But a really top quality listing of a BG4002 nonetheless

Chris.

Do you get the thinly veiled dig at B&O. I suppose he can't help himself! Good listing, nonetheless.

" Not embarrassed by being played through a good system and obviously well suited to Beomaster amplifiers. Good partner for good, mid range amplifiers such as NAD and Rotel. "

met the guy, graham you're correct he is not over impresse with bno

Tony

joeyboygolf:

Do you get the thinly veiled dig at B&O. I suppose he can't help himself! Good listing, nonetheless.

" Not embarrassed by being played through a good system and obviously well suited to Beomaster amplifiers. Good partner for good, mid range amplifiers such as NAD and Rotel. "

For my 10p worth, and I will take any flack coming my way on this, I presently run two of these types of Deck. A 4000 and 4002 and have to agree with the comment as far as actual sound is concerned. What they are NOT is "crap" as some Hi-Fi pindits would tell you. What they are is a very well engineered, built like a tank, beautifully designed average sounding deck. Weak points being the platter and arm in my opinion. The fact that they are parrallel trackers is somewhat lost by the overall arm design and the 'Mid-forward" sound of the cartridges. At first play they can sound immediate and clear, this is a function of the predominatly mid farward and somewhat Bass Shy sound from both decks I currently run. I regularly compare them to my Michell Gyro/Rega 300 Benz Microglider, Michell Hydraulic reference SME 2009 mk 2 Imp Benz Microglider, Thorens TD 145 mk2 TP 16 arm Stanton 681 eee and Garrard 401, Mayware Formula 4 and a host of different MM and MC carts. I have run my B&O mmc 20 CL and 20 CS on all of these decks with the supplied adapters and found the sound improves somewhat with regards to Bass but the overall sound is still mid Fwd..to me at least. They are excellent trackers though. I still love my 4000 and 4002 though for what thay are and would rather part with the Gyro first which I consider very good but somewhat overrated and hyped by the magazines. The Michell Hydraulic Reference/SME 2009 combo comes closest to the B&O decks in overall sound, but the Reference still sounds marginally nicer and better overall presentation. You may be surprised to hear this but of all the decks I own my current most run fave is the Thorens combo for sheer foot tappin listenability and sheer fun... And this from someone who literally "gave away" a Lin  LP 12 ....all this played through an NVA Pre, NVA Passive Control Unit, TVA 1X Valve Power amp and either Klipsch KG3's or a lovely pair of Tannoy Dimension 12's.

My B&O units do get used quite a lot but usually when I just want background stuff when I am cooking etc for the useful turn off function at the end of play, a kind of Vinyl CD Player.

I certainly don't regard these units as rubbish, neither are they, to me at least, what I hear as Hi-Fi. But as stated above, I won't be parting with them anytime soon..

and yet these carts have a remarkably flat response. Maybe people who criticise the lower end are wrong to do so?

Agreed, a very flat frequency response. But figures do not always tell the full story as many "figure Perfect" CD players can prove..many have MUCH flatter frequency responses that ANY Vinyl Player but sound somewhat sterile and flat.  And even with almost identical response figures sound different.

What I will do, when I get my pc sorted is record the same track of a couple of LP's as a lossless file from all of my decks and post onto a website with the Linky here so you can have a bit of fun comparing and saying which you/ we prefer the sound of. And without any "fiddling or cheating" let you know which is which. I will stick them up and send the id letters for each deck sample by PM to someone, maybe Peter, so it is all above board.

Please do that Stevie!!!

That would make an interesting competition! I think we need to work on this. I did try something similar but was let down by a rubbish recording ! They all sounded dreadful! It is actually most instructive to do a bit of blind testing - differences which you imagine will be night and day suddenly disappear!

I have certainly found that in my case:

1. Digital files over 192bps are just as good as the original. In most cases, 128 will suffice.

2. I cannot distinguish the difference between amplifiers.

3 I cannot distinguish between CD players except a Naim CD555.

4. I can tell speakers apart most easily as they have definite characters.

I think the comparison would be most instructive - the trick will be making sure all the samples play at the same volume - even a small difference can bias your opinion.