Mike,

From my experience from the reviews I find them pretty good but none of them are able to pull the turntable out of the equation to my satisfaction. I happen to prefer the Raven w. the Mystic Mat or no mat. Contrary to a few others. BUt...., the Boston Mat made the Raven sound more like my Hyperspace. What is funny the Boston Matt is slightly similar to the Hyperspace. Go figure. I found the Boston Mat to make everything sound slightly diffuse and bloated. Also, it softened everything. I had the option to return it & I did. Mind you I hate shipping things back so that says a bunch. In the end there might be more analytical tables out there. Given my bias, which is detailed but relaxed, the Raven meets my needs. I don't want anything edgy or fatiguing. But I don't want to lose detail. The cartridge arm synergy in the end will be the determining factor for the Raven. On a different table it might be a balancing factor. There are lots of great tables out there.

dgad July 24, 2008 00:44

Mike,

Read your post about your feeling that you will prefer the Nottingham to the TW. Just wanted to let you know that I owned a Hyperspace. I upgraded to a Raven AC. While the Hyperspace is sightly warmer and is an amazing turntable, it has a few areas of weakness that became apparent compared to the Raven. Min you although I am biased, I was not when I owned both. The Hyperspace is a little dark and less extended. The bass is bloated in comparison. The Raven to me is just much more neutral. Even the little Raven - which I find to be very close to the big one - is more neutral. The Raven allows you to tune via cartridge while the Hyperspace will need a more detailed "thin" sounding cartridge to come into its own. These are my experiences. Take them with a grain of salt as we all hear differently. At the low end of price I would jump at a Nottingham but at the $5000 & up I would look elsewhere.

dgad July 22, 2008 22:39