Forever At a Price

Specifications

ELP LT-1XA Laser Turntable, $12,300.00, 30-50 rpm and 60-90 rpm.  
ELP LT-1LA laser turntable, $9,500, 30-50 RPM. 

Manufacturer:
ELP Corporation
3-10-1 Minami Urawa,
Urawa-shi, Saitama 336, Japan;
phone 048/883-8502,
fax 0-48/883-8503;
e-mail: elpchiba{at}interlink.or.jp;
website at www.elpj.com.

North American Distributor:
Andy Obst,
5 Timber Ridge, Los Alamos,
NM 87544; phone 505/662-1415,
fax 505/661-9068,
e-mail: andyobst{at}aol.com.

"The almost complete lack of serious playback harmonic distortion and
the really flat and wide frequency response, free of resonance's, from
the ELP is a revelation..."

This is not an April Fools joke! Yes, Virginia, there really is a
turntable that plays LPs (and even 78s) optically, that performs this
function to the highest audiophile standards and that is now readily
available at a rather high, but now more reasonable price than when
first announced under the Finial aegis in the late 1980s

Anyone, with hundreds if not thousands of LPs, 45s or treasured 78s or
anyone convinced that analog recordings musically outperform digital
ones should begin saving up for the ELP Laser Turntable LT-1LA which
sells for $9,500 including the very effective VPI HW-17s cleaning
machine. While this seems like an outrageous price to pay for a
turntable to play recordings, stored in what most people would consider
to be an obsolete form, the recently announced Domus turntable and arm
designed by Ben Ghibaldani goes for a cool $12,750 and that price
doesn't include the cartridge, yearly needle replacement, a cleaning
machine, and your records will still wear down, so obviously the analog
beat goes on.

Since I have thousands of LPs and some hundred 78s (mostly vocal,
acoustical, pre 1927) that I treasure, I decided the time had come to
see what a laser turntable could do and review it, since this
technology, coming so late in analog recording history and just after
the advent of the CD, has never received the attention in the audiophile
press it might otherwise have deserved. The secretiveness and ineptitude
of Finial's public relations during the early days of the development of
this device did not endear the company to editors and reviewers who
largely treated the company as an improbable joke.

ELP Comes of AGE

It started for me when I found, quite by accident, a website d in Japan
by ELP. The ELP Corporation's turntable seemed to be a truly reliable,
Japanese made version of the ill-fated American Finial design. Indeed
the Japanese company has now sold something over 200 of these machines
each one hand made to order and to make a long story only slightly
shorter, this optical thing works better than any record player I have
ever used or tested. It is worth every penny they are asking for it if
you value the complete absence of:

horizontal tracking angle error 

leveling adjustment worries 

inner groove distortion 

channel balance error 

stereo crosstalk 

anti-skating compensation need 

acoustic feedback problems 

locked groove problems 

problems tracking warped, cracked, or eccentric records 

cartridge hum pickup 

The payoff for eliminating all these cartridge playback defects is the
startling clarity and musicality of the sound stage that is thereby
delivered.

The almost complete lack of serious playback harmonic distortion and the
really flat and wide frequency response, free of resonance's, from the
ELP is a revelation, particularly with early stereo LPs that are
minimally mic'ed and therefore capable of producing exceptionally vivid
stage images especially when listened to with the acoustical stereo
crosstalk cancelled. Early reviews of the Finial criticized it for not
being able to track the higher frequencies, but ELP now claims response
to 25 kHz and using one of my old test records I was able to confirm
essentially flat response up to 15 kHz using an oscilloscope. At least
to these ears, that have admittedly lost their upper octave, the
frequency response of the ELP is clearly better than that of any
cartridge I have ever owned.

Having a laser turntable makes it possible to play LPs as one would a
CD.

That is, one can select a particular track to play, repeat it or the
entire disc virtually any number of times, program a group of tracks to
play in any order, pause, etc. It also has a draw like a video laser
disk player that opens and closes at the touch of a button and, mirabile
dictu, it stops automatically at the end of a record and even turns off
its ac power after a few minutes. It displays track or disk time
elapsed, time remaining, and other CD like things. It performs some
functions a CD player does not do including changing playback speed in
increments of .1 rpm.

Some Not Audible Downers

Its major defect is the lack of a remote control to take advantage of
all these CD like features, though I am told that the hooks for such a
remote control, are on the board. Since, despite its CD like design, it
is still a 100% analog device as far as the signal path is concerned.
But since the reflected light signal from the groove wall is not
digitized, there is no SPDIF digital output. The LT-1XA even has only a
cartridge level output of 12 MV and so must go to the low-level input of
a preamp. The more expensive LT-1LA, which is the unit I tested, has an
RIAA equalized line level output but it is inexplicably anemic at only a
few tenths of a volt and so one needs plenty of gain in the balance of
the system to achieve a normal listening level. Another factor to
consider is that laser diodes do not last forever. ELP rates theirs at
10,000 hours which is a reasonably long time. The replacement cost is a
tidy $1500. But there is a real risk that they will not be around to
supply the part or to help you install it when the time comes. I would
therefore suggest that you stockpile a spare laser replacement assembly
with instructions if you expect to use the turntable a great deal.

Deluxe Model Plays 78s

The LT-1LA, which costs a whopping $12,300, not only eliminates the need
for a preamp but also adds the ability to play 78 rpm records, even
antique ones, which is no mean feat. A handy outboard high and low
frequency passive adjustable filter and a groove wall selector switch
are provided to enhance 78rpm mono or mono LP reproduction. One can read
the sum of both groove walls or just the inner or just the outer groove
wall. I soon discovered that the inner wall of most of my 78s was much
better preserved than the outer wall. Reading just the inner wall of
most acoustic 78s of the Caruso/Galli-Curci era produced amazingly quiet
and undistorted results apparently because the heavy sound boxes and
arms of the old acoustic horn players wore the outer groove wall more
than the inner groove wall as the heavy arm was pushed solely by the
outer groove wall toward the center of the record. In any case it is
gratifying to listen pleasurably to a rare record which otherwise seems
unplayable.

Dirt Is Where You Find It

Both ELP models allow the angle at which the laser hits the groove to be
slightly varied. This feature sometimes makes it possible to compensate
for some types of groove damage or manufacturing idiosyncrasies. The
fact that the laser pickup illuminates and sees the entire groove wall
from top to bottom means that any dirt mite in the groove will cause a
click. This is the major disadvantage of this perhaps all too accurate
playback technology. Thus ELP includes a top of the line VPI record
cleaning machine with each turntable and you better use it. Playing an
uncleaned and unvacuumed stereo LP on the ELP is not anything you will
do twice. Uncleanness is unlistenableness. It is dismaying to realize
just how much crud lies in the groove of just about any LP including
even those virgins never before played. However, after proper cleaning,
the velvety almost CD like quiet is a pleasure to experience and, in
most cases the reproduction is as tick and pop free as cartridge
reproduction. The ELP units do include what they call a noise blanker.
It can be switched in or out but I could never hear a difference and,
like most analog noise reduction circuits I have tried, this one doesn't
seem to do anything.

The knowledgeable Andy Obst, (505-662-1415) ELP's moonlightinlear
physicist) offers the Cedar DC-1 Series 2 De-Clicker for use with ELP
players. This professional all digital unit did do a dandy job at
eliminating almost all those remaining clicks and pops which are
probably not caused by dirt. The DC-1 can also be used as an analog to
digital 48 KBPS SPDIF converter making the ELP a stronger contender in a
44.1 KBPS CD world. It can also digitize using 20-bit resolution but I
did not use this option. Having a high quality, quiet, digital signal at
standard level makes it possible to use the ELP player more easily in
the new digital surround sound systems that include 7.1 processing and
ambience recovery for two channel music sources and I have had
considerable success playing my library of old SQ encoded LPs this way.
But at $10,000 for the DC-1, one must have a very strong aversion to
vinyl playback ticks and pops.


The Bottom Line

I am absolutely enthralled. I hadn't listened to any of my LPs in over
two years (despite having a Versa Dynamics air-bearing turntable) and
now I can't stop playing them (Ambiophonically of course). The best-kept
secret in the audiophile world is that the optical laser LP disk player
really works. While there is still the occasional tick or pop (without
the Cedar DC-1), I can begin, for the first time to appreciate what the
analog aficionados are so enthused about. I still believe that digital
is a more accurate and reliable storage medium than the analog LP. But
the temptation by today's recording engineers and CD producers to use
digital video recording gimmicks such as panning, excessive
multi-mic'ing, spot mics, ambience enhancement etc. make many classical
CDs less musical and less psychoacoustically rational than older analog
recordings that of necessity had to be made simply and honestly because
hokey post processing tools simply were not available.

If you want audiophile caliber analog sound forever without the
cartridge/arm-tweaking hassle, the ELP Laser Turntable is the way to go.
















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