Crosley Moves Up, The C10 Turntable (Part 1 of 2)

Birch and Mahogany Plinth -- in the Project/Music Hall world
not obtainable unless you spend twice as much.  FWIW.

"What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar" ~ T. Marshall

"What this country needs, is a decent 5W Amp!" ~ P. W. Klipsch

The box arrived on our doorstep a few days earlier than we had figured - it had taken less than a week.  I had been in multiple IM sessions with Scott Bingaman, the President of Deer Park Distributors (The exclusive distributors of Crosley Turntables to the US and Canada), who had indicated that they were onto something big, something that was a real step up for them from their traditional retro-styled products.
"This won't be sold at Target or Urban Outfitters.  It'll be primarily sold online, at indie record stores and high end dealers - targeted at a younger audience looking to move up," Scott said.

 After I had asked how much better it would be, given the reputation Crosley has in audiophile circles, I could almost sense Scott smiling as I saw the message "Want to try it out and tell me what you think?"  Of course!  Given we get questions from people wanting to get back into vinyl once in awhile from friends and colleagues, I figured the worst case scenario was I would find a decent but unspectacular sub-$400 turntable that would form a good basis for someone not wanting to spend multiple thousands of dollars on a turntable, not to mention the stereo system to extract the best sound out of it. Yeah, as you guessed, we were wrong.

The biggest issue we've had when listening to, or helping someone along at the budget end, is that the sound can be poor, and the people find their iPod with AAC's to be more satisfying.  The words one hears when they are disappointed is "Huh, it didn't sound very full, and had a lot of pops and crackles.  I guess that's the vinyl sound."  With a good turntable and clean record, that is very far from the truth.  We've experienced how good the sound on a good vinyl rig can pretty much wipe the floor with most other sources (even high resolution computer files).  If this offering can allow someone to get addicted a taste of what is so compelling about the medium, we're all ears (pun intended)!

So What is This Turntable?

Crosley, noted for their nostalgia oriented audio products, has recently announced their "C10" turntable which will have an MSRP of $399 (Street price is supposed to be closer to $300), and will have a target audience of people seeking better sound out of their records, or those entering the vinyl market.

When asked about their philosophy when they specified the turntable, Scott said "we selected the components of this turntable carefully, with quite a bit of balance in the cost vs. performance categories.  We had free reign to design just about any turntable we wanted, but went with a fairly simple design and didn’t complicate it with an automatic arm or built-in preamp. We put quite a bit of money where it couldn’t be seen, but heard in a quality bearing and their best motor.  Quite simply, building turntables in this range remains as much art as science, and you need craftspeople who can get them right.  These are hand-built in the Czech Republic."

The C10 consists of a birch veneer plinth (mahogany later this year), is belt driven, employs the highest grade bearing and motor offered by the company that builds Project and Music Hall turntables (it builds these, too), and comes equipped with an Ortofon OM-5e moving magnet cartridge.  Since it doesn't come with a built in phono amp, you do need to either use a receiver or integrated amp with one built in, or obtain an outboard phono amp (this is what we did with our trusty Lounge Audio MM Phono).

The Lounge Audio Phono Amp.  $300 for a stellar product!

The family resemblance to Project and Music Hall is unmistakable, actually.  This isn't a bad thing.

We unpacked and set the turntable.  The setup was a snap - set up the belt, put on the platter, adjust the counterweight to get to the 1.7g downforce specified for the cartridge (we liked 1.8g the most - so really do experiment), attach the pendulum like anti-skate weight on the middle rung, and once you hook it to the phono amp, you are ready to spin records.  (This is in stark contrast to our main rig(*) which took 2-3 hours of fiddling and adjusting to initially set up, though to be fair to everyone, in this price range most turntables are equally as easy to set up).

So ... what it it sound like?

The Rolling Stones - Hot Rocks

After about 20-30 hours of casual playing it came time to get down to business.  We put down one of our favorites, Rolling Stone's Hot Rocks - a sort of "Best of" for us.  What struck us most about this, was the bass, and pitch accuracy was far better than we expected - there was a slight loss of treble airiness and overall clarity to our SOTA (at 20x the price it had better have advantages!), but the C10 wasn't closed in sounding at all, and it had the screech of the guitars, the attack and thump you'd expect out of the Rolling Stone's glory days.

George Ezra - Wanted on Voyage

We absolutely love the mid-range of this recording, and the MM cartridge and the excellent stability of the turntable - it all came through.  What's also apparent, that if you use good components, the C10 keeps on giving - you can not only get the main rhythm, you get a nice level of detail, and that elusive 'echo' that is usually compressed right out of music on MP3's.  It was at this point I started to doubt the SOTA, so I re-played the album right afterwards on it.  The SOTA had a more air, clarity, a bigger soundstage, and the bass had a little more articulation, but the C10 was punching way above it's weight in that it didn't embarrass itself against something costing a lot more.  I had to remind myself that this table is only going to cost around $300.

Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

This album is a fantastic newer recording, that has a deep and pounding bass that is pretty hard to cut. Again we heard the strength in the bass (Bass is really hard to do well with Vinyl - the fact that Crosley has a good bearing helps here quite a lot) - and you got to sit back and relax.  In fact, I had to listen to this album twice since many times I just forgot I was reviewing and drifted into just listening.

So ... what are your impressions so far?

It's pretty clear the folks at Crosley were doing their homework.  The table gives the listener a real experience of what vinyl is capable of, and it's clear that in most stereo setups, that the table will shine through, and not hold the sound back.  In fact, if well setup with decent components, it could grow with the user if they pursue upgrades to other parts of the system.  We found it musically satisfying, and it was good enough to answer the question "so does vinyl sound better than CD and iTunes?"  If someone is looking to get into vinyl, or wants better sound than a close-and-play style player, we could easily direct them towards the C10.

What do you get for your $300?  The Crosley C10 is a musical, enjoyable and well balanced table that should give a customer the vinyl experience, that doesn't have to apologize for itself. You can spend more to get more, but you'd be hard pressed to get this kind of performance for less.

Next up:  How does the C10 stack up vs. the U-Turn.  We're also getting a Thorens Phono Stage to try out vs. the Lounge Audio.  Somebody's going to get bloody ....

Disclaimer:  We were given a review sample that we're being allowed to keep.  We are going to use it as an example of a great value for money turntable in the $300 range.

(*) For those new to the blog look here to see the gear we use.