I was surprised how much more appealing voices and saxes sounded on the Music Hall than on CD players in this price range. Yes, I could hear some pitch wobble on sustained tones, but I’m willing to live with that, particularly at this price level, for better timbre and less listening fatigue. Kije and Rossini Overtures, massed strings sounded even better. With higher quality reissues like Prokofiev’s Lt. Mercifully, the strings sounded relatively rich, warm, and natural using the Music Hall. While it’s not one of the great DG “tulip” recordings, if the massed string tone is too bright or edgy, I know I’m in for a rough ride. The first album I use to evaluate analog components is Adagio. The realistic reproduction of massed strings, voice, and saxophone are three sonic areas where analog really speaks to me, and it’s why I put up with its incremental setup and maintenance hassles. The real payoff for using the MMF 2.1LE begins when you start playing music. Those of you with “big mitts” might want to enlist the help of someone who’s used to putting a thread through a needle.
It took me several tries to get the loop on the rod and a little patience is required. While final tracking force adjustments are best done by ear, you should invest a few bucks in a stylus force gauge, because if you’re like me, as you try to loop the anti-skating weight around the anti-skating rod, you’ll hit the counterweight and need to adjust the tracking force again. Once I “zeroed” the arm, I set the cartridge tracking force to 1.7 grams using the scale on the counterweight and verified it using a great little digital scale from Expressimo Audio.
Music hall turntable manual#
Also, note that the table does not have “a fixed power cord” as stated in the manual but uses a wall wart. However, before adjusting tracking force, make sure you first lower the arm lift and zero the arm, enabling it to float freely in space. Setup is straightforward and intuitive, and if you’re a novice, the manual does a good job leading you through the process step by step. This means you can be up and running in less than ten minutes, provided you can loop the anti-skate weight around its post in less time than it took me. Music Hall makes the process relatively painless by providing the table/arm with its Music Tracker cartridge already mounted and aligned. One major barrier, I suspect, that keeps many music enthusiasts away from turntables is fear of the set-up process. And it lets music lovers step into vinyl for less than the price of a good set of interconnects or speaker cables. I could listen to this table all day without any aural fatigue- something I can’t say about most relatively inexpensive digital players. Two of the Music Hall’s greatest attributes are its listenable sound and affordability. It gives you a good taste of analog magic, showing why many audiophiles still prefer the sound of vinyl.
While the Music Hall doesn’t have the rock-solid speed stability, low noise, or extended response at the frequency extremes of its digital counterparts, it was, for me, more musically engaging and natural sounding. The answer is not entirely clear cut, because the MMF 2.1LE involves several sonic tradeoffs relative to affordable CD or DVD players. Could Music Hall’s striking Ferrari red MMF 2.1LE turntable, priced at $399 complete with arm and cartridge (or $349 in black) outperform a good CD player in this price range? The problem with most cheap, new tables I’ve heard is that their limitations really get in the way of the music. What’s more, they acted like rotary plows and damaged my records. Some of my first inexpensive tables, such as a Garrard changer I owned in high school, were noisy and obscured a lot of the music. I have always assumed that one would have to spend about $800 on something like a Rega P3 system with a decent phono cartridge to fully appreciate the advantages of vinyl. For many years I’ve recommended that music enthusiasts with less than $500 to spend on a source would be better served by purchasing a CD player rather than an inexpensive turntable.
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