Because of this focus on luxury, the typical Luxman buyer is someone who likes to consider the complete ownership experience when making equipment choices. Merely sounding fantastic isn't good enough; everything about using the product needs to exude quality, from the feel of the switches and ease of operation, to its styling and fit and finish. As a result, Luxman equipment tends to appeal to a wider group of owners, well beyond the hardcore audiophile crowd. Their traditional design language makes Luxman appealing to people who like to own beautiful things with a dash of nostalgia for the audio gear they lusted after when they were younger but perhaps couldn't afford until now.

The PD-151 MkII record player ($5695) is an excellent example. If you had a time machine and could go back and slot a picture of the PD-151 into Luxman's 1978 product catalog, nobody would think that they were seeing a turntable from 45 years into the future. Its timeless design makes it instantly recognizable as what it is—it doesn't look like a chrome wedding cake, for example—so you won't have to explain it to most visitors. The MkII is even available with a traditional, clear, hinged dust cover ($795), something increasingly rare on today's higher-end turntables.

To maintain its discreet, classic appearance, the PD-151 MkII hides most of its working parts inside the chassis: Most of the turntable's business parts, including the motor, power supply, speed-control circuitry, main platter bearing, and tonearm, are attached to the 10mm-thick slab of "diamond-cut" aluminum that forms the top surface of the structure. This plate is mounted onto the boxlike lower half of the plinth, the front panel of which is home to the power and speed controls, while an IEC power inlet connector is around back, and four adjustable isolating feet are on bottom.

Normally when making a high-performance turntable, the designer will try to keep any parts that can create vibrations—the motor, the power transformer—isolated from parts that are especially sensitive to vibrations, especially the platter and tonearm. So it's unusual to see all of these components bolted together onto the same structural part of the turntable. To avoid the problems this might create, Luxman has mounted the motor and transformer using special rubber damping washers to keep vibrations from making their way into the main top plate—a time-tested approach. Furthermore, they have used a very quiet DC motor to avoid vibrations in the first place: DC motors typically run quieter than the AC synchronous motors used in most turntables, and the MkII's motor is among the quietest I've ever encountered. The downside is that they need very accurate voltage control and plenty of rotational inertia to maintain consistent speed under load. The PD-151 achieves these things by combining a sophisticated pulse-width modulation power supply—the basic technology behind DSD—with a proportional-integral-differential feedback loop (footnote 1) to correct speed variations. The high-inertia (heavy) platter and thick rubber drive belt also help to smooth out any speed anomalies.

What matters is the result, and even when I held my stethoscope against the top plate adjacent to the motor, I couldn't tell whether the motor was on or off. It's that quiet.

Front-panel buttons, switches, and LEDs allow the user to control the platter drive and speed. From left to right, there's a main power button for firing up the circuitry, a start/stop switch to turn on the motor, and a three-position rotary switch to select 33 1/3, 45, or 78rpm. On the right of the rotary switch is a multicolor LED that allows you to monitor the status of the speed-control circuitry; to the right of that are three recessed trim screws that allow you to fine-tune the three speeds individually.

Luxman doesn't provide any type of strobe disc or other tool for verifying the speed, although these are easy to acquire. I used a Shaknspin wow and flutter measuring device to adjust the speed, but you can also use one of the free (or cheap) apps that rely on your phone's gyro—or an old strobe disc, which I prefer to phone-based tools. I found the 33 and 45 speeds close to spot on out of the box (above). 78rpm was pretty far off, but correcting it was easy. Measured with the Shaknspin, wow and combined flutter were superbly low, at 0.02% WRMS, about half the factory-specified value.

What makes it 'Mark II'?
Normally, when a company introduces a new version of an established product, it's because further developments make it possible to improve its performance. That's true of the PD-151 MK II, but it's also true that a change was necessary: The earlier PD-151A used a tonearm supplied by Jelco; sadly, that Japanese tonearm maker announced in 2020 that they would be closing their doors for good after almost 100 years in business. That left many turntable companies scrambling to find alternatives and led Luxman to strike a deal with another Japanese manufacturer, SAEC, which, in cooperation with Luxman, created the LTA-309.

Founded in 1974, SAEC lacks the name recognition of Jelco but has enjoyed a cult following in audiophile circles since the 1970s. Most of their tonearms follow a design approach similar to that employed in the 1960s by SME, with a detachable H4 bayonet-mount universal headshell and knife-edge bearings for the vertical pivot. Knife-edge bearings work exactly as their name suggests, with a pair of narrow blades flanking the armtube at the pivot point, held by gravity to a pair of V-shaped blocks. The result is vanishingly low static and dynamic friction as the arm moves up and down and a certain robustness, or resistance to accidental damage from overzealous cartridge-bolt tightening and other mishandling. Older knife-edge designs were sometimes criticized as being prone to bearing chatter and poor energy coupling from the cartridge to the turntable's structure, but this isn't a problem with a higher mass design like the SAEC. As with any gravity-supported bearing, you can feel a little play between the arm and the base if you manipulate the armtube in a way that lifts the knife edges out of the V blocks, but on the Luxman/SAEC arm this movement is very tightly constrained, and anyway it isn't relevant during playback.

The H4 bayonet-mount universal headshell has a long history, going back more than 60 years to the Ortofon G-type headshell and the SPU series of cartridges. It's a good system, allowing for quick, easy cartridge swaps in just a few seconds, but it has a few limitations when it comes to ultraprecise cartridge alignment. The pin that locates the headshell vertically in the armtube will typically have some play, making precise, repeatable azimuth setting difficult, and the way the collar holds the headshell into the armtube can change the front-to-back angle of the headshell depending on how much the collar is tightened. I found that with the Luxman arm, tightening the headshell collar firmly resulted in the headshell surface being about 1.5° out of parallel with the armtube. This isn't really a big deal because you can easily compensate by raising the height at the back of the arm, but it's something to be aware of when adjusting the stylus rake angle.

Setup
Despite the PD-151 MK II's sophistication and high performance, Luxman has done a lot to make it very easy to set up and get playing. The 'table arrives with its tonearm preinstalled, the cable plugged in and secured, and the adjustable feet in place. Just place the turntable on your rack or shelf and level the chassis using the four adjustable isolation feet, which have a 5mm adjustment range. Luxman says that all four feet should be lowered at least slightly to allow the isolation function of the feet to work as designed. Once the chassis is level, lower the platter onto the main bearing, put the thick rubber platter mat in place, and install the drive belt around the platter rim and motor pulley. A pair of handles helps lift the platter into place, and these screw into threaded holes on the platter surface. This helps prevent unfortunate platter-dropping accidents and keeps your mucky paw prints off the polished platter rim. Connect the power cable to the back panel socket and the turntable is ready to spin.

The LTA-309 tonearm presents no real difficulties in setup and finetuning (footnote 2). The arm is fully adjustable, with a wide height-adjustment range (for setting stylus rake angle), a rotatable headshell (to fine-tune azimuth), and a simple rotary dial for antiskating.

For aligning the cartridge in the headshell, the manual says to use the old trick of measuring 52mm from the back of the headshell collar's rubber washer to the stylus tip. That will give you an alignment close to Stevenson, but to a fussy setup guy like me, it seems to lack precision. I used an Acoustical Systems SMARTractor alignment protractor to adjust the arm more precisely.

The tonearm comes with a standard counterweight suitable for cartridges weighing up to 10gm, while a heavier weight—part number OPPD-HW2—is available as an option for cartridges that weigh between 9gm and 19gm. I used two cartridges during the review, an Ortofon Cadenza Blue and Luxman's own LMC-5, and found the standard weight suitable for both. Luxman provided an extra headshell, the OPPD SH2, which allowed me to switch easily between the Ortofon and Luxman cartridges with minimal recalibration.

The OPPD-DSC151 dustcover is offered as an optional extra; at nearly $800, I guess it's nice that Luxman gives you the option of going without it if your budget is tight. That's a lot of money for a dustcover, but you get what you pay for: This beautiful, thick, crystal-clear cover really completes the package visually. To install it, unscrew two plates on the back of the turntable and replace them with the two hinge brackets provided with the dustcover. The cover then slips easily into place.

Footnote 2: However, I was puzzled by Luxman's decision to provide no alignment tools; perhaps they assume your dealer will do the setup, or that you or your setup guy will have their own tools.

Just ignore them. I do. (Well, I try.)

The ability to fine-tune a vinyl playback system is part of what makes it possible to combine an archaic technology with modern thinking and materials to create musical magic, and take listeners to new heights of ecstatic musical pleasure. It's why so many young people are tuning in to vinyl, and helps explain why just today, as I write this, it was announced in the UK that, for the first time, revenues from sales of vinyl exceeded those from downloads.

You can buy a turntable that's been pre-tuned by the designer—that is, the user can't adjust its combinations of mass, materials, suspensions, etc.—or you can buy one that offers a few things you can adjust to your own taste. Either approach can be valid.

You can also buy a turntable whose designer has decided that high mass and heroic amounts of damping will solve any problems in the system's electromechanical design, and has applied these with an iron fist but without careful, critical listening. You might as well buy a CD player.

I bring this up because both Audio Union's Döhmann Helix 1 turntable (footnote 1) and the Schröder Captive Bearing tonearm (footnote 2) include instructions outlining how one can tune them—in one case through the use of heavy brass weights, and in the other by various degrees of screw tightening. These options are spelled out in well-written manuals, not because the designs are unfinished or the designers uncertain, but because the player's international design team, headed by Mark Döhmann, consists of both scientists and careful, experienced listeners who understand the tuned nature of the system.

Audio Union
The last time we heard from Mark Döhmann, he was the chief designer at Continuum Audio Labs—it says so right on his business card. There, he headed a design team that created the no-longer-in-production Caliburn, Cobra, and Castellon turntable, tonearm, and stand. That was more than a decade ago.

I listened, I reviewed, I bought . . . and 11 trouble-free years later I'm still glad I did, though I've since replaced the Cobra with the Swedish Analog Technologies (SAT) arm (and am glad I did that, too). And I replaced the Castellon's original magnetic-repulsion isolation system with one from MinusK.

Döhmann is now a member of the Audio Union team, based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Rumen Artarski, who holds a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Denmark and who also manufactures the Thrax line of electronics and loudspeakers, is Audio Union's executive director of engineering and marketing. The other Audio Union team members from around the world include names familiar and unfamiliar: world-renowned tonearm designer Frank Schröder; Dave and Tom Kleinbeck, of EnKlein cables (Dave is a telecommunications engineer, Tom a patent-holding mechanical and aeronautical engineer); Bo Christensen, of Bow Technologies (and previously of Primare); and Dr. David Platus, inventor of MinusK's vibration isolation technology. There are also two more Bulgarians: Stanislav Stoyanov, an aeronautical engineer who, among other things, oversees Artarski's state-of-the-art CNC machining facility; and Dr. Plamen Ivanov Valtchev, an expert in the use of advanced software visualization, FEA modeling, and acoustics. You can read more about the team at www.audio-union.com/Helix.php; if you do, you'll think they got together to design a great-sounding guided missile, but no—it's "just" a turntable project.

Döhmann Helix 1 turntable
Mark Döhmann's goals for the Helix 1 were the same as for his older designs: Isolate the groove-stylus interface from the outside world and from within. Drain away noise and various forms of energy produced by the turntable's bearing, the motor, and the stylus/vinyl interface. And, of course, spin the platter at the correct and unvarying speed. (For details about how he accomplished this in the Continuum Caliburn, see my review in the January 2006 issue.)

The goals this time were the same, but with a desire to bring it in at far lower cost. By the time the Caliburn came to market, its retail price had soared past $150,000, and it couldn't easily be dismantled for moving.

The Döhmann Helix 1 ($40,000) looks unlike any other turntable on the market. Its design concept and execution are equally unique, beginning with the integrated MinusK Negative Stiffness isolation platform (footnote 3). Simply put, MinusK is a totally passive leaf-spring design that isolates down to 0.5Hz vertically and 1.5Hz horizontally. Nothing from outside gets in. It wasn't invented for audio applications, but it sure works well under whatever you want to isolate.

Interesting as that is, it's probably the least intriguing aspect of the Helix 1's design. More fascinating are other design features, each with its initials: Micro Signal Architecture (MSA), Mechanical Crossover Technology (MCT), Tonearm Damping System (TDS), and Resonance Tuned Suspension (RTS). You can read way more about these on Audio Union's website than I have space for here. The language is flowery, but I found it free of another pair of initials: BS.

Basically, the Helix 1's interior consists of various plates that can be thought of as leaves on a tree—or, as described on the website, "the bearing is the center of the 'universe' where 'planets' (motors and arms) sit on an orbital plane (the chassis/plinth). Vibrate the plane (chassis/plinth) by internal or external means and you get vibration patterns and nodes, which become visible to the naked eye using Chladni plate analysis.

"By placing the bearing and motor and arms into 'optimal zones' where vibration was well damped or controlled we provided the best possible place on the chassis for the sub-system to sit with the lowest possible vibration. Helix 1 chassis research created several eureka moments!" Want to know what "Chladni plate analysis" is? Go to the link.

In fact, if you want to see a Helix 1 partially assembled by Rumen Artarski at his factory, see my 25-minute video. More particulars include a plinth of 4"-thick, CNC-machined aluminum and structural alloys that, fully assembled, weighs 100 lbs. Not visible in the video are the aforementioned series of interlocking plates "fitted closely" to the MinusK platform, to which are attached the motor, the platter bearing, and two suspended, isolated platforms for mounting tonearms.

A "mechanical crossover," produced by the various materials and their thicknesses and placements, creates, the manual claims, continuous, "smooth vibrational pathways that drive higher order vibrations generated through motor noise away from the bearing and platter via a complex coupling to the chassis."

The 30lb platter is a triple sandwich of layers of an "engineered thermoplastic" and a nonferrous alloy that's balanced and shaped for the lead-in groove and label areas of LPs. This is topped with a thin, permanently installed damping mat. The spindle is of brass.

The platter bearing is similar to the brilliant design used in the Spiral Groove turntables designed by Allen Perkins, who worked with Döhmann on the Helix 1 prototypes. The Helix 1's bearing—clearly shown in the video, and well worth a look—is manufactured in Europe to precision tolerances. The spindle and housing are of maraging steel—an alloy of iron possessing superior strength and toughness. The spindle rides on a single ceramic ball and thrust pad.

A high-torque, low-noise, zero-cogging motor capable of 100W of power drives the platter via two dissimilar O-rings. The belts are purposely machined to have different durometers (degrees of hardness), so that each belt "beats" differently, with the motor-control system doing the final smoothing. Döhmann says that a "springy" belt is good because it addresses motor-bearing noise and motor cogging—but because of inevitable bearing friction, the belt slows (we're talking on a microscopic level of course) and needs retensioning, which produces a "beat." With the addition of a second, less compliant belt—which, when added to the system, won't stretch at the same time or at the same rate—the two belts will then "average out," smoothing the beat—and the motor controller can be programmed to further aid the improved belt performance. Döhmann figures that makers of turntables driven by two or more identical belts will eventually pick up on this.

The Helix 1's custom, software-based motor-control system is housed in a handsome case the size of a preamplifier. This digital, closed-loop servo has greater than 16-bit resolution. The motor-control software was designed by Tom Kleinbeck, Rumen Artarski, and Stanislav Stoyanov. This international collaboration was necessary, Döhmann says, partly because of the different electrical needs of various nations, but also because they found ways to "voice" the motor with flexible programming. With each iteration of the software, each of the three independently listened, then shared his opinions with the other two. From the Audio Union website: "Absolute positioning reading occurs over 120,000 discrete positions of the rotor per revolution. The motor spins several hundred times to achieve one revolution of the platter thus increasing the system resolution by an order of magnitude over a direct drive topology."

The Helix 1's two speeds, 33 1/3 and 45rpm (78rpm is available on request), are set at the factory and, according to Audio Union, should not need adjusting. If they ever do, a smartphone/tablet app will do it—or the controller can be connected to the Internet, to allow AU's service techs to remotely diagnose and adjust, as well as download firmware and/or software updates. There's a screw-on record clamp.

Footnote 2: Schröder Tonarme, Stuttgarter Platz 3, 10627 Berlin, Germany. Tel: (49) 030-611-51-81. Web: www.schroeder-tonarme.de/

Footnote 3: For more about the Negative Stiffness system, see my September 2012 interview with MinusK's David Platus.

I have a friend named Yale, a record producer, who lives in a capacious, art-filled SoHo loft with enormous windows, craggy wood floors, and a high, tin-tiled ceiling. I enjoy Yale's company because he has extraordinarily diverse, highly evolved taste in music, art, architecture, books, home furnishings, and hi-fi equipment.

In one part of Yale's loft, a large, tin cow weathervane stands on a bureau. Bolted to the ceiling above the dining room table is a greasy black 300lb electric motor with a wide pulley—the kind formerly used to turn the belts that powered sweatshop machines ca 1920. In the purest essence of 1970s SoHo style, a loft bed is situated above the closet and bathroom, and the kitchen floor is raised to shelter plumbing pipes. There's an unnamable piece of machinery, about the size of a small dog, on the floor next to the couch. It sits there because it looks elegantly mysterious, inspiring curiosity and contemplation. Yale and his architect wife spent decades creating this dreamy, comfortable space, which leads my mind to reminisce—and loft envy.

One sunny winter weekday, Yale invited me over for the express purpose of helping him decide which amp does a better job powering his patinaed 1970s Tannoy Cheviot speakers: his newly arrived, 1956 Fairchild 260 tube amplifiers or the shiny Line Magnetic 2A3 amp he'd been using for some time. His "gear table," he said, was too small for both.

As we unpacked the Fairchilds, we agreed: Those push-pull 6L6 mono amps are museum-quality masterpieces of industrial design. The Fairchild 260s are, along with the Marantz Model 2 and the Brook 12A, top classics of American mono-era amplifier design.

As we unwrapped the NOS tubes, I reminded Yale that RCA released the 6L6 beam tetrode in 1936 and that it was designed specifically to have a distortion characteristic high in second harmonic and low in third harmonic, for use in push-pull, audio-frequency amplifiers in which the second harmonic gets canceled. Push-pull 6L6 tube amps are notoriously musical, revered especially for their vocal reproduction. These rare Fairchild 260s are the holy grail of 6L6 design.

When we got the tubes in and the wires connected, only one channel worked. After some fiddling, we had sound from both channels, but one speaker was out of phase. As Yale troubleshot, I sat myself down in a random chair about 30' from the speakers and began to check my email. Suddenly, both speakers jolted into loud, in-phase action, making my head jerk so fast I hurt my neck. When I looked down, I saw my right foot tapping like a sewing machine. Then I felt my head bobbing. I was having an "Oh my! Listen to that!" moment.

Full-strength Pace, Rhythm, and Timing (PRaT). Unsuppressible forward momentum. Music grooves owned the room. Artists' intentions were coming through. My brain gave no thought to "how does it sound?"

When the second record ended, I turned to Yale wide-eyed and exclaimed, "Wow! You were right. You're not an audiophile. You are a music lover!" I said this because, earlier, Yale had denied being an audiophile, saying he just likes "gear."

It was obvious he cared little about all that "audiophile checklist" stuff and not at all about those speaker setup–room arranging rules that place a high priority on a strategically positioned listening chair and precisely focused image mapping. To me, it seemed that Yale's system was carefully curated to do one thing perfectly: remind himself and show his friends how good his records are.

I asked Yale how he chose this particular mixture of stuff. "I chose most of it because I liked how it looks," he answered. "I don't compare equipment. I just go by what moves me." That made me smile. "I believe that strategy works," I told him. "Because ... in my experience, most components do sound like they look." I complimented my friend and his wife on their good taste, saying, "I think your audio gear is 'of a piece' with your art and furnishings and taste in music."

Watching me swoon over the gray, hammertone beauty of his EMT 930 turntable, Yale explained that he had owned quite a few turntables, "but once I realized that idler wheels were close to god, I bought into the myth." Yale told me his EMT cartridge came from Art Dudley, whose writing had been "an inspiration" during his gear-buying journey.

Yale has a second system, set up along the long, high books-and-records wall. It features a crisp-looking Thorens TD 124 (completely stock, restored by STS Turntables) with an SME 3012 arm and a Denon DL-103 moving coil cartridge wired into a 1960s Voice of Music, EL-84–based integrated amplifier powering some snappy-looking Altec Model 14 speakers sitting on the floor pointing out at no particular chair. When he played it, this system filled the room with sound and gushed boogie factor like the first one.

Both of Yale's systems moved the music forward better than any newfangled system I've encountered. I wasn't sure why. When a sound system excels at PRaT and momentum, those talents swamp all other considerations. PRaT is engagement factor. It's what seduces listeners. Forward momentum is what holds their attention. When PRaT rules, noise, distortion, and frequency response become secondary. In order for me to love an audio system, it must have a strongly coercive nature: It must invite me in, pin me to my chair, and force me to listen intently. For me, it's PRaT (and authentic tone)—not SINAD (footnote 1)—that makes recorded music believable and exciting.

Ever since that day at Yale's, I've spent much time thinking about why idler-drive turntables excel at pushing music along. All my belt-drive and direct-drive players run at the same 33 1/3 , 45, and 78 speeds, but compared to that EMT 930, my 1984 Linn LP12 feels like it's dragging a hind paw. And Dr. Feickert's Blackbird plays brisk and surefooted and makes records exciting, but it's not a locomotive like that EMT.

In the quiet passages, my LP12 is quieter than all forms of direct or idler drive, and its lower noisefloor exposes more of that inner detail we audiophiles crave. But EMT's 930—and also the PTP Audio idler-drive turntable I am about to describe—do something unique with quietness, momentum, and what Art Dudley called "touch," which I interpret as a commingling of tactility and corporality.

What probably makes vintage idler drives so supercharged, PRaTwise, is the precision-made, high-torque AC motors they use to turn heavy platters with no speed correction or belt decoupling. To my subconscious mind, idler drive feels more solidly connected to the music's forward momentum than direct drive does. To my conscious mind, idler drive appears less conditioned, less electrically affected, than direct drive. Compared to idler and direct drive, belt drive feels like it decouples the platter and record grooves, not just from the motor's noise and vibration but from the essence of its torque and power. I can't swear that I hear this, nor can I describe what idler drive sounds like any more than I already have—but I can feel it, as I did that day at Yale's.

Since that day, belt-drive decks feel like cars with automatic transmissions. Yale's EMT idler feels like it has a sturdy gearbox and a stiff clutch.

PTP Audio's Solid9 Record Player
I am home now in my studio, listening to PTP Audio's simple-as-a-rock Solid9 turntable (footnote 2). The Solid9 is a restored, hot-rodded, replinthed Lenco idler drive (footnote 3) that my Eurofriend Peter Reinders builds in his shop in the Netherlands (footnote 4). Every time I place a disc on its rubber Lenco platter mat, I admire every no-frills thing about it. It looks solid and purposeful.

Back in the '80s, when I was buying and selling used, broadcast-quality decks, my Japanese customers' first choice was always the rarest: a gray, hammertone, grease-bearing Garrard 301, followed by an ivory-colored grease-bearing model. In third place was Garrard's ivory-colored oil-bearing model.

Farther down my customers' want list (and my price list) were idler-drive models from Gates and Lenco. The made-in-Illinois Gates was a cool-looking, truck-tough turntable with a gearshift-styled speed-change lever and a choice of 16" or 12" platters. Its most distinguishing feature was the idler mechanism: The idler wheel didn't drive the platter's outer rim as in the Garrard and EMT; instead, it drove a massive inner hub surrounding the cast platter's spindle. According to Gates's advertising, this "hub-drive" strategy reduced rumble by allowing the motor to operate at a lower speed.

Between 1946 and 1979, the Lenco AG offered a third approach to idler drive. These Lencos used a long, gently tapered, horizontally positioned motor shaft to drive the bottom of the platter via a skinny (4mm) spring-tensioned vertical idler wheel. Where the idler is positioned against the tapered shaft determines the platter's speed. This is the mechanism used by the PTP Audio Solid 'tables.

Footnote 2: Art wrote about PTP 'tables several times including here and here.

Footnote 3: See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenco_Turntables.

Footnote 4: PTP Audio/Audiomods, Email: peter@ptpaudio.com Web: ptpaudio.com

And talk about turntables! From the entry-level $1499 Cliffwood to the top-of-the-line $104,000 Vanquish (found under the website's "VPI Luxury" page, accompanied by the adage, "Settle for Nothing but Extravagant"), VPI is clearly and rightfully proud of its analog achievements.

Like many successful small businesses, VPI is a family affair. Cofounder and designer/engineer Harry Weisfeld designed the tables that established the company's reputation. Sheila, Harry's late wife and VPI cofounder, was an important presence; her expertise in audiology and speech-and-language pathology gave her a skill set unusual in the industry and made her a principal contributor to VPI's success. Harry and Sheila's son Mat Weisfeld is the current designer and CEO; his wife, Jane, is VPI's office manager. The 15 employees work at the company's Cliffwood, New Jersey, HQ to manufacture every VPI 'table from 95% North American–made components.

Harry Weisfeld is a longtime, fervent record collector. His analog dreams started with buying vinyl and shellac as far back as the 1950s. He still collects LPs (no "vinyls," please) and has a special fondness for Sonny Rollins's Way Out West, Jo Basile's Hit Broadway Musicals (Audio Fidelity AFSD-5972), Eydie Gormé's albums on the Coral label, and anything on Norman Granz's Pablo Records, home to natural-sounding '70s and '80s records by Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Pass, Sarah Vaughan, Milt Jackson, and Count Basie, to name a few.

"My first record was a mono Louis Armstrong, and I still love his 'Shadrach Meshach'—amazing music," the elder Weisfeld noted in an email from his Watchung, New Jersey, home. "I began building audio gear with a Dynaco FM 3 tuner and went from there. I was originally an electrical and mechanical engineer and a sheet-metal contractor. I learned all I know about making things from 15 years working with sheet metal union workers in New York City. I learned a lot [about] how things work [and] get built and how to not go bankrupt."

Early on, Weisfeld was a devotee of the grand era of American-made muscle cars; he raced a 1966 Dodge Coronet 500 powered by a 426 hemi (the same car my father drove back in Charlotte, North Carolina). That American power aesthetic would later influence the brawny, chromey look of VPI's upper-tier turntables. A hardcore audiophile from his school days, Weisfeld experimented with hi-fi equipment of all persuasions. "I remember audio equipment, but I don't remember people!," he told me. "I went through Dahlquists, ElectroStatic Solutions (ESS), Acoustic Research, Dynaco, an Acoustic Research, a Garrard 301, Micro Seiki tonearms, a Denon DP-80 turntable, on and on," he elaborated. "Not to mention cartridges: Shure, Stanton, Goldring, Decca. Oh so many Deccas, and Pickering, ADC, so many ADCs. I still love the ADC XLM MK-2, one of my favorite cartridges of all time."

Weisfeld was a frequent visitor to the Sea Cliff, New York, home of The Absolute Sound founder Harry Pearson. There, in the mid-1970s, Weisfeld encountered the Keith Monks Record Cleaning Machine. Believing he could make a record cleaner that was more affordable and easier to use, he fashioned the HW-16, introduced circa 1980. It remains in production, an exceedingly popular product—indeed, one of a handful of analog products currently produced that can legitimately be called "classic."

VPI's other early products were record weights and isolation platforms, the latter made for specific record players, including Denon and JVC direct drives. Sometime in the early '80s came the notorious DB-5 "magic brick": a slab of wood encasing plates made of ferrous metal; the aim was to damp vibrations while also providing some magnetic isolation.

Harry introduced VPI's first turntable, the HW-19, in 1981; it would be produced in four iterations. The HW-19 was followed in 1986 by the TNT (footnote 1). The current VPI lineup consists of 14 'tables, 12 tonearms, two VPI-branded phono cartridges, and some accessories.

The Avenger Direct turntable ($36,000), the subject of this review, comes with the 12" gimballed version of the 3D-printed FatBoy tonearm (footnote 2; $4500 when purchased separately), the aluminum JMW Full VTA Base ($1500 separately), a direct drive assembly/motor, a machined aluminum platter, a vented chassis, a stainless steel Periphery Ring Clamp ($1300 separately), three air-suspension Feet ($3450 separately), a VPI-branded alignment jig ($75 separately), a poly-weave platter mat, and one Signature record weight ($185 separately). For this review, VPI graciously supplied their Weisline tonearm cable by Nordost ($780/pair) and the VPI Shyla MC cartridge ($2000, named for one of Mat and Jane's daughters), built by Audio-Technica and modeled on that company's flagship ART Series, with an anodized aluminum body, boron cantilever, line-contact diamond stylus, and an output of 0.5mV. For another perspective on the Avenger Direct, Ortofon lent me the Verismo MC cartridge ($6900).

Design
The Avenger Direct's massive, 18½" wide × 17" deep × 10" high aluminum-sandwich, War of the Worlds chassis is based on the tripod-spider design of the Avenger Reference. "The chassis is made of sandwiched acrylic/stainless steel/acrylic, silicone-sealed and screwed together, making it very, very dead," Harry told me. Three massive, 2¾"–wide stainless steel posts stabilize the massive chassis. Three machined-aluminum cones are set into 3½" Delrin/ball-bearing isolation bases. A rubber grommet between the cone and the Delrin provide even more isolation. Yet another layer—a special acoustic pad—sits below the Delrin disc, Weisfeld noted. The resemblance to the Avenger Reference extends to functionality: Both 'tables employ up to three arms at a time, of any length or manufacture.

The motor drive, platter, and tonearm used in the Avenger Direct were key elements of the VPI HW-40 40th Anniversary Direct Drive 'table, which Michael Fremer reviewed in Stereophile's January 2020 issue; many tonearm and platter specifications are common to both 'tables.

The 2" high, 21lb Avenger Direct platter is machined from a solid billet of 6061 aluminum, internally damped with a disc of wood-composite fiber covered in black mica and "locked in with silicone," Harry told me in an email. "Hitting a VPI platter is like hitting a pillow with a sausage."

A subplatter 5¾" in diameter × 1" high drives the main platter. "The subplatter/rotor spins on an inverted bearing, central to which is a hardened steel ball atop a steel spindle shaft, ... the latter rigidly secured to the motor housing—as is the encoder that monitors the rotor rotation," Fremer wrote in his HW-40 review. On the Avenger Direct, that ball is chrome-hardened, rated 60 on the Rockwell scale. The subplatter bearing turns on a polyether ether ketone (PEEK) thrust pad fixed to a phosphor-bronze bushing.

"This is the most solid and least error-producing system in the business," Weisfeld senior said. The Avenger Direct uses the same basic motor—the same rotor stator—used since the Classic Direct, but the way that motor is driven changed with the HW-40. In its earlier implementation, the motor was driven as a brushless, direct-current (BLDC) motor; in the later direct-drive 'tables, including the Avenger Direct, it is implemented as a PMAC (permanent-magnet AC) motor, "driven sinusoidally as a three-phase AC motor," Harry wrote in an email. The motor-drive system is servo-controlled by an active Texas Instruments–based feedback loop. A magnetic strip with 2500 magnetic elements on the platter is read by a magnetic head; that information is fed back directly into the drive system to correct errors. "The drive is so powerful you can put your finger on the side of the platter while running and it does not slow down," Harry wrote. "With no cogging, when the platter turns there is no vibration."

Weisfeld emphasized that this is no off-the-shelf implementation of a third-party direct-drive motor. "ThinGap supplies the stator and rotor—the bearings, assembly, shaft, entire housing, drive and monitoring gear all have to be bought or machined," he said. "What you buy from ThinGap is essentially a paperweight that cannot turn or even stand on its own."

Three small buttons on the lower tank of the chassis turn the power on and off and set the speed, 45, and 33 1/3.

Once you get past the turntable's imposing chassis, eyes are drawn to the Avenger Direct's 3D-printed 12" FatBoy tonearm, said to feature precision gimbal bearings, and the 2¾" wide × 2" high rotating tonearm tower, which enables oh-so-easy, on-the-fly vertical tracking angle (VTA) adjustment. Instant gratification. The 12" armwand3 sits in a Delrin/stainless steel arm rest. VPI makes their own cueing lever, also of stainless steel. Past the tonearm's gimbal and two-part stainless steel/aluminum collar and bearing housing (which utilizes ABEC 9 bearings by Lucent Technology), a screw-threaded butt end holds a stainless steel counterweight, encircled by two rubber rings for peripheral damping. Vertical tracking force (VTF) is set by rotating a small black knob at the butt end of the tonearm, which moves the counterweight forward or backward on a plastic sleeve. Easy to use and precise, it's one of the most efficient VTF methods I've seen.

Back to the armwand, which is 3D-printed from liquid resin set into a UV- and heat-resistant stainless steel tube. "When this company in Ohio 3D-printed the tonearm, we attached an accelerometer on it," Weisfeld recalled. "It was a 1.5dB resonance, three cycles wide. There was nothing there. It's quiet. That's why we use it. Instead of a tube, it's a million strands of stainless steel, all glued together and laser formed. It's a collection of thousands of little tubes. It takes 11 hours to print one tonearm tube and headshell, one laser line at a time. Then a carbon fiber piece goes in the center of the armtube, which makes it incredibly stiff."

Azimuth is adjusted by loosening two Allen-head screws on the tonearm near the rear bearing collar, allowing the tonearm to rotate. The tonearm specs out at a pivot-to-spindle distance of 300mm, an effective length of 313mm, an offset angle of 17.37°, an overhang of 13mm, and an effective mass of 11.9gm. The FatBoy includes an adjustable, 5/8"-thick, 6061 aluminum armboard. An extra 12" FatBoy tonearm, complete with base, junction box, and armboard, adds $6500 to the price. Nordost Reference wire is used throughout.

Footnote 2: VPI also makes unipivot versions of the FatBoy tonearms.

New York will never make onto a "most livable cities" list, and it attracts a particular kind of person. Despite the influx of suburban corporate workers that has transformed it over the past three decades, the city remains a haven for the strange and those drawn to strangeness, for artists and obsessives, for people hooked on the pursuit of more than ample parking space and an affordable breakfast burrito.

This situation is alluded to in the title of Waylon Jennings's 1992 album Too Dumb for New York City, Too Ugly for L.A. and also by the odd fact that John Waters, the filmmaker responsible for underground art-trash classics like Pink Flamingos, once attended New York University. "I didn't go to class," Waters recalled. "I went to Times Square every day and saw movies. I stole books from their bookshop and sold them back the next day to make money. I took drugs. I probably should've been thrown out." Waters was eventually expelled, after getting arrested with a quantity of marijuana. I think about him every time I teach a class at NYU.

What I'm getting around to saying is that easily the best part of living here is the people. One of them is Jeffrey Catalano, who has been a drummer, painter, DJ, and construction worker and today runs a hi-fi business, High Water Sound, from a loft in a former sail-making factory on Water Street in Manhattan's financial district. With his wiry frame, matinee-idol cheekbones, and graying thrash-metal mane, he's a dead ringer for country singer Jimmie Dale Gilmore and also looks a little like the late character actor Harry Dean Stanton. Catalano's intensity can be glimpsed in his diet-and-exercise regimen: he's vegan, eats one meal a day, and logs 1000 daily reps on a rowing machine. Like some longtime New Yorkers, he can come off as gruff and even severe in an attempt to cover up a readily apparent curiosity and kindness.

What exactly High Water Sound is can be difficult to figure out. It doubles as Catalano's home and feels more personal than a showroom, being the repository of decades of record collecting, listening, reading, and an approach to audio that can be described as uncompromising and quite possibly fanatical. Unlike most hi-fi retailers, Catalano doesn't try to cater to every price point, technology, and commitment level. Instead, he offers components from a handful of producers—calling them companies doesn't quite capture it—who make beautiful, exotic, high-sensitivity speakers, low-powered tube amps, and devices for vinyl playback. If you're looking for digital or solid state gear, or a soundbar for your projector, you've reached the wrong address. Like Catalano himself, the products found here embody a devotion to the best possible sound with little to no thought given to practicality. Consider possibly the most quixotic of these items, the Dalby Audio Design Pirueta Extreme record clamp and Pirueta Carbon mat. Constructed from Gabon ebony, a carbon fiber weave used in Formula 1 racers, and gold, they resemble mysterious artefacts from one of the Hellraiser movies and retail for a hair under $16,000 for the pair.

During my first visit to High Water Sound last winter, I listened to a system consisting of record players and tube electronics from TW-Acustic sitting on racks and platforms from Silent Running Audio, hooked up to a pair of Cessaro Horn Acoustics Liszt speakers. The Liszts weigh 992lb each. When I asked Catalano how he got them up the narrow staircase to his second-story loft, he described a system of ropes and pulleys like the ones used by the builders of the pyramids at Giza.

As Catalano put on record after record, my friend Michael Lavorgna and I listened on the sofa and from time to time shot each other a look that meant "Holy f*ck, are you hearing this?" On John Coltrane's 1959 version of "My Favorite Things," Coltrane's soprano sax and McCoy Tyner's piano were rendered larger and louder than live, with extraordinary detail, weight, presence, and color. But the more memorable thing about the system, possibly the most transporting one I've heard, was the way it riveted our attention to the music and how freely that music flowed. Every once in a while, Michael and I were hugged by Thaddeus, Catalano's Old English Sheepdog, who felt like he weighed 992lb, too.

Before Michael and I left in a euphoric daze, I mentioned that I wanted to review the Raven GT2, the smallest and least expensive turntable from TW-Acustic (footnote 1). A little more than a year and many emails later, Catalano made the trip across the Brooklyn Bridge.

TW-Acustic Raven GT2
The GT2 ($12,500) is a formidable machine that in no way comports with the notion of "entry level." To my eyes, it is not so much attractive as sternly functional, in keeping with its German origin. Everything about the 'table, which weighs 75lb and is made almost entirely of raven-black aluminum, appears thought out. The motor controller is hidden inside the chassis, while the power and speed are set with pushbuttons and confirmed by red LEDs on the front. Three aluminum cones are used for leveling and support. The GT2 is so precisely machined that lowering the very heavy composite-and-bronze platter onto the upward-facing bearing shaft takes not seconds but minutes. Watching the belt-driven platter in motion, I could detect no swim at all. Best of all, the turntable is no larger than it needs to be and, despite its considerable weight, is compact enough to fit on a typical rack.

Yet the Raven 12" arm ($6500) that came installed on the GT2 impressed me even more, having been designed with a solution for every last thing I hate about tonearms. VTA is fine-tuned by turning a ring at the arm's base. VTF is dialed in by rotating the ingenious counterweight, held in place by the friction of unevenly spaced threads. Antiskating is set with a magnetic screw. The integral headshell rotates to allow azimuth adjustments. And the housing of the four-point gimbal bearing has a dimple at its center, to anchor the point of a cartridge protractor and eliminate guesswork from finding the arm's pivot point. I suffer from shaky hands and shakier patience; discovering this seemingly minor convenience nearly brought tears to my eyes. Compared to my 12" Schick arm, with its SME-style system of grub screws, the Raven appears to be a product of a more enlightened civilization—clearly, TW-Acustic's Thomas Woschnick is an obsessive. The GT2 also offers provision for a second armboard, which Catalano was good enough to provide, allowing me to mount the Schick alongside the Raven. Look ma, two arms!

It took several weeks of listening to the GT2 with the Dynavector Te Kaitora Rua and Miyajima Shilabe cartridges (see later) before I began to zero in on the turntable's character. That may sound like a criticism, but I mean the opposite—the German 'table did everything so well that I struggled to describe its sound. No single area of performance stood out or seemed overlooked, and it remained trouble-free and delightfully straightforward to operate. The only small hitch was needing to add the 7mm-tall Trans-Fi Reso-Mat in order to achieve proper VTA with the Schick arm. For what it's worth, I slightly preferred listening to the GT2 with the Reso-Mat than with the records placed directly on the platter.

Listening to Arthur Verocai's self-titled album from 1972, a classic of Brazilian pop that blends voices with acoustic and electronic instruments in dense, unusual orchestrations, I was struck by how unfailingly the GT2 was able to unravel the gossamer musical layers and surround them with plenty of space and air. On "Dedicada a ela," I heard remarkable separation on the wildly busy arrangement of horns, strings, flute, bass, drums, background vocals, guitar routed through a wah-wah pedal, and Nivaldo Ornelas's searing sax solo. And the Raven placed Verocai's voice, which sounds like it's coming from the bottom of an elevator shaft, well behind the plane of the other instruments and singers. On record after record, the German deck was able to excavate spatial and instrumental detail, and imbue recordings with depth and dimension, as well as any I've heard.

The Prime was fitted with a Lyra Helikon SL cartridge (ca $2500, discontinued), driving a reasonably priced phono preamplifier: the Audio Alchemy PPA-1 ($1795, currently under review for AnalogPlanet). Accompanying the Continuum Caliburn and SAT arm were Audio-Technica's AT-ART1000 cartridge ($5000), and Ypsilon's MC-16L step-up transformer ($6200) and VPS-100 Silver phono preamplifier ($65,000)—total cost, more than I paid for my first house, in 1992.

In terms of the great disparities in cost and sound quality, the comparison was absurd. My point was to show how much good sound could be gotten from a high-performance turntable at a relatively modest price. But even through YouTube's audio compression, it was clear to all that the big rig sounded far better—some commenters were astonished—but also that the Prime system produced really sweet, very pleasing sound.

However, one YouTube commenter insisted that, had the same cartridge been used in both tonearms, the easily audible sonic differences would have evaporated. How do you argue with someone so dogmatic?

Easy! A while back, I posted on YouTube a video of the Andrew Hill tune "Laverne," from jazz pianist Frank Kimbrough's Meantime (Newvelle NV 001LP), played on the Kuzma combo of Stabi M turntable and 4Point 14" tonearm (footnote 1) with the Lyra Atlas cartridge, driving Audio Tekne's very rich-sounding TEA-8695 PCS tubed phono preamp (footnote 2). More recently, I posted another video of the same cut, this time played with Acoustic Signature's Ascona Mk.2 turntable and TA-9000 tonearm, fitted with the same Lyra Atlas. I used the Ypsilon electronics because the Audio Tekne had been returned to the manufacturer, yet comparing the two recordings clearly indicates that the newer video has sound that's richer and fuller in the midrange. This didn't at all surprise me—the Kuzma combo of Stabi M turntable and 4Point arm was noticeably lean in the midrange, and sounded so even with the lush Audio Tekne phono preamp.

On the other hand, the Kuzma combo had a tightly focused, well-extended bottom-end response, most of which survived its trip through the Audio Tekne's lushness, while the Acoustic Signature combo made the bottom end more lean and somewhat softer, even though it had the benefit of the Ypsilon's far punchier bottom end. Turntables—and, of course, tonearms—do "sound"!

Acoustic Signature Ascona Mk.2 turntable
Acoustic Signature's Ascona Mk.2 turntable ($32,995, footnote 3), which is exquisitely machined from aluminum, is massive yet surprisingly compact. Ingeniously designed by Gunther Frohnhöfer, its tasteful bling also makes it one of today's more visually attractive platter spinners.

The Ascona's unique design features a main chassis in the shape of an equilateral triangle, near each apex of which is a European-made AC synchronous motor encased in its own aluminum pedestal, and driven by a digitally derived signal from Acoustic Signature's new AlphaDIG motor-drive electronics, which the company describes as "State of the Art."

Three massive, circular receptacles attached to the top of the lower chassis accept the upper chassis' three domed, cylindrical threaded brass feet, each having a cross-piece that fits into a slot machined into the lower-chassis receptacle. This locks the feet in place so that the upper chassis can be leveled by turning the knob at each apex. Ingenious and well thought out.

The upper chassis holds Acoustic Signature's signature hand-tuned, low-clearance bearing, with sintered bronze sleeves—said to be self-lubricating—and a Tidorfolon thrust plate. Between the bottom of the hardened-steel bearing shaft and the Tidorfolon plate is a tungsten-carbide ball.

The rim of the large-diameter, one-piece aluminum subplatter comes within a few millimeters of each of the three motor pulleys. An elastomer drive belt loops around the rim and pulleys to produce a large contact area—and enough torque to get the Ascona Mk.2's massive platter (its weight is not specified) up to speed relatively quickly. The subplatter's shape incorporates an unusually tall and wide cone, precision-machined to mate with the platter, which is fabricated from what Acoustic Signature describes as a soft alloy, its lower surface coated with a resonance-damping material. The sturdy design and execution of the Ascona Mk.2 is a showcase of machining excellence.

Thirty small brass cylinders, called Silencers, are arrayed around the 13.8" platter's lower periphery; these plus 24 larger Silencers embedded in the platter's record-bearing surface are claimed to eliminate airborne and coupled acoustic energy from the LP being played. The Silencers protrude slightly from the platter surface. Acoustic Signature supplies a thin mat made of a rubbery/leathery material, with holes cut in it that match the tops of the Silencers, though the result is still not a flat surface. According to AS's importer, Fidelis Music Systems, this arrangement produces the most neutral tonal balance, but I don't understand the rationale for it—I think a tight coupling of record to mat to platter is always a good idea.

The 'table can accommodate up to three tonearms on thick aluminum mounting plates that slide in and out of slots in the chassis, to set the pivot-to-spindle distance; those plates are then locked in place by tightening pairs of bolts. Accessing the bolts to loosen, slide, and tighten them requires sliding the Ascona to the edge of the surface on which it's installed. It's not the most convenient system, but it's eminently doable.

Despite its relatively small dimensions of 26.5" (673mm) wide × 8.4" (214mm) high × 19.3" (489mm) deep, the Ascona Mk.2 weighs an incredible 176lb (79.8kg)! But thanks to its modular design, hoisting its various parts atop my HRS stand proved not at all difficult. The $32,995 price, while high, seems reasonable, given the build quality. This is a substantial turntable, and its design intricacies and machining set the bar high.

For an additional $4995, you can add an all-new, three-layer Invictus platter made of a sandwich of aluminum and brass, also incorporating a total of 54 Silencers. This platter comes standard on Acoustic Signature's flagship turntable, the six-motor Invictus ($150,000). Acoustic Signature's position is that if you're spending $32,995 on a turntable, you can easily spend another $4995 for the better platter. One was supplied for this review.

Acoustic Signature TA-9000 tonearm
Acoustic Signature's top tonearm model is available in lengths of 9" or 12"; I chose the 9" version of this very handsome design ($17,995). The arm pivots, horizontally and vertically, on preloaded precision ball bearings produced in the US by Timken and adjusted in-house by a bearing specialist.

Much of the arm's cost is due to its innovative armtube. Gunther Frohnhöfer claims that you can go "stiff and light" with carbon fiber, with the disadvantage of undamped resonances within the audioband, or opt for die-cast aluminum or magnesium tubes, which are relatively stiff, but heavy and also not well damped. Frohnhöfer's solution to the problem of producing a lightweight, extremely stiff, well-damped armtube was to use two concentric aluminum tubes, both with conical exteriors. The tubes are bound together with more than 700 branch-like connecting pads, arranged in a spiral around the inner tube—an incredibly complex construction.

Vertical tracking angle (VTA) and stylus rake angle (SRA) are adjustable on a very rudimentary level: loosen a clamping screw in the arm base and, unless you hold it up, the arm pillar drops; you can raise or lower the pillar by hand, then hold it in place as you retighten the screw. You can use a ruler to determine a reference height and work from there, or use a marking pen to put lines on the post, but for $17,995 you might expect an arrangement something like the one used in SME's V or the SAT arm, which supports the arm with a vertical screw that can be turned to raise or lower the arm before tightening the clamping screw. The headshell can be rotated for azimuth adjustment by loosening and retightening its own clamping screw.

Other features include: compatibility with SME arm mounts; continuous, pure silver internal wiring terminated with a straight, five-pin DIN connector; and a threaded counterweight stub and brass counterweight. The review sample came with an AudioQuest DIN-to-RCA phono cable.

Footnote 2: See my review of the Audio Tekne in the November 2016 "Analog Corner."

Footnote 3: Acoustic Signature, AS-Distribution GmbH, Ulmer Strasse 123, D-73037 Göppingen, Germany. Tel: (49) (0)7161-3898135. Fax: (49) (0)7161-3898137. Web: www.acoustic-signature.com. US distributor: Fidelis Music Systems, 460 Amherst Street (Route 101A), Nashua, NH 03063. Tel: (603) 880-4434. Fax: (603) 880-4433. Web: www.fidelisav.com

SME's history is well-documented. The company started out, in 1946, as an engineering company for hire. In 1959, after a few years supplying parts for the scale modeling and various other high-tech industries, company founder Alastair Robertson-Aikman wanted a better tonearm for his personal use. He leveraged the capabilities of his small engineering company to create what eventually became the legendary 3009 and 3012 tonearms. The reputation of the new arms spread quickly, and from the mid-1960s through the 1970s, SME dominated the high-end tonearm market. SME's corporate slogan was The Best Pick-Up Arm in the World, and few people at the time would have challenged that claim.

Sadly, AR-A died in 2006. The company was handed down to AR-A's son, Cameron, who steered the ship until 2016 then sold the family business to Cadence Audio. (I knew Cameron Robertson-Aikman when we were kids in the 1970s, in the same year at school, so my tenuous connection to SME goes back a long way!)

Two types of companies make turntables, I've found: the type that assembles them from outsourced parts and the kind that manufactures them. Most high-end turntable companies fall into the first group: They use subcontractors to make most if not all of the 'table's component parts, to the turntable company's specific design and specifications. Turntable manufacturers, on the other hand, build the individual parts themselves—most of the parts anyway, including the key parts—then assemble them to create a finished product. Usually only bigger companies with deep pockets can manage this; larger production numbers justify the investment in costly machine tools. SME, on the other hand, has survived as one of a handful of small, specialist turntable and tonearm manufacturers that build the mechanical parts for themselves, in part by continuing to take on subcontracting jobs, much as the company did when it was founded more than 75 years ago.

When you make everything yourself, you have much more control over the process, and you can introduce small changes quickly with relative ease. Prototyping is much faster, making it easier to try out different solutions to a problem without having to wait for a subcontractor to make the required parts.

When you walk into the SME factory in Steyning, England, you see rooms crammed with state-of-the-art manufacturing—giant CNC milling machines and lathes—whirring away making turntable and tonearm parts. Almost every mechanical part they use, down to the tiniest screws and washers, is made in their factory to the same exacting standards as more substantial parts like bearings and platters.

For more than 30 years, SME's audio business was strictly all about tonearms, but in 1990, they took the next logical step by producing their first turntable, the aptly named Model 30. The Model 30 was an all-out effort to deliver state-of-the-art performance. It raised the performance bar in many ways, but the timing wasn't so great. In 1990, vinyl records were fading into oblivion as CDs came to dominate the prerecorded music market; launching the costly Model 30 made about as much sense then as introducing a state-of-the-art fax machine would today. But the company survived and versions of the Model 30 are still in production. Thirty-plus years have passed, and vinyl has come roaring back. So, recently, SME decided to rethink the challenge of building the best turntable possible when cost is not a concern.

The Model 60 shares much of its mechanical design with the Model 30, but with everything maxed out and fully optimized. One key difference from the 30 is the switch to an AC synchronous motor, replacing the DC motors used in all their prior turntables. Generally, AC motors are considered to offer a tighter grip on a turntable's platter speed, but unless it's handled carefully, an AC motor can be a little noisier and not quite as smooth as a DC motor. SME went to great lengths to minimize noise, providing the Model 60's motor with an extremely pure AC waveform, provided by a power supply split into two chassis to isolate the motor from potential noise sources. Apparently, SME was impressed enough with the new AC motor drive system developed for the Model 60 that they have now incorporated AC motors into almost every SME turntable, creating new MK2 versions.

Another component that has seen extensive reworking for the Model 60 is the Series V tonearm, now designated Series VA; the A stands for "Advanced." In my brain, I still tend to think of the Series V arm as a relatively recent model, but it was launched way back in 1986. It has remained in production, with just a few minor changes, for more than 35 years. The Series VA doesn't replace the Series V; the older version remains in production for use with the Model 30, 20, 15, and 12 turntables. The Series V's cast-magnesium-alloy armtube is one of the few mechanical parts brought in from an outside supplier, but for the VA arm, an entirely new type of armtube is machined in-house from a solid block of polymer resin. This new design has a trilobular cross section, which SME says increases stiffness. The advanced polymer resin is said to be far more self-damping than the old magnesium casting.

A minor cosmetic issue plagued the old Series V arm. Over time and repeated use, the plastic armrest clip would polish the satin paint finish on the armtube. After a few years of use, you would begin to see a narrow shiny band in the paint across the top of the tube. This problem has been solved on the VA by replacing the clip with a U-shaped cup, which the arm simply rests in when not in use. This is an example of the kinds of simple optimizations SME has performed for the Model 60.

Over the years, SME has used several suppliers for their tonearms' internal wiring. Now that SME is part of Cadence Audio, it makes sense that the arms now use wiring from another Cadence company, Crystal Cable. The connections between the various power supply boxes also got attention, and these interconnections are made by cables supplied by another Cadence company, Crystal's sister company, Siltech.

Despite its shelf-bending 105lb weight and its utter solidity, the Model 60 is compact compared to many other mega turntables. At around 22" by 16½" deep, it's only about 4" wider and 3" deeper than the already surprisingly compact Model 30, while the weight is up by about 15%. The word that comes to mind when you handle the Model 60 is dense, and while it may not overwhelm anyone visually due to its massive size, most people will revise that opinion the first time they attempt to lift or move it.

Perhaps the most visually distinctive feature of the older Model 30 is its four suspension towers, each of which holds up one corner of the rectangular upper plinth using 12 rubber suspension bands. The Model 60 uses a similar damped rubber band system to isolate and suspend the upper plinth, but with additional horizontal bands to control its lateral movement as well. Also in the Model 60, the rubber suspension bands are all hidden away inside the four corner towers, making the turntable look sleeker and less fussy.

Unpacking and setup
The Model 60 arrived beautifully packed and immaculately presented, as SME products tend to do. Everything comes in a single large wooden crate, which has an additional internal wooden divider for added strength. The parts are nestled in a series of layered high-density foam trays, which provide excellent protection and cushioning.

The first piece to come out of the crate, conveniently, is the main chassis. As it weighs nearly 90lb, SME sensibly says this needs to be a two-person lift, with one person at each end. SME's importer, Bluebird Music, generously offered to send someone to assist with the lifting and to help with the setup, but I decided instead to get a workout and do it myself. My chiropractor says thank you.

That very first lift is the only physically challenging part of the setup; once you have the plinth positioned, the rest of the work is straightforward. SME has always provided excellent tools with their products—most of the tools are also made in-house—and the Model 60 comes complete with every tool required to complete an accurate and comprehensive setup. Those of us who work with a lot of turntables tend to have our own preferred gadgets for performing various setup tasks, and the SME way of doing things doesn't always make it easy to use alternate tools and approaches with their products. More about that later.

The rest of the Model 60 setup will be familiar to anyone who has worked with a Model 30 or 20; with all three 'tables, you follow the same basic steps. Once the main unit is on your stand, you level it by rotating the corner feet. Next, the motor's transit screw is removed, and the motor is leveled using the thin end of the supplied feeler gauge and the motor housing's three adjustable spikes. Next, top up the main bearing oil, which comes mostly filled, then back out the subplatter's transit screws. At this point, the subplatter can spin freely, so install the belt and place the main platter on the inner platter.

Kuzma Stabi M turntable and 4Point 14 inch tonearm
Deeper into Darkness: I'm very familiar with Franc Kuzma's expertise in design and machining (footnote 1). I've reviewed his diminutive, pipe-bomb-like, lower-end Stabi S turntable, with Stogi S unipivot tonearm; his top-of-the-line Stabi XL, with high mass, a minimal footprint, two motors, and Air Line air-bearing tonearm; and his unique 4Point tonearm, which I bought and continue to happily use. I'm a fan.

Unlike Kuzma's earlier, minimal-plinth turntables, the Stabi M has an old-fashioned, maximum-plinth design with a solid-aluminum outer frame measuring 23.6" wide by 11" high by 19.7" deep. The look, in solid black, is oversize and imposing. Included is a large, spring-hinged, thick-acrylic dustcover whose vibration-resistant design made it among the most difficult to engineer of the Stabi M's features, according to Kuzma. (It was too large to use in my system.)

A massive, elastically isolated inner platform sits within the Stabi M's outer frame. This contains the large DC motor and an inverted platter bearing, 16mm in diameter, topped with a ruby ball. Rotating on the ruby bearing is the aluminum subplatter, driven by a stiff plastic belt. The motor is suspended from the inner platform within a massive brass housing attached to an aluminum plate, to provide isolation from both the inner platform and outer frame, with sufficient rigidity to allow high-torque drive. Kuzma claims that this combines the "positive properties of both belt and idler drives, while minimizing the negatives [of] each."

A conical, machined cutout on the underside of the 26.5lb platter securely accepts the subplatter's tapered hub. The platter comprises two 40mm-thick aluminum discs sandwiching an acrylic damping plate.

An external power supply, connected via a pair of multi-conductor cables, drives the DC motor via a precise frequency; very fine adjustments of speed can be made and monitored on the supply's front-panel display. Start/Stop and speed-change buttons (33 1/3 or 45rpm) are provided on the outer frame's front panel.

The Stabi M is designed so that its platter reaches full speed within two seconds, or one full rotation of the platter. All of this mass, metal, and acrylic total 132lb, for $19,225 without tonearm—in my opinion, a more than reasonable sum for what's available at or near this price.

Although the Stabi M can accommodate just one tonearm, the ease with which you can swap out and adjust the 4Point arm's headshells makes this a nonissue. You can also swap armboards by removing just a few large bolts. The Stabi M's is one of the thickest, most massive aluminum armboards I've ever seen. A screw-on record clamp and a battery-powered handset for remotely starting and stopping the platter—the latter function might be useful if you find yourself in a music- (or drug- or alcohol-) induced stupor—are also included.

Kuzma 4Point 14 inch tonearm: I reviewed the 4Point in the September 2011 issue; please read the review for full design details and a description of the arm's sound. To briefly recap: Instead of using a traditional gimbaled or unipivot bearing, the 4Point pivots on four hardened points sitting within cups: the two points for vertical movement are more easily seen; the pair for horizontal movement sit inside a large-diameter vertical shaft.

This design can be thought of as comprising four unipivot bearings that combine the benefits of unipivots with the rigidity and stability of gimbaled bearings. Skeptics would say that having four unipivots is four times less effective than using a single point that's fully pressurized by the arm's entire mass. Fight among yourselves!

The standard 4Point costs ca $6500 and up, depending on wiring choice. My 4Point has an effective length (ie, pivot-to-spindle length plus overhang) of 11" (279mm). While the pivot-to-spindle distance is a long 10.39" (264mm), the arm's offset pivot design means that the mounting distance—the distance from the platter spindle to the center of the arm's VTA tower—is just 8.346" (212mm). This is similar to the mounting distance of a 9" or 10" arm, and it's why my Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn—a turntable designed for arms with an effective length of 9.409" (239mm)—was able to accommodate my 4Point.

Despite the 4Point 14 inch's effective length of 353mm (13.9"), the mounting distance of 11.5" (292mm) is closer to that of a typical 12" arm, which the Stabi M can also accommodate while playing records with the dustcover down. The 4Point 14 inch costs from $8995 to $10,270, depending on wiring choices.

Is longer better? Assuming that any tonearm designer's—not just Franc Kuzma's—mathematical calculations are correct, the advantages of longer armtubes are lower lateral tracking error (LTE), as well as less skating, due to a smaller offset angle for the headshell. Disadvantages include a possible lessening of the arm's stiffness, greater mass, and more cumbersome performance in the groove due to a greater moment of inertia—and the fact that any error in setup will be magnified. Every supposed improvement comes at a cost. Off the record, some tonearm designers will tell you that, all else being equal, they prefer 9" or, at most, 10" arms, and that they make longer arms only to meet market demand.

My experience with both the Continuum Audio Labs Cobra (9.5" effective length) and Swedish Analog Technologies (somewhat less than 9.5" effective length) arms is that the LTE of a properly set-up pivoted arm produces less distortion than the rest of one's audio system, which makes LTE, essentially, a nonissue. You should not hear LTE from a properly set-up 9" arm, and I don't—nor do people who enjoy my rips at audio shows. More often than not, they don't even know they're listening to vinyl.

If you think otherwise, knock yourself out with long arms on large-footprint turntables like the Stabi M's, or those of SME's 12-series. In fact, for $5310, you can upgrade your standard 4Point with a 14" wand. I'm just here to express my opinion based on my own experience, not to tell you what to think or like or own.

After checking and adjusting its speed and letting the Stabi M spin for a few days, I used Dr. Feickert Analogue's PlatterSpeed app to assess speed accuracy. Figs.1 and 2 show very good, if not exceptionally good, speed consistency. I cleaned the belt, measured again, and got the same results.

Sound—Stabi M plus Kuzma 4Point 14 inch: Together, the Stabi M and 4Point 14 inch cost $28,220 and up. The sound of them together was so highly accomplished and tonally well balanced that at first I found it hard to describe, other than to note its striking foundational solidity. The combo produced rock-solid images, impressively stable soundstages, and an iron-willed sense of musical grip. Backgrounds were quiet, and the rejection of impulses such as pops and clicks was very good. Still, when I tapped a finger on the Stabi M's sturdy frame or on the Harmonic Resolution Systems base beneath it, the 'table passed the taps along to the speakers with surprising liveliness.

The Stabi M's freedom from obvious tonal colorations was very good, bass control and extension were exceptionally good, and macrodynamics were very, very good. Want slam? You got it!

However, compared to either of my far more expensive reference turntables and tonearms, as well as to another more expensive 'table-arm combo currently under review, the Stabi M and 4Point 14 sounded definitely drier in the midrange, and exhibited less bloom and ease of musical expression. In other words, the Kuzma combo somewhat suppressed sustains, while also pleasantly emphasizing image "structure" and soundstage focus. Adjusting the arm's horizontal and vertical damping troughs didn't change that observation.

The Stabi M and 4Point 14 inch combo also produced sonic tapestries that weren't quite as fine or delicate as those woven by the more expensive rigs. All of these observations are based on putting a Lyra Atlas cartridge in all three arms, on all three 'tables, and were confirmed by recording the same tracks at 24-bit/96kHz. This drier, less bloomy quality is probably what made more obvious the Kuzma combo's ability to produce those "rock solid images, impressively stable soundstages, and an iron-willed sense of musical grip." Were the Stabi M my turntable, in order to get a better balance in my system I'd go with a bloomier cartridge than the Atlas—say, a Kiseki Purple Heart or a Koetsu.

More important, those other 'tables were equipped with tonearms of 9.5" effective length. In terms of audible distortion and/or tracking artifacts, I couldn't tell the 9.5" arms from the 4Point 14 inch, no matter where on the record surface I dropped the needle. (I made recordings that demonstrate this as well.)

Hence my conclusion: If you must have a really long tonearm, the Stabi M and 4Point 14 inch make a great combination for a very reasonable price for the sound quality it offers, and for its superb design and build quality—especially if you like rock, for which its low-end grip, extension, and slam were superb.

But I didn't hear any sonic benefits from that 14"-long arm, so I don't think it's really necessary—and so neither is the large platform required to accommodate it. Still, if you like how it sounds and what it looks like, and are convinced that longer is better, don't let me stop you. This is a 'table built to last several lifetimes.

The standard-length Kuzma 4Point remains one of my favorite tonearms, regardless of price. In fact, I wish Franc Kuzma had made a shorter 4Point—a 9.5" model. But that's just me.

Whether it's a thicker chassis, more powerful motor, more precise bearing, more effective isolation system, or something else, the emphasis is always on stepping things up a notch or two, rather than reinventing the wheel. This obsession can result in some impressive 'tables—some of the most impressive in the world, with awesome attention to detail. But are they the best sounding?

The other camp is what I call the deep thinkers. They approach the task of playing a record from a theoretical perspective and leverage their knowledge of physics to come up with fresh and innovative designs. The results may look unconventional, or even odd at first glance, but when such lateral thinking clicks, it can really push the boundaries of what's possible.

The real killer combo is when both of these traits are present in the same person, which is how I think of Vertere CEO and designer Touraj Moghaddam. In the early 1980s, when he was studying for his doctorate in mechanical engineering at the prestigious Imperial College London, he became obsessed with making his own hi-fi system sound better. At a time when three-point, spring-suspended turntables like the Linn Sondek LP12 ruled conventional thinking on turntable design, he went back to basic principles to create something better.

The results were impressive, and in 1985 he founded Roksan Engineering and launched the Xerxes (footnote 1). The Sondek LP12 remained the dominant force on the UK high-end turntable market, but the Xerxes soon cracked that stranglehold, gaining favor with retailers, consumers, and even the fickle British hi-fi press of the day. The Xerxes's combination of fresh thinking and high-precision manufacturing—both camps, together—led to a 'table many found demonstrably better, even (or especially) in the performance area where the LP12 excelled: what's known as PRaT, for pace, rhythm, and timing. Today, 38 years after its debut, the Xerxes is still being manufactured. (So is the Sondek LP12.)

Some 20 years later, seeking a fresh start, Moghaddam left Roksan to start Vertere Acoustics. You might expect Moghaddam to dive straight into pushing the record-playing envelope even further, but Vertere actually began life as a cable manufacturer, reflecting what Moghaddam felt was the weakest link in the audio chain of that time. It wasn't until 2013 that Vertere made a big splash by launching its first record-playing product, the original version of the Reference tonearm. Its eye-watering $35,000 price tag attracted a lot of attention (footnote 2).

At Vertere, the Reference Tonearm was soon joined by the RG-1 Reference Groove turntable, which itself was followed by the SG-1 Standard Groove, MG-1 Magic Groove, and eventually the DG-1 Dynamic Groove turntables, each another step toward affordability.

The Vertere DG-1S Dynamic Groove turntable
Vertere's most recent step is the DG-1 Dynamic Groove, which was recently upgraded to DG-1S status (footnote 3). Three preconfigured packages are available with varying combinations of cartridges and accessories, priced from $4899 to $6999. The review model came with the top Sabre package, which includes the Sabre moving magnet cartridge, Redline interconnect cables, Techno Mat platter mat, three Iso Paw footers, plus an electronic stylus pressure gauge. An additional option is the Challenger DC power supply ($675), which can be used in place of the DG-1S's standard wall wart. I didn't have the Challenger DC, so I used the standard wall wart throughout this review. The DG-1S is built in the UK. Its two-year warranty is automatically extended to five years upon product registration.

The mechanical design of the DG-1S follows the lead set by more costly Vertere turntables and Moghaddam's designs for Roksan before that. A multilayered construction approach using compliant rubber devices isolates the main plinth, which supports the motor, from a separate island set into the plinth that supports the platter and tonearm. The 24-pole synchronous motor is compliantly mounted to maintain even tension on both sides of the motor pulley. It is driven by a two-speed control circuit mounted inside the plinth. That plinth is a three-layer sandwich of black or white acrylic playing the bread role; the cheese is a clear center layer that can be illuminated internally by a white LED. Looks pretty.

The main platter bearing comes assembled and pre-oiled, with a dire warning to never pull the spindle out, which would disturb the oil film. The platter itself is a thin, 3lb alloy disc with a cork-and-rubber damping layer on the bottom and a top surface designed to interface directly with a record. A clever touch is how the lines printed on the platter surface function as an alignment protractor during cartridge installation. A clear, round cross-section silicone drive belt sits in a groove around the perimeter of the platter, eliminating the need for a subplatter.

The most eye-catching feature of the DG-1S is the Groove Runner S tonearm with its wide, flat profile and unique bearing structure. The flat shape is reminiscent of the E.A.T. E-Flat turntable or, for those of us with longer memories, the Tesla-built NAD 5120 from the 1980s. A key difference is that, as with the plinth, the arm uses a multilayered sandwich construction for stiffness and damping while also providing a neat way to route the cartridge wiring using a long, flexible PCB instead of more conventional stranded wires.

The unusual shape is not the only striking feature of the Groove Runner S. The arm's bearings are also very different, using twisted bundles of nylon thread under tension instead of more conventional rotating balls. Moghaddam realized that traditional ball bearings are designed for continuous rotation in the same direction, like a rolling wheel, while a tonearm only rotates by about 45 degrees at a time in the horizontal direction and even less vertically. Under real-world conditions, a tonearm has to reverse directions every 1.8 seconds due to imperfect record centering and less-than-perfect flatness. Just watch a cartridge playing a record, and you'll see it constantly bobbing and weaving from side to side and up and down like Ali fighting Frazier as it follows the record's moving groove. Under such conditions, a ball bearing will suffer stiction every time its motion reverses directions, while the Groove Runner S's thread bearings are stiction free.

Setting up the DG-1S Dynamic Groove: The DG-1S arrives mostly assembled, but a few tasks need to be completed to get it ready to play. If you're the kind of person who sees a printed manual and thinks it would make a fine birdcage liner, a series of short videos is available on YouTube to take you through the following steps.

First, remove the big, chunky transit screw that holds the main plinth and sub-plinth together. This frees up the rubber isolators that decouple the arm and platter island from the main chassis and motor. Next, lower the platter onto the main bearing and install the belt around the platter and motor pulley. The DG-1 is supported on three feet; rotate to adjust for perfect level. Now connect the tonearm's output to your system with the pair of RCA jacks and the grounding terminal around back, and connect the power supply—the wall wart or the upgrade if you have it—to the DC power socket.

The tonearm comes mostly set up out of the box, with the Sabre cartridge installed and aligned, but you'll need to attach the counterweight, which hangs under the arm on the rear. The instructions give you a starting point for positioning the weight, which you then adjust using the supplied stylus force gauge to measure. A small sliding weight on the front part of the arm allows you to fine-tune the tracking force once you're close.

With a new, fresh-from-the-box DG-1S record player, this is all you need to do to start playing music. But don't think the tonearm has limited adjustability: The arm allows you to adjust all the key parameters, including VTA/SRA, azimuth, overhang, zenith, and antiskate, which you'll want to do if you roll your own cartridge.

Operating the DG-1S is simple. Just press a button to start the motor then give it another push to toggle between 33 1/3 and 45rpm. To stop the motor, hold the button down for a couple of seconds. In contrast to tonearms that use a clip to secure the arm when not in use, the Groove Runner S has a screw-in locking pin, which you remove and store in a hole next to the armrest when you want to play a record.

While its design is quite different than either, in use this arm feels like a cross between a unipivot and the Well Tempered silicone-bath design, with a fair amount of give and springiness in the bearing, but side-to-side rolling is well-controlled in contrast to many unipivots.

I deal with cartridges destroyed by housekeepers every week, so I was happy to see that the DG-1S comes with a retro smoked brown dust cover to keep meddling fingers away.

The Sabre moving magnet cartridge follows the well-established formula of upgrading a well-established cartridge generator with a customized mount. For the Sabre, Vertere uses a machined-aluminum body, which secures the generator using four carefully torqued screws instead of the more common, less-precise method of gluing it in place. Vertere says that this approach delivers better mechanical coupling and better resonance control. The rest of the cartridge is conventional. The cantilever is aluminum. The stylus is elliptical. Less conventional is the use of an AlNiCo magnet.

Footnote 2: This was before collective sticker shock was numbed by, eg, Marc Gomez's Swedish Analog Technologies (SAT) tonearm.

Footnote 3: Vertere Acoustics, 5 Oliver Business Park, Oliver Rd., London NW10 7JB, UK. Web: Vertereacoustics.com. US distributor: Rutherford Audio, 14 Inverness Dr. East, Unit G-108, Englewood, CO 80112. Tel: (888) 279-6765. Email: info@rutherfordaudio.com. Web: rutherfordaudio.com.

To me, that headline screamed "Audio!" And the book that needs to be written is The Digital Recording Revolution: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Audio's Computer Age.

In the early 1980s, after hearing a CD at the format's US debut at an Audio Engineering Society convention in Los Angeles, I wrote a commentary for Music Connection Magazine (footnote 2). In it, I made the point that "compact discs are not the future. They don't sound better than records, and soon very few people will still have CD Players." Only the "soon" was wrong!

Recently, a troll who's fixated on me actually e-mailed to say, "Your problem is that you listen." Instead, he said, I should better educate myself in audio engineering. That way, he was certain, I'd stop advocating for vinyl, because my advocacy, which is based on listening, is ill-informed and therefore invalid.

At the January 2016 Consumer Electronics Show, during Meridian Audio's before-and-after demonstration of MQA audio-encoding technology, Bob Stuart first played a 24/96k transfer of Keith Jarrett's solo-piano The Köln Concert, and then the same recording processed with MQA, in which, he said, the time-domain sins of the original analog-to-digital converter—sins that I imagine were "unmeasurable" or "unmeasured"—had been corrected. The result was a dramatic improvement in imaging, soundstaging, and piano harmonics. No longer were the piano's attack, sustain, and decay confused with one another. No longer were the hall acoustics commingled with the sound of the piano.

Why, it sounded closer to the original LPs!

Back in the day, whenever I complained about CD's miserable imaging and soundstaging compared to vinyl, the stock response was that "all of that so-called imaging and soundstaging you're hearing on your records are really L–R artifacts." My answer to that was always: "Fine—if distortion makes it sound more real, I'll take the distortion." But as the MQA demo proved, the LP wasn't distorted—the CD was!

Not Measured but Heard: the Reed 3P tonearm
Manufactured to a very high standard of fit'n'finish and presented—with equal attention to detail—in an attractive wooden box, the Reed 3P tonearm, made in Lithuania, is an elegantly machined tour de force that incorporates new and previously used tonearm ideas in a compact package that's relatively easy to set up and use.

Reed offers the 3P in 9.5", 10.5", and 12" versions; I chose to review the 9.5" version, which has an effective length of 240mm and an overhang of 17mm, because now I'm firmly in the camp of less is more when it comes to tonearm length—at least as between 9" and 12" arms. Yes, a shorter arm's tracking error is greater, and there's more skating side force, but—all else being equal—the shorter arm's lower mass should result in better dynamic behavior during record play. With a 1m phono cable of copper wire terminated with WBT RCA plugs, the 9.5" 3P sells for $5000 (footnote 3).

The 3P's armtube is available in a variety of woods, including Brazilwood (Caesalpinia echinata, aka Pernambuco), wenge (Millettia laurentii), ziricote (Cordia dodecandra), and western red cedar (Thuja plicata). While each has different but equally fine-looking cosmetics, Reed has produced measurements demonstrating that all of the choices have similarly impressive but not identical low-resonance characteristics (footnote 4). The woods Reed uses have been cured, and shouldn't drift with age or changes in temperature and humidity, though I have to admit that wood is not my first or even second choice of armtube material. But the proof is in the listening.

Reed's tonearm options more resemble those found in the automotive world than in audio. There are seven metal finishes to choose from, and three phono cables—all made with the same copper wire, cryogenically frozen or not, and terminated with Eichmann Bullet or WBT NextGen plugs.

Attached to one end of the review sample's Brazilwood armtube was a metal headshell, and to the other a metal stub for the counterweight. The two-piece headshell is attached via a combination of insertion and clamping that seemed to produce structural rigidity. Reed specifies the approximate effective mass of each combination of armtube wood and length; the effective mass of my 9.5" Brazilwood arm was 14gm.

The 3P's unique bearing system consists of three pivot points, hence the arm's name. While this is just one point fewer than are used in Kuzma's 4Point arm, the arrangement is altogether different. Here, a winged collar fixed to the armtube carries two of the 3P's finely machined points, one on either side of the armtube. These are the two points on which the arm vertically pivots, and they fit into cups built into a neatly machined open frame, shaped somewhat like an egg that's been sliced lengthwise and stood on end. The topmost part of the frame contains the third point, also downward-facing, by means of which the frame and armtube hang from a portion of the stationary mounting structure: that's the horizontal pivot. An impressive animation of the 3P's mechanical structure is available online (footnote 5).

Horizontal stability is maintained with the mutual attraction of two magnets: one built into the bottom of the egg, the other set into a crosspiece that's part of the arm-mount/VTA adjustment tower.

The antiskating force is set with another magnetic-attraction system: one magnet is fixed at the end of a threaded shaft, and two more are embedded in the movable egg, a set distance from one another. As the arm moves across the record, and the space between the fixed magnet and the first moving magnet increases, the space between the fixed magnet and the second moving magnet decreases, allowing a smooth magnetic handoff.

Setup and Use: Because the 3P's designer, Vidmantas Triukas, made the good choice of having no electrical break from cartridge clips to RCA plugs, care must be exercised in fitting the armtube into its frame, and in hanging the frame on the mounting structure's horizontal bearing platform so that all three points are correctly seated—all while being careful not to stress the wires going from the armtube into the main post.

Probably because of a translation error, the instructions incorrectly labeled the pivot-to-spindle distance as the "mounting distance"—and in an offset design such as the 3P (or the Kuzma 4Point or the TriPlanar), where the tonearm pivot and the tonearm-mounting hole are not concentric, these are not the same thing. Reed has promised to fix this.

I appreciated that the 3P arm can be locked in place with a setscrew. You just have to be careful not to apply too much pressure or you might mar the wood. A frame carrying an underslung counterweight slides easily onto the stub end of the armtube, and locks in place with another setscrew; when the frame is locked in place, the weight can then be screwed in and out to fine-tune the vertical tracking force (VTF).

The VTA and stylus rake angle (SRA) are adjusted with a unique dual system that uses a lockable, threaded post and top-mounted knob to position the armtube parallel to the record surface, and then a side-mounted lever to make finer adjustments while playing a record—after which you lock down the whole thing. If you insist that LPs of different thicknesses require different settings of VTA and SRA for each thickness, the 3P may be for you.

Another knob adjusts azimuth on the fly by moving the horizontal pivot point relative to the two vertical pivot points. If you calibrate azimuth by listening, not measuring, this feature will be useful.

Reed offers no guidance in how to set antiskating. The only test record I ever found that was worth recommending for this was Telarc's Omnidisc, now out of print. Otherwise, you'll have to observe the deflection of the cantilever during play, and adjust the antiskating until the cantilever remains centered, without being pulled one way or the other.

I set up tonearms all the time, and installing the Reed 3P was a total pleasure. Using and listening to it were equally enjoyable. I installed the Lyra Etna and Ortofon A95, and found each cartridge's performance in the 3P free of sonic surprises. The mass/compliance of both pairings put the combination's resonant frequency at around 10Hz, which is ideal.

Footnote 2: See Music Connection, October 11, 1983.

Footnote 3: Reed, Upes 26, Naujuju Muniskiu k., 54317Kauno raj, Lithuania. Tel: (370) 610 41639. Web: www.reed.lt. US distributor: Axiss Audio, 17800 S. Main Street, Suite 109, Gardena, CA 90248. Tel: (310) 329-0187. Web: www.axissaudio.com

Footnote 4: See www.reed.lt/research/58-wood-vs-the-rest-testing-armtube-material.

Footnote 5: See www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AM28KJizzU.

I was not proud. Our band was hot, booked year-round in hotel lounges and standalone clubs from Florida to Virginia Beach.

"Beach music" was a popular southeastern style then, an R&B variation on '40s swing and doo-wop, with close vocal harmonies, popping brass, and choregraphed dance steps. Like peanut-sized rock stars, we reveled in this insular, south-of-the–Mason-Dixon– line entertainment lifestyle with its small-town intrigues, tasty southern food, and bodacious southern belles. Then overnight, everything changed.

At the beginning of the previous decade, Technics had released the SP-10, the first direct drive turntable. That was followed in short order by the SL-1100. Clive Campbell, aka Jamaican-American DJ Kool Herc, pioneered the simultaneous use of two Technics SL-1100s, initially at his sister's birthday party in the Bronx, inspiring "block parties" (rigging streetlamps for power) and hip-hop culture. Kool Herc isolated drumbeats from records by James Brown (with drummers Clyde Stubblefield and John "Jabo" Starks) and the Incredible Bongo Band (powered by master studio drummer Jim Gordon), among others, creating "breaks" for heated dance-floor partying. Soon, Lace Taylor (aka Afrika Bambaataa) and Grandmaster Flash (The Message) took Kool Herc's inventions into the mainstream, and hip-hop went global.

The SL-1100's successor, the SL-1200, released just a year after the SL-1100, quickly became the deejay's turntable of choice and continued to be until it was succeeded in 1979 by the SL-1200MK2, the first turntable to intentionally include deejay-friendly features. The world's most popular turntable was born.

Back to those clubs and hotel lounges. Rooms and audiences that had been ours and ours alone were stolen by a slick dude with a pair of silver Technics SL-1200MK2 turntables, a GLI PMX 7000 mixer, and a chintzy PA. Our kingdom of smoky lounges and come-hither smiles shrunk with every needle drop. Our snazzy silk jumpsuits were replaced by his louche Hawaiian shirts and flared polyester pants. One room after another fell to the cult of the deejay, who demanded less cash than a band of unruly musicians. Dancers grinded to the pounding music the deejay played, his cueing finger a powerful tool, his control total. A paradigm shift was in full force. The road-band scene was demolished. I left the road to study jazz.

Since those days, many Technics models have entered the market, for home, radio, and deejay use, to mark technological advancements and celebrate Technics anniversaries. Descendants of the Technics SL-1200 were consistent in their feature set: a direct drive motor with high torque for fast startup, a 9", S-shaped gimbaled tonearm, stroboscope and target (stylus) lights, a die-cast aluminum platter, isolator feet, and a slider pitch control. The SL-1200 deejay 'table is now in its seventh generation.

How is the deejay 'table different from the turntable I'm reviewing? The deejay version has a lighter platter, a reverse switch (so deejays can play records backwards), a nonhinged dustcover, and different torque and braking adjustments.

Technics never stopped making 'tables for music lovers, descendants not just of the SL-1200 but also of the original SP-10, which today is almost as legendary in audiophile circles as the SL-1200 is among deejays. 1200-series turntables have been on the market since their introduction in 1972, except for a brief pause between 2010 and 2016, when the SL-1200G was introduced. What music-loving teenager in the 1970s and '80s didn't own at least one direct drive Technics deck, maybe an SL-2000 "Black Beauty" or the semiautomatic SL-1700? (footnote 1)

Among the audiophile variants Technics has released since that 2016 reintroduction are the $4000 Grand Class SL-1200G, reviewed by Alex Halberstadt in November 2022, and the SL-1200GR, reviewed by Michael Trei in Sound & Vision in 2018. The Grand Class SL-1200GR2 ($2199), the GR's successor, is Technics's newest record player. It adds several features that should up its performance considerably.

The SL-1200GR2
This latest iteration of the Technics SL-1200 includes two main advances: "a revolutionary new drive control method for smooth, accurate rotational stability, and a new power supply for an exceptionally low noise floor," according to the press release.

It isn't obvious that technology from an amplifier could aid in a turntable's rotation stability, but that's what happened here. The GR2 uses technology that originated in Technics's SU-R1000 integrated amplifier, one of the finest amplifiers I've had the pleasure to review. Specifically, the "JENO Engine" in the SU-R1000 utilizes a 1-bit delta-sigma modulator in the signal procession leading from digital input to musical output. Technics says that this technology generates a perfect sinewave, greatly reducing vibrations in the coreless direct drive AC motor. "It is based on a signal-processing technique that uses noise shapers to reduce distortion and was developed by an amplifier signal processing engineer," wrote Tetsuya Itani, formerly Technics CTO and now a Technics technical expert. "This has a significant impact, especially on the frequency range where the motor vibrations overlap with the natural resonance of the tonearm/pickup cartridge combination. Thus, the tracking precision is drastically improved." That's from the Technics website.

"GR2 technology improves on our coreless story by removing even more micro vibrations and making way for improvements in the power supply," wrote Technics US Business Development Manager Bill Voss, by email. "The progression from the legacy models to the new coreless models, which utilize higher tech and materials like magnesium in the G-model tonearm, zinc and special gel in the footers, and higher-grade plinth designs and improvements in tonearm sensitivity and ease of cable connectivity, laid the groundwork for audiophiles and allowed us to develop the more affordable, deejay-specific 1200MK7 and mainstream 100C/1500C models based on that technology." As Voss mentioned, the GR2, which is built in Malaysia, features a new power supply, which the company calls "Multi-stage Silent"; it combines a "low-noise, high-speed power supply working at over 100kHz and a noise-canceling circuit inherited from our reference class SL-1000R turntable," according to the Technics website. "This circuit measures the level of minute noise in the regulator output and cancels the noise by adding its inverse component current to the output," Itani wrote. The website again: "By this method, a very low noise floor is achieved, enabling exceptional signal-to-noise ratio, improving the overall signal performance."

The improvements don't stop there. Apparently, Technics received complaints regarding the VTA dial set at the base of the bearing housing. It's very easy to use, but some found the range of adjustment too narrow for all possible cartridge and arm combinations. With the GR2, Technics supplies a 3mm die-cast aluminum cartridge spacer, which allows improved cartridge compatibility compared to the SL-1200GR and earlier Technics models.

Some elements of the earlier GR machine were retained from previous generations, including its two-layer plinth made from die-cast aluminum and BMC (bulk molding compound) to resist vibrations; the classic, S-shaped aluminum tonearm; the two-layer, 5lb aluminum platter damped by rubber applied to its rear surface; and four insulator feet consisting of a "metal housing with cylindrical tubes using microcell polymers, silicone rubber, and felt," Voss wrote.

The SL-1200GR2 comes in two color schemes, with model numbers redundantly indicating the color difference: the silver SL-1200GR2-S and the black SL-1210GR2-K. On both GR2s, more parts are said to match the color scheme than on the original GR, and the finish is said to have a "new body surface touch quality."

Setup
The GR2 weighs slightly more than 25lb—solid but easy to move—and it fit easily onto my IKEA bamboo platform atop my Salamander rack. The turntable is easy to use, with essentially the same user-friendly design Technics has used for the last 60 years.

That attitude of attentiveness and dedication is felt and seen in the GR2, from its smooth surface and ubiquitous large power button to the small details of the pitch slider, strobe, and stylus lights. From an audiophile perspective, those mechanical tools—really retro tchotchkes—mean little. But they reflect the Japanese design aesthetic of respect for the past while improving the technology of the present for the collective betterment of the future that certainly rings true in the GR2.

Following a current, welcome trend in the industry, Technics uses new packaging for the 1200GR2/1210GR2 to ensure their "products are fully protected throughout their journey to our consumers." The new packaging is Styrofoam-free; those hulking white inserts are bad for the environment and crumble and split if handled roughly. For packing up the GR2, Technics replaced Styrofoam with "smart shaped cardboard" ensconced in an outer cardboard box of adequate sturdiness. The internal cardboard sections fit the individual turntable parts like a glove and fill the box completely for extra rigidity.

The GR2 arrived with its tonearm premounted. I used three cartridges for this review: the EMT TSD 15N, the Dynavector DV-10X5 MKII, and the Kuzma CAR-30, using the headshell supplied by Technics and others from my personal collection. Easy cartridge swapping is one of the joys of Technics's SME-type bayonet headshell. Fit and finish of the GR2 could hardly be better at the price.

A complete redesign of the inverted platter bearing used in the Firebird and in Feickert's two other turntables, the Woodpecker and Blackbird, is claimed to reduce the contact area between spindle and bearing well by 80%, in order to reduce friction and, in turn, rumble, wow, and flutter. (Good thing: The original Blackbird, which I reviewed in my September 2011 column, wasn't the quietest bird on the block.) Riding on the inverted bearing is a 13.23-lb platter of polyoxymethylene (POM), which is said to have resonance characteristics similar to those of vinyl itself; embedded within that platter, close to its outer edge, are eight solid brass cylinders. Feickert says that his three-motor arrangement, in which the platter is evenly driven by a thick, precision-ground belt made of nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR), results in a more stable bearing and platter by canceling out "virtually all acting forces," to effectively eliminate bearing and platter wobble.

The Firebird weighs 68.5lb, and its plinth is large: 22" wide by 6.25" high by 18.25" deep. Its thin upper and lower aluminum-alloy plates sandwich a block of treated MDF, and it sits on (newly designed) adjustable feet. The plinth is available in natural or black-anodized alloy, with side panels of zebrawood or piano-black lacquer.

Feickert's arm-mounting system makes installing, adjusting, and swapping out tonearms more convenient than on many turntables. In each rear corner of the plinth is a large, oval, diagonally oriented cutout; the one on the right can accommodate arms with effective lengths of from 9" to 14", the one on the left arms of 9" to 12". Each cutout can be fitted with a circular armboard that bolts to a pair of sliding, captured nuts, one nut on each side of each cutout. A notch in the rim of the armboard aligns with a scale calibrated in millimeters and silkscreened on the plinth, for measuring the distance from the tonearm's pivot to the center of the platter's spindle—obviating, in most cases, any need for a pivot-to-spindle protractor. This makes swapping tonearms easy, assuming you've already mounted your other arms on Firebird armboards and that their pivots coincide with the centers of those armboards. Otherwise, as with tonearms that have off-center pivots—eg, the Kuzma 4Point, the Tri-Planar, and the Reed 3P—you'll need to use a protractor capable of measuring pivot-to-spindle distance. Dr. Feickert Analogue, among others, makes such a protractor.

A single armboard is included in the Firebird's price; to make use of the turntable's second arm cutout, the user must add to it a Delrin "slider" ($100) and purchase an additional armboard ($125 each). The Firebird's platter bearing is warranted for five years, everything else for two years.

Relatively Easy Setup: I placed the Firebird's 68.5lb plinth atop a Harmonic Resolution Systems isolation base, made sure that both base and plinth were level, then attached to the plinth's underside the L-shaped mini-plug for the power supply. After applying to the bearing spindle a decent amount of the supplied lubricant, I carefully lowered the platter into place and waited for it to fully seat itself. That wait over, on went the belt. The only sticking point was getting the armboard bolts into those sliding metal nuts. It wasn't easy, but only those who like to swap arms in and out will have to bother with it.

The Firebird can spin at 33 1/3, 45, and 78rpm; plus and minus buttons permit easy speed adjustment, if needed. The speed controller comes precalibrated, but I nonetheless checked it with Dr. Feickert Analogue's PlatterSpeed software and 7" test record. All three speeds were spot on, and remained so throughout my listening. See figs.1 and 2 to check out the measured results at 33 1/3rpm: They're very good, and unusually symmetrical (perhaps because of the equilateral three-motor drive system?), though the low-pass-filtered trace (fig.2, wavy green line) seems to indicate the constant correcting action of the controller. Still, the filtered results look good, if not the best I've measured.

Nine Inches—More than Long Enough for Me! Despite their popularity in some circles, I've never been a big fan of 12"—or longer—tonearms. (What were you thinking?) I've long believed that whatever benefits are gained with longer arms' lower theoretical tracking error and need for less anti-skating force are more than offset by their lower rigidity, their amplification of any errors made in setting overhang or zenith angle, and, especially, problems resulting from the arm's greater moment of inertia—ie, a tonearm's ability to handle a record groove under dynamic conditions.

This has also been the conclusion of the designers of Continuum Audio Labs' 9"Cobra tonearm ($12,000) and, more recently, of Marc Gomez, who designed the Swedish Analog Technologies arm ($29,000). In fact, the SAT arm is actually somewhat shorter than Rega Research's own tonearm—long a de facto standard—all models of which have an effective length of 239mm (9.321"). Gomez, who has a master's degree in mechanical engineering and materials sciences, says that whatever tracking-error distortion a shorter arm introduces is more than offset by its greatly superior performance under dynamic conditions. Listening to his SAT arm sufficiently convinced me of that that I plunked down, without regret, five figures' worth of retirement income. Of course, more than its length is involved in the sound of the SAT arm. (That said, I also own and love the 11" Kuzma 4Point.)

So, when Axxis Audio's Art Manzano offered a Reed 3P for review, I chose the 9" version and attempted to mount it in the Firebird's right-hand corner, with my Kuzma 4Point in the left. But that didn't work—the Reed's pivot assembly was where the Kuzma's long headshell wanted to be.

Nor was it possible to mount and conveniently use the Reed arm on the left with the Mørch DP8 arm (9.25" effective length) on the right. These shorter arms have a shorter pivot-to-spindle distance, which puts both of them closer to the platter; when correctly set up, these arms, too, interfered with each other.

So I ended up doing much of my listening with just the very familiar Kuzma 4Point mounted on the Firebird's right armboard. Later, I managed to mount and use the Mørch and Reed arms—but in order to use the Reed on the left mount without it banging into the Mørch, I had to move the Mørch from its rest, then carefully lift the stylus of the cartridge mounted in the Reed over the widely spaced side weights of the Mørch. I was able to use both arms, but not easily.

From all of this, I concluded that while the Firebird is perfectly suited to be used as designed—ie, with one or two 12" tonearms—before buying you should carefully check for its compatibility with whichever two arms you're considering or already own, and know that you'll still be comfortable if your favored arm might have to be mounted on the Firebird's left armboard.

My experience with the Firebird challenged two long-held opinions: First: The best platter motor is no motor at all. But because a platter must be rotated by something, you have to compromise. But why triple the noise by adding two more motors and their pulleys, knowing that it's virtually impossible to machine either to sufficiently low tolerance to prevent chatter? Second: The best plinth is no plinth at all. But, again, you need one, so you'd better make it as small as possible, to avoid a large, resonating surface.

The Firebird has made it clear that if enough design attention is paid to the motors, pulley tolerances, mounting arrangement, controller, and interface between motors and platter, the problems of noise and jitter can be, if not completely solved, then reduced to near-irrelevance, leaving intact all of the benefits Dr. Feickert Analogue claims for the design. In fact, when I placed a stethoscope on the Firebird's plinth close to each of its motors, I heard near silence—and far less noise than I've heard from many single-motor designs I've 'scoped. Same with the Firebird's heavy, well-damped plinth: When I tapped it, I heard near-silence, whether from the stethoscope or my speakers.

In short, if a manufacturer's aim is to make a turntable with a big plinth and the alleged benefits of three motors, it should be done right. In the Firebird, Christian Feickert has. And if your aim is to own a turntable that can easily and competently handle two 12" tonearms, the Firebird is well worth considering. But if you're considering buying or already own a 9" arm or two, spending $12,500 on a Firebird buys you an awful lot of costly, unnecessary real estate.

Meitner has been designing innovative hi-fi gear for the pro and consumer audio markets for more than 50 years, but for most of the last 30, he has been best known for his work with high-resolution digital audio and DSD recording (footnote 1). Despite this focus on digital—and despite that comment about the two leading phono cartridge technologies—deep in his heart, Ed still loves analog and has fond memories of the Kenwood optical cartridges from the 1970s, which I discussed in last month's Spin Doctor column. So when Ed read that a company in Japan called DS Audio was bringing back an improved version of the optical cartridge using modern materials, he contacted designer Tetsuaki Aoyagi to learn more.

As luck would have it—and as discussed in the April-issue Spin Doctor—DS Audio seeks partners willing to help push the optical-cartridge approach. The company is happy to share details about the technology with other manufacturers. Ed says that once he got his hands on a DS Audio W2 cartridge and learned what kind of circuit was needed to work with it, he whipped up a working model overnight and was astonished by the results. He thought it would be a game changer for vinyl playback. The experience rekindled his enthusiasm for vinyl records. He further developed and refined the circuit he had hastily assembled, creating what became the EMM Labs DS-EQ1 and Meitner Audio DS-EQ2 optical equalizers.

Meitner and EMM Labs (footnote 2) are the two sides of the same company, with Meitner focused mostly on lower cost price-competitive products while EMM Labs takes more of a cost-no-object approach. Ed said that the EMM Labs DS-EQ1 and Meitner DS-EQ2 use the same basic circuitry and are built in the same Calgary factory by the same people, but the EMM version has a more sophisticated power supply, balanced-output capability, and much more substantial aluminum casework. The output signal from an optical cartridge is naturally single-ended, so none of the optical equalizers have balanced inputs.

In Spin Doctor 11, I wrote about how the optical pickup system allows for a tremendous reduction in the moving mass of the stylus and cantilever, increasing the responsiveness of the cartridge's tracking. Ed explained some other advantages that I missed that first time around.

The way the optical cartridge generates a signal is fundamentally different from how a magnetic cartridge works. Whereas the output of a typical phono cartridge is determined by the velocity of the stylus as it is deflected, an optical cartridge measures the amplitude of the displacement. A defect on a record such as a scratch causes a sudden but usually low-amplitude deflection; it happens fast, but the displacement is small. An optical cartridge doesn't see it as a significant part of the signal. Consequently, an optical cartridge has less surface noise. Another reason an optical cartridge is quieter is that the output signal is larger; the signal/noise ratio is bigger.

What's more, Ed told me that the cartridge's output signal naturally incorporates part of the RIAA EQ curve, greatly simplifying the filtering requirements within the equalizer box.

In contrast to the DS Audio W3 equalizer I wrote about in the April Spin Doctor, the EMM Labs DS-EQ1 doesn't offer any bass-tailoring options, unless you count the selectable 15Hz rumble filter. When I tested the W3 cartridge with DS Audio's own equalizer, I didn't encounter any low-frequency resonance problems using my Brinkmann La Grange turntable and 12.1" tonearm, so I left the filter off while testing the DS-EQ1.

As with all optical-cartridge setups, there isn't really anything to adjust—no gain or loading options—just hook up your tonearm cables, a ground wire, and a pair of output cables, and you're ready to go.

At $12,500, the DS-EQ1 costs about 25% more than DS Audio's own W3. DS Audio lets you buy cartridges without their equalizer, so you can mix and match. A few different manufacturers now make optical cartridge equalizers, and any of them will work with any DS Audio cartridge.

Sitting side by side, the DS W3 has a somewhat deeper chassis, more heft, and a beautiful, curvaceous front panel. The EMM box is just as well made, more slab sided yet still very elegant.

To make things a bit easier during my comparisons, I turned both units around so that their rear panels were facing forward, which made it easier to switch out the cables. Before I got down to comparisons, I spent a few days simply playing records through the DS-EQ1 to get a handle on its overall character.

I started with the title track from The Lounge Lizards album The Voice of Chunk (veraBra Records vBr 25). The clarity and resolution of the EMM DS-EQ1 was immediately on show; with the EMM Labs equalizer in the system, I heard an uncanny sense of layering and depth. When electric guitarist Marc Ribot's blistering, angular solo started up, a new space opened up, floating in the soundstage. I clearly heard the size and characteristic sound of whatever space they recorded Marc's guitar cabinet in. John Lurie's alto sax was bright and clear but never hard or aggressive. The percussion bristled with detail and color.

Switching over to the DS Audio W3 equalizer, the sonic impression was still dominated by the speed, resolution, and low noise, but the tonal balance shifted slightly richer and darker, with a tad more punch behind Douglas Browne's drums, giving them a little more flesh on the bones as my friend Herb Reichert would say.

Changing gears, I played Vivaldi Lute Concertos and Trios (Hungaroton SLPX 11978) with lutist Dániel Benko. This is an exceptionally fine recording of a delightful performance, highlighting the tone character and sonic color of the lute and the string-orchestra accompaniment. As with the Lounge Lizards record, it was the EMM's ability to deliver sonic images with palpable depth and height that at first was the most striking, but when I focused on the sound of the lute, tonal details like the pluck of the natural gut strings and the resonance of the soundboard were real ear candy. Going back to the DS Audio equalizer, the sound took on a slightly richer and fuller-bodied quality, still with gobs of detail but with less of a spotlight on that part of the sonic picture.

I could make a convincing case for either the DS Audio W3 or the EMM Labs DS-EQ1 equalizer. Both sound stunning, allowing the qualities of the optical cartridge to shine through. The differences between EMM and DS Audio are more in their different flavors than in overall performance.

Here in New York, we have an amazing gelato shop called Il Laboratorio del Gelato, and if I'm headed there for a treat, I may think, should I get the Chocolate Amaretto Crunch or the Thai Chili Chocolate? Whichever choice I make, I know it's going to be heavenly.

Footnote 2: EMM Labs, 119-5065 13th St. S.E. Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2G 5M8. Tel: (403) 225-4161. Email: sales@emmlabs.com. Web: emmlabs.com.