Contrary to popular belief, there is only a relatively loose connection between the technical specifications of an audio device and its ability to play music in an authentic fashion. Manufacturers today mostly compete with a range of similar audio devices on the market and need to attract buyers who will mostly be unable to hear the actual product, let alone test it out in their domestic environment before making their purchase. In this scenario, customers will be comparing the technical specifications of a device rather than the product’s ability to convey the recorded music event with lifelike musicality.
Before the receiver wars of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and even more so before we started comparing prices and purchasing products online, HiFi electronics mostly had to compete with music events and the sounds produced by real-life instruments. Judgment on the performance of audio equipment was based on the ability to satisfy the human ear rather than ultra-clean measuring results that would out-spec the competition. Tube amplifiers are a relic of such times, in that they provide more joy to the listener than they do to the reader of their data sheets. Even today, true High End manufacturers will place more emphasis on the subjective human perception of sound than on the objective data that is derived from measurements.
The Newbie’s Perspective
I must confess that I am still a relative newbie to the subject of turntables. Like most turntable owners around in the 80s, I was excited about the emergence of the new super-silent digital technology that came in the shape of a shiny and more compact disc. And honestly, at the affordable price range of an adolescent, the CD performed much better. I consequently sold my record player in the early 90s, never to look back until summer 2018 when we found a 1972 Philips 212 deck in our grandpa’s basement. Lots of time reading and experimenting has passed since then.
The Philips needed a new belt bracket and cartridge. We lubricated the moving parts, upgraded the internal wiring, and changed the output terminal from 5-pin DIN to RCA/cinch sockets. We checked the platter speed, corrected the azimuth as well as the offset and rake angle. We made sure that the turntable was placed on non-resonant footing and was level with the ground. The result is astounding, and for the first time, our turntable actually does sound more impressive than CD, if the record itself is of a good pressing.
Since buying a well-engineered LP can be a bit of a gamble, it is a good idea to share personal experience on sound quality, as I have started doing here. The Lenco shown here was our second project. Once famous as a well-built budget player with surprising sound quality, it arrived here in pretty poor condition. We have had to remove motor noise, bring in new blocks, and adjust the other parameters described above to uncover its potential. The investment of time and effort has not been in vain.
For audiophile listening, turntables should not be underestimated.
Dual Turntables: From Clockwork to Gramophone
Christian and Joseph Steidinger started out as a manufacturer of clockwork and gramophone in the German Back Forest town of St. Georgen in 1907. The original company simply bore the family name until they rebranded as Dual in 1927. The new company name was chosen in reference to their signature dual-mode power supplies, in which they were true pioneers. Gramophones featuring these supplies could either be powered by electricity or wound up for playback.
Given their early success as a parts supplier, the Steidinger brothers began designing their own turntables. During the German economic recovery that followed World War II, Dual became the largest producer of turntables in Europe. The German economy still enjoyed a price advantage over the rest of Europe and became known for high-quality once again. The Steidinger brothers had to hire up to 3,000 factory staff in order to keep up with the growing demand in entertainment devices in the world.
Although Dual stretched the brand into other consumer electronics items, their turntables have remained iconic to this day. The original Dual company went bankrupt in the early 1980s following a decade of fierce competition from cheap and sophisticated imports from Japan. It was sold to the French electronics group Thomson SA. In 1988, the German company Schneider Rundfunkwerke AG bought Dual and then spun off the Dual Phono GmbH to Alfred Fehrenbacher in 1993. Fehrenbacher produces Dual turntables Made in Germany in the Black Forest town of St. Georgen based on Dual’s original product lines until this very day.
The Dual CS 630Q
I confess that when the Dual CS 630Q was brand new on the shelves during the early 1980s, I would have walked straight past it, only to marvel at the cleaner-looking and trendier Technics decks from Japan. And the sad demise of the Dual company, alongside many other German manufacturers of quality audio gear during that same period, suggests that I was not alone in this assessment.
Forty years later, I am sitting in our studio listening to one Dual turntable after another, only to find that we had been utterly wrong in ignoring them. But as so many times in the history of mankind, we are only smarter after the fact. During the 1980s, I was a teenager who had to stretch his allowance. More often than not, the money for HiFi gear came from my father. I mostly liked what my friends at school liked and what I was able to afford.
This is also my excuse for purchasing a JVC AL-F3 as my first turntable – a mass-produced, fully automatic, direct-drive deck in plain black that can be found in mint condition for EUR 2,000 on eBay these days. Sellers of the Dual, on the other hand, usually ask for at least five times as much for their machine, regardless of its condition.
The trouble for Dual was that both turntables played music, and as most people did not have the time, expertise, or equipment to compare the sound of turntables, the difference between the devices was a matter of marketing. Japanese turntables often boasted the latest in technology, even before it was proven that this actually served the purpose better than established means. The S-shaped tonearm, turntable automation, and direct-drive technology were cases in which German manufacturers were slow to follow the hype.
The ULM tonearm, for example, did have excellent tonal and rhythmical characteristics on the Dual turntables. It was lightweight and torsion-free, by which it could offer a forward drive that feels natural in music. Earlier idler-wheel turntables and some well-engineered belt drives could very well compete with newer direct-drive models and have remained favorite classics in many audiophile communities. And turntable automation has long since outlived itself, with modern decks often only having a single switch that is required to set the motor speed.
While Dual and other German manufacturers were seemingly out-classed in the 1980s, listening to the old decks perform suggested that they were still excellent choices when it came to their musicality, especially when played within a well-set-up system.
Exploring the Dual CS 630Q
The Dual CS 630Q that is presented here was handed down to my daughter from her recently deceased great aunt, along with some other mid-Fi gear. Among the items were a Dual CV 1260 receiver manufactured by Denon, a Dual CT 1260 tuner that was connected via 5-DIN plug, a Denon DCD 660 CD player, and two Canton GLX 100 bookshelf speakers that served to wrap up the ensemble.
And as the equipment had been sitting on a shelf for some years, I wanted to take the opportunity to run some routine checks and to present it in this forum. Among these new devices, the CS 630Q interested me the most. I was already a great fan of the earlier and more elaborate Dual CS 721, for which I had built a walnut plinth for improved drive isolation.
The CS 630Q was claimed to offer an improved signal-to-noise ratio, paired with a more modern look. Where the famous Technics decks had a visible strobe light that reflected on iconic dots along the platter rim, Dual featured an accurate LCD display that interpreted the speed reading electronically.
Dual’s legendary 4-point gimbal rested on adjustable tip bearings and served to stabilize the straight, ultra-low-mass ULM tonearm well. The Start, Stop, and Lift buttons felt firm and gave great sensory feedback, and I also enjoyed the fact that the rotation speed adjustment was executed in the same manner. The record size was set separately via a selector switch located to the right of the tonearm.
All in all, this seems like a well-thought-out design. Modern users might object that the layer’s surface was not flat but instead showed all kinds of elevations and crevices. On the other hand, these oddities gave the CS 630Q its low silhouette and recognizable appearance.
While I would not perhaps have thought of purchasing this Dual for myself, I did enjoy the look of it while it was perched on our makeshift audio sideboard with our experimental system in the studio.
Listening to the Dual CS 630Q
The system consisted of the Dual CV 1260 integrated amplifier and our Epicure 30 loudspeakers that had already shown that it worked very well together when playing from a CD source. I did have some difficulties adjusting the tracking force because the automatic features got in the way of performing the action. Moving the arm towards the platter started the motor, and taking the Dual off the power grid automatically elevated the arm. There seemed to be no way out of this predicament, and I ended up adjusting the raised arm by also raising the tracking scales, which was probably not the most accurate method.
My reason for wanting to confirm and set the tracking force was due to an error that I could hear as sibilance on the inner LP tracks. The original ULM 66E cartridge had been replaced with an Ortofon DN 166 E, which still seemed to work alright.
I started my explorations with Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours, of which I had the 2009 pressing. For a 70s album, Rumours offered decent recording quality as well as a wide range of songs that varied both tonally and rhythmically.
Listening to the album with the CS 630Q for the first time, I also noticed a humming that sounded like a grounding issue. I inspected the original cinch plugs and found that the metal grounding had corroded. The original plugs were already quite cleverly designed, featuring a broken outer ring and a split center prong.
I decided to replace them with some decent modern standard Neutrik Rean, which were much less sophisticated in terms of sonic virtues, except for their debatable gold-plating, perhaps.
Looking at stylus options for the ULM/Ortofon cartridge, I came across the elliptical stylus that was now in place for about 750 EUR, and then found the complete headshell with cartridge and Shibata stylus for just 1,400 EUR more. For my daughter learning to play records for the first time, the present stylus would do, but if this turntable had been mine for the keeping, I would have gone for the Ortofon OM PRO S SH4 bl hs full package as advertised on the Thomann website, among others.
For the time being, I set the tracking force with the scales on a CD case next to the rotating platter to 1.05g and the anti-skating to approximately half this value. I noticed that the Ortofon cartridge started to muffle the treble when the tracking force exceeded 1.25g. The original sibilance might have been caused by the anti-skating force exceeding the tracking force, when really the opposite should be the case.
Fleetwood Mac’s album Rumours had started to sound just right, with a good amount of drive and swing. I enjoyed the amount of detail presented by the elliptical stylus, but I could also hear its limitations in terms of treble nuances. The higher the tone, the more it seemed to blend in with other high tones playing in the recording. This gave the music a robust and danceable presence rather than an audiophile experience.
Bass, on the other hand, was tight and layered. I was able to get a good feel for the different materials of the drum set that stayed quite separate of the other instruments in “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.” At the same time, I was missing some of the genuinely low bass frequencies that would have served the overall music impression well.
Considering the fact that the Dual CS 630Q already had a universal headshell mount, there was a wide range of cartridges available for the arm that were easy to swap and experiment with. While setting the tracking and anti-skating correctly improved the sibilance on the inner tracks, I was not able to eliminate it completely using the old stylus.
The straight arm’s tracking error of 0.15 was at least, in my opinion, not large enough to explain the extent of the phenomenon. And it was sad as well, because “Songbird” was among my favorite tunes on the album. If I could only trust our kids and their friends, and the friends of their friends, to keep the stylus free from harm, I would be tempted to take that Ortofon SH4 offer.
Dual CS 630Q Specifications
- Type: Semi-automatic, direct-drive turntable
- Platter: 312 mm aluminum diecast
- Speeds: 33 and 45 rpm
- Motor: Ultra-low speed, brushless DC motor
- Power Consumption: 0.1W
Overall Impressions
The Dual CS 630Q was Dual’s flagship turntable towards the end of the 1970s and is by many considered to rank among the best Dual turntables ever made. When there is disagreement between the experts, this is usually about the merits of the drive system.
Proponents of idler-wheel turntables, the “Treibrad Classics,” would cite Dual models CS 1219 and CS 1229 as their favorites, whereas belt-drive fans would give preference to the CS 5000 or CS 7000 “Golden.” The CS 721 was a direct-drive design (DD), and in all fairness to the other two camps, it had the most audiophile specifications in terms of rumble, wow, and flutter of them all.
However, we do not listen to specifications but to music, of course. And I must confess that I do love the straightforward sound of our smaller CS 505-3 as well.
Unleash your inner explorer with portable piezoelectric generators for off-grid adventures.