![]() I use a Rogue Ares, and because this was a concern of mine, I remember having a call with Mark O'Brien (about the time of its initial release 2010) where he said something along the lines of (paraphrasing here) "yes, it has a subsonic filter, and I don't get why some makers don't use one". It varies by phono stage and it's definitely something that not often specified (even for stages that have filtering), but it would be much more useful information than the usual "RIAA within +/- 0.5 dB" stat lines. not to see if I can discern a sonic preference one way or another - but it's difficult to do a fair assessment here because the 3lbs weight of the ring affects the Clearaudio's magnetic suspension, which necessitates a change in the VTA. I might do a night of comparison ring-clamped vs. I suppose a cartridge with very marginal tracking would also benefit from full clamping - but again, why would you run a cartridge like that? And a severely warped record would ideally be something your return/toss anyways. But then, I noticed that some records will still flap your woofers even with full clamping (that's why you really want a subsonic filter). Unflattened warps would be a bigger issue if your phono stage doesn't have adequate subsonic filtering (scary to see how much displacement that can generate on your woofers) - very bad for your woofers if they exceed max excursion, and needlessly drains power from your amps. Though it's nice to flatten out minor warps, I'm able to play the vast majority of records just fine without a ring clamp. Honestly I haven't to date found it to be a huge difference. ![]() I really like the idea of a vacuum hold-down when it's working, but the old SOTA tables had silicon platter lips that lost their ability to seal over time. The SOTA's platter didn't allow for a metal ring clamp, so I played my records unflattened for quite a while, and it did just fine (yes, even with my Koetsu). I previously ran a SOTA Star III, originally designed with a vacuum hold-down, but the old silicon lip didn't hold a vacuum anymore so I disabled it. I currently use a ring clamp plus center weight on my Clearaudio (total of over 5 lbs of clamping), but the ring's usage is annoying enough that some people never use theirs I do it by habit, but you must be very careful not to drop it over your table or clip the cartridge or bump the tonearm - and also take care not to queue the stylus onto the ring lip!! ![]()
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