For reasons that will be more obvious at the Munich High End Show in May, I have been listening to rather a lot of vinyl recently. It’s good to get back into the critical listening to turntables, arms and cartridges again after many years of really only listening to records for pleasure.
It’s also good to find that every change is audible just like CD or HD replay.
One of the listening tests was to try out the differing performance of the TT in design, on different supports, to get an idea of the variations in performance customers may get at home.
I had previously good results at home using an Ikea Lack table and so we risked the weather to visit the local Ikea. The Lack tables were hugely expensive at 9.90 Euro so we bought two.
The point of the blog of course is the performance. While I would never argue that the Lack delivered 100% of the dynamics of the specialist rack we were using, it wasn’t too shabby at all. The good part is that, what it didn’t do well – mainly dynamic contrasts – it didn’t fail badly and horribly.
Overall the performance was reduced but in a very even handed way.
So I reckon the conclusion is that; if you are looking for something suitable for your turntable and you are just getting back into vinyl maybe after a few years absence, you can do far worse than an Ikea Lack at £7.82 currently in the UK. At that price it has got to be worth a punt.