AUDIO-TECHNICA AT-LP120XUSB TURNTABLE
Every great turntable needs a back story, and back stories don’t get any better than the one behind the creation of this particular model.
Every time I see an Audio Technica turntable, I am reminded of disgraced West Australian entrepreneur Alan Bond. Well, not totally disgraced: He did, after all, on behalf of all Australians, manage to wrest the America’s Cup away from the USA in 1983, after they’d held it for 32 years!
More precisely, Audio Technica turntables remind me of Australian millionaire Kerry Packer’s quip about Alan Bond, which was “You only get one Allan Bond moment in your lifetime, and I’ve had mine.” This is because Packer was the beneficiary of a stunning business deal whereby, after selling the Channel 9 television network to Bond for $1.05 billion, Packer bought it back three years later for just $250 million.
Why I am reminded of this quip is because it’s very likely that the head honchos at
Audio Technica say the same thing about Panasonic. Are you confused? Then you need to hear the back-story.
BEHIND THE DESIGN
Back in the 70s, Panasonic used to be simply a brand-name owned by Japanese multinational Matsushita Electric Industrial, an enormously large corporation that made everything from heavy machinery to power tools and everything in between. Panasonic was the brand-name it affixed on its small electrical appliances—clock radios, microwave ovens and so forth. But come the 60s, the introduction of the transistor made hi-fi components affordable to the mass public for the first time and so Matsushita entered the market with a new brand, Technics, which it used for all its consumer hi-fi products. One of the very first Technics-branded products to go on sale (in 1969) was the SP-10 turntable.
At the time, it was a technological marvel. Whereas almost all other turntables on the market used idler drives or belts to rotate the platter, Matsushita had developed a direct-drive motor that was an integral part of the platter. To do so, Matsushita (or more precisely, Shuichi Obata, one of the engineers at Matsushita) had to overcome a problem with electric motors of the time called ‘cogging’ where, when the rotor poles came into alignment with the stator teeth, the reluctance of the magnetic path was minimised and the rotor wanted to remain in this position rather than rotate any further.
This meant additional torque was required to get it to move past this point, and the end result of adding it was uneven rotation, most especially at the low rotational speeds required when a direct-drive motor was used in a turntable. Cogging not only caused serious speed variations (i.e. wow and flutter), it also resulted in unwanted vibration and noise.
Matsushita’s direct-drive motor solved all these problems and so the SP-10 became the world’s first direct-drive turntable.
The Technics SP-10 was rather too expensive for most customers at the time so in 1971 Matsushita released the more-affordable Technics SL-1100 direct-drive turntable and then, in 1972, the Technics SL-1200 direct-drive turntable. This model was enormously successful for Matsushita (most particularly in its MkII incarnation, introduced in 1977), such that it and its dozens of variants, are very possibly the most successful turntable design(s) in the world. So far, if you can believe Wikipedia, more than three million of them have been sold, and most of them are still in use today. One of the reasons for the SL-1200MkII’s success was its pitch control. It was one of the very few turntables that allowed you to increase or decrease the speed of the platter, in turn increasing or decreasing the pitch of the music being played.
The SL-1200MkII was the turntable that DJs around the world had been waiting for. Indeed it was the DJ community that influenced Matsushita to change what had originally been two rotary pitch controls (on the SL-1200) into a single slider control (on the SL-1200MkII), and then also to increase the potential percentage of pitch variation from 8 per cent up to 16 per cent.
So it rather took the DJ community by surprise when in October 20, 2010, Panasonic (as it was then known, having changed its name from Matsushita Electric to Panasonic, for reasons I won’t go into in this review) issued a statement to the effect that it was ceasing production of all analogue products sold under the Technics brand name. “Panasonic decided to end production mainly due to a decline in demand for these analog products and also the growing difficulty of procuring key analog components necessary to sustain production,” was the statement the company issued to the hi-fi press at the time.
The world’s DJ community was so surprised that it didn’t actually believe Panasonic would cease production of its work-horse ‘tool of the trade’, and asked the company to confirm that it was really was going to stop production of the SL-1200 (which was by then up to Mk6). A follow-up statement was then subsequently posted on the DMC World DJ Championships’ home page: “Panasonic has confirmed that it ceased the production of its Technics-branded analogue turntables this autumn. After more than 35 years as a leading manufacturer of analogue turntables, Panasonic has regretfully taken the decision to leave this market. However, Panasonic will continue to sell headphones under the Technics brand.”
As it happens, the DJ world need not have worried, because very shortly after Panasonic ceased production of the Technics SL-1200Mk6, both Audio-Technica and Pioneer (along with several other less well-known brands) began selling turntables that looked to be perfect clones of that model. It would seem that although Panasonic was not interested in manufacturing turntables any more, it was quite happy to allow others to do so, likely under some kind of licensing agreement. However it could also have been that because it had been almost forty years since the release of the original SL-1200, all the relevant patents had expired (patents last for only twenty years).
So where do Allen Bond and Kerry Packer come into all this? It’s simply that a couple of years ago, Panasonic had a change of heart about analogue audio, and decided to re-enter the market with several products, including three turntables all of which were based on the SL-1200Mk6. But Panasonic’s change of heart, and the reappearance of Technics turntables on the market meant that now the company was competing with turntable models that had had almost a generation to instill themselves in the psyche of consumers, and were all based on models originally designed and engineered by Panasonic itself.
One of those models was the Audio-Technica AT-LP120XUSB reviewed here, which is available in several versions, including this one which has both phono and line-level outputs, along with a digital output (via
USB), plus there’s a Bluetooth version too.
THE EQUIPMENT
As you will have gathered from this review so far, the new Audio-Technica AT-LP120XUSB is a direct-drive turntable, where the motor is an integral part of the platter, so there are no belts and no pulleys involved. But we haven’t really addressed why direct-drive motors came about in the first place. One reason is speed control.
Whereas all belt-drive turntables (and we mean ALL of them) will have some inherent degree of wow and flutter (even though this might be inaudible), a direct-drive motor will have inherently lower wow and flutter, because the speed is able to be controlled via what’s called a servo, which can be a d.c. servo, as in the case of the Audio-Technica AT-LP120XUSB, or a Phase Locked Loop (PLL).
The new Audio-Technica ATLP120XUSB is a direct-drive turntable, where the motor is an integral part of the platter
Either way, it means that the speed of the platter is being constantly monitored and variations compensated for in real time, which gives very exact control over the speed of that platter. This, combined with the tremendous torque of a direct-drive motor, means that the platter of a direct-drive turntable can move from stationary to 33.33 rpm in less than one second. This is one of the attributes that makes the AT-LP120XUSB so popular with DJs. But speed control isn’t all about keeping the speed exact at 33.33 rpm, or 45 rpm… or in the case of the AT-LP120XUSB, at 78rpm. It’s also about being able to vary that speed… instantly and precisely.
Originally, pitch control was designed to allow people to play back their LPs at ‘concert pitch’, so that when an orchestra played an ‘A4’ at 440Hz while it was being recorded, the frequency of that ‘A4’ would be 440Hz on replay. I was necessary because due to the limited playing time available on an LP, recording engineers would very often ‘speed up’ the tape recorder feeding the cutting lathe in order to reduce the playing time of a particular work so that it would fit onto the LP. Although this meant the music then fitted onto the LP, it also meant the pitch was raised, so that the pitch of the instruments on replay from a turntable was slightly higher than it was when they were originally recorded. A turntable with a pitch control allowed listeners to compensate for this inaccuracy both for aesthetic reasons, and also to allow musicians with fixed pitch instruments (such as the piano) to ‘play along’ with the LP on their own instrument.
In the beginning, pitch controls didn’t need to offer much more than 5 per cent adjustment, because recording engineers did not adjust pitch any more than this. But then, when DJ-ing took off, DJs wanted to be able to adjust the pitch of one track to match another, and also match the beats per minute (BPMs) of one track against another, or simply play back well-known tracks at different pitches/ speeds for special effects. This is why, on the AT-LP120XUSB, the pitch control is labelled ‘Tempo’, rather than ‘Pitch’.
It’s for this reason that the pitch control on the AT-LP120XUSB is, firstly, a slider control, so that DJs can operate it accurately and repeatably even under very low light conditions, and secondly why it offers unprecedented control over pitch: up to ±16 per cent. This is offered in two different ranges (–8 to +8% and –16 to +16%) specifically for DJ use to ensure accuracy in pitch-matching both on replay and when synchronising two turntables. Indeed it was the DJ community which forced a change in the operation of the slider control. Originally, the control operated from –16% to +16%, but this meant the increments along the length of the slider were too small across the most-used –8% to +8% range, so an additional switch was added to split the pitch adjustment into two different ranges, as on this AT-LP120XUSB.
On the AT-LP120XUSB, pitch control range switching is accomplished via the large button at the end of the pitch slider control that’s closest to the tonearm. The button to the left of the pitch slider control is a ‘quartz lock’ button that, when pressed, instantly returns the speed to whatever speed you have selected using the two small rectangular speed select switches at the front left of the turntable.
Two buttons, three speeds? Yep, you press the left-most button down for 33.33 rpm, the right-most button down for 45 rpm and press both down at the same time for 78 rpm. And that big square switch alongside these two switches is not, as you might have expected, the power switch.
The speed of the platter is being constantly monitored and variations compensated for in real time, which gives exact control
It instead starts and stops the platter, and it’s worth mentioning at this juncture that start and stop are virtually instantaneous. If the platter is stationary, and you place the stylus on the LP then press ‘Start’, playback starts almost immediately. I am not sure if this is good for the stylus, so I am not going to recommend you do it unless you’re a certified DJ.
And if you’re wondering where the power switch is located, it’s rather strangely located as a rotary control atop of the strobe light pillar, about which more in a moment.
But the development of direct-drive turntables wasn’t only about speed stability and pitch control. It was also about convenience. Belt-drive turntables are fairly high-maintenance devices. Their drive belts stretch, requiring regular replacement, and as the belts age, they tend to get ‘slippery’ which means you get slippage (resulting in wow and flutter), which also requires belt replacement. Then there’s the platter bearing. Many—but not all—belt-drive turntables require that the lubrication in the platter bearing be replaced and/or replenished at regular intervals, which is a messy and fiddly process. A direct-drive turntable, on the other hand, requires no maintenance whatsoever.
The large ‘post’ at the left side of the AT-LP120XUSB contains a strobe light, which is used in conjunction with the four lines of engraved ‘dots’ on the sloping side of the platter to show whether the platter is rotating at the ‘correct’ speed. It works for only the 33.33 and 45 rpm speeds. So why are their four lines of engraved dots? Because two are for use in countries where the mains frequency is 50Hz (such as here in Australia, and in the UK) and the other two are for countries where the mains frequency is 60Hz (such as the US and Japan). When the platter speed is exact, the ‘dots’ will appear to be stationary. If the platter is running slow, the dots will appear to creep backwards; if it’s running fast, they’ll creep forwards.
All of which begs the question of why there is a strobe at all, since one of the direct-drive motor’s claims to fame is its ability to rotate at exactly the right speed. I don’t really know, but my guess is that it originally started out as a marketing exercise to demonstrate the superiority of direct-drive over belt-drive. Think about it. Have you ever seen a belt drive turntable with a built-in stroboscope? I thought not. Belt-drive turntable manufacturers wouldn’t dare build in a stroboscope, because it would simply demonstrate that their products were not rotating at the correct speed and/or that the speed of the platter was constantly changing.
So that’s the long answer as to the reason for there being a strobe on the AT-LP120XUSB. The short answer is that there’s no good reason for it being there at all: it’s totally superfluous. But… and I have to say it… it looks ‘way cool. I love it!
The post towards the middle right at the front of the AT-LP120XUSB is not another strobe, it’s the support for a cueing light, which allows you to find the exact track you want on an LP. As you’ve likely guessed, this also came about at the request of DJs around the world, who mostly work in pretty dark environments. But it’s actually also very useful for audiophiles, because in order to try to extend playing time on an LP, in addition to altering speed, recording engineers also reduced the lead-in groove to the first track, which means that even if you’re using a turntable in good light it can sometimes be difficult to see where you should place the stylus. The ‘side’ light from the cueing post really helps… and most particularly so if your eyesight is on the wrong side of 20:20. On the AT-LP120XUSB it’s removeable, as you can see from the product photography.
The S-shaped tonearm fitted to the AT-LP120XUSB has static downforce adjustment provided by way of a counter-weight on the other side of the pivot, but anti-skating is applied dynamically, via tensioning, using a small rotary dial at the base of the tonearm mount. The headshell at the end of the tonearm tube uses the standard universal mount, so more light-weight versions can be swapped in to adjust tonearm mass.
On the AT-LP120XUSB I received for review, that headshell (a fairly heavy AT-HS6 type) was home to an Audio-Technica ATVM95E dual-magnet high-output moving-magnet cartridge, which is now discontinued in the USA, but it appears they still have stock here in Australia. I wasn’t fussed about this, for reasons that will become obvious a bit further on in this review.
As for that S-shaped arm, I am not a fan because the S-shape does not improve tracking and adds unnecessary mass, which can make phono cartridge selection difficult, most particularly so these days, when the dynamic compliance of most phono cartridges is optimised for low-mass tonearms, as these comprise the majority of tonearms on the market.
I assume Audio-Technica uses an S-shaped arm on the AT-LP120XUSB because DJs find these easier to cue-up, particularly if they’re cueing a track that’s closer to the spindle than it is to the periphery of the platter. If you’re not a DJ, I would recommend always playing on the safe side and always using the cueing lever, which is damped, so you get a nice soft stylus-drop, and also accurate, so the stylus won’t drift sideways while it’s dropping down to the LP’s surface.
As you’ve no doubt already guessed from the last three letters in the model name, the AT-LP120XUSB has an analogue-to-digital converter built in, so that while you are playing an LP you can also be creating a digital version of what you’re playing for subsequent playback via a music server. The USB output is a USB Type-B socket, for which Audio-Technica helpfully supplies a USB B-to-A cable. However, Audio-Technica does not helpfully provide any software with the AT-LP120XUSB that might help you firstly—and most importantly—subdivide an LP into its component tracks, which most audiophiles view as an essential stage in the digitisation process, and secondly remove the inevitable ‘ticks’ and ‘pops’ in the digital copy… or, indeed any unwanted gaps caused by the lead-in or run-out groove sections. Instead of providing suitable software, Audio-Technica instead suggests you should download a free computer program called Audacity.
Audacity is an ‘easy-to-use’, audio recorder/editor that is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. SInce it’s ‘open source’, Audacity is available as a free download, but since it is available free, I can’t quite see why Audio-Technica doesn’t include the latest version of it on a USB stick. Maybe doing this would violate the open-source licence, but I can’t see why it would.
Although I would be the first to say that Audacity is a great program, and it certainly has the virtue of being free, I also think that if you’re a newbie to transferring vinyl to digital, you may have to climb a fairly steep learning curve before it becomes easy to use, which is why I put quote marks around those three words in the previous paragraph. So if you’d prefer not to spend some time learning a new skill and you don’t mind parting with a few dollars, you might like to look at using a program called VinylStudio, which will set you back $US29.95 when last I looked, but is ‘way easier to use and packed with features. It’s here: https://www.alpinesoft.co.uk/
If you have pots of money and would rather spend it than learn to use Audacity, you might like to look at Channel D’s Pure Vinyl, whose fairly hefty price owes to the fact that it has a lot of useful built-ins, such as phono equalisation, for example, but also to the fact that it comes in only one flavour: Mac. Since I do not own a Mac, I have never even tried it, but if you do, you can find out why everybody seems to rave about it here: http://www.channld.com/purevinyl/
The Audio-Technica AT-LP120XUSB also offers two different ways of getting analogue audio out of it. It has a built-in RIAA phono pre-amplifier so you can, if you wish, connect the output of this directly to any line-level input on your preamplifier or integrated amplifier.
However, if you’d prefer to use your own external phono pre-amplifier, you can access the raw output from the AT-VM95E phono cartridge (or any other cartridge you’ve installed) directly. Rather than providing two separate outputs, Audio-Technica uses just the one set of output terminals (gold-plated RCA sockets) and provides switch selection between them, so you can only use one or the other. Audio-Technica also supplies the all-essential stereo RCA leads with a fifth wire for making a ground connection.
IN USE AND LISTENING SESSIONS
The placement of the AT-LP120XUSB will require some forethought, because a direct-drive turnable’s bête noire is external vibration, since it’s not possible to isolate the motor from the chassis. Audio-Technica has addressed this through the use of four very large, very compliant (‘springy’), rubber feet, obviously specifically intended to help reject vibration and structure-borne noise. However, depending on the construction of your home, and its location with regard to transport routes (train lines, highways, etc) you may find it necessary to place the turntable on an isolation platform. It’s pretty easy to work out if further isolation is required: put an LP on the platter, leave the platter stationary, then let the stylus drop to the record surface and turn the volume up on your amplifier to a level a little louder than you’d normally listen. If you can hear rumbling (or other low-frequency) noises from your speakers, you need to add additional isolation. If you can’t hear anything, you’re good to go.
The editor of this august publication is a bit of a ‘wow and flutter Nazi’ so I was under specific instructions to ensure I didn’t overlook this aspect of the AT-LP120XUSB’s performance, so this was almost the first thing I evaluated. However, having just had my lovely grand piano tuned to concert pitch, I couldn’t help but play along with some albums I knew to have been recorded at that pitch. If the Audio-Technica were not rotating at exactly 33.33 rpm, the resulting sound would be unpleasantly discordant. It wasn’t. It was perfect. Certainly more perfect than my playing. Andras Schiff would likely be horrified to learn I’d been playing along with him! So, so far as speed accuracy is concerned, the Audio AT-LP120XUSB is, just like the movie: Pitch Perfect.
That out of the way, it was on to wow and flutter for which, as is often said, slow piano music is the best for establishing its audibility. I usually use Alexandre Tharaud’s version of Eric Satie’s ‘Gymnopédies’ for this purpose, because I think it’s a very fine version indeed, but I am indebted to a fellow reviewer at Australian Hi-Fi for putting me on to the version by Anne Queffélec (Virgin Virgin Classics 522 0502) which I purchased solely on his recommendation and found that I liked even better. I love her take on the tempo, in particular, but perhaps her rubato most of all. I have to say that although she takes some liberties with the score, she’s not brave enough to omit the final chord from No 1, which is what I like to do when I’m playing it. I think it finishes better without the final chord. (But I guess she has to accommodate a picky audience, whereas I have only to please myself.)
Switching to one of my all-time favourite albums, Joe Farrell’s fabulous ‘Canned Funk’ from way back in 1975, I found that I wasn’t entirely happy with the bass I was hearing from the AT-VM95E, not least because I have heard this cartridge sound better.
Audio-Technica’s AT-LP120XUSB is a well-designed full-featured robustly-built high-performance ‘work-horse’