Where it all started

It always helps to know where it all started. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877. His invention was able to record sounds onto tinfoil wrapped around a rotating cylinder. It used a steel needle attached to a resonator mounted at the end of a horn, all of which moved across the cylinder to both record and play back sound. This was a mechanical system that evolved over time to use a wax-coated cardboard cylinder and a steel stylus that moved from side to side in a zigzag groove around the record.

Eventually the cylinder was replaced with a flat disc similar to what we use today. This transition was the brainchild of Emile Berliner in the 1890s when the term gramophone for disc record players was universally adopted. The first commercially available 78-rpm shellac records were still played back mechanically with either a cactus or steel needle.

It wasn’t until technology advancements in the 1940s that the console radio/phono moved to tube amplified systems.

Things stayed relatively the same for the next decade and a half until 1955, when Philco developed the first transistor record player. It was at this time that the phono cartridge appeared as an electrical transducer.

Cartridges

The phono cartridge has perhaps the most important job in analog reproduction: converting the undulations within the record groove to electrical output. There currently are four common types of phono cartridge designs: moving coil, moving magnet, moving iron (sometimes incorrectly referred to as a moving magnet), and ceramic (sometimes referred to as piezoelectricor crystal). I need to comment that there are a few other designs, including strain gauge, optical and electrostatic, but they are not common and I am ignoring them for this article.

Before I go any further, I think it makes sense to explain the basic parts of a phono cartridge and their functions, which are the same for all four design types. The tip that touches the record is referred to as the stylus, which is generally made from either diamond or another type of very hard material. The exact shape of the stylus can be conical, elliptical or multi-radial, and it is either bonded to a shank or made as one solid piece.

The stylus is mounted to the end of a cantilever. The cantilever (the moving armature) can be made of anything from plastic (not a good choice) to aluminum, tapered aluminum, boron, carbon fiber, and solid synthetic gemstone. A notable example of the last design is the Dynavector DV-17D3 moving coil cartridge, which uses a solid diamond cantilever with a line contact diamond stylus. In all cases, the cantilever is supported by a damper at its pivot point. Normally there is a magnet, a coil of wire, or a piece of iron mounted to the cantilever. The illustration to the right shows a moving magnet design. The magnet, moved by the cantilever, causes an electrical flow from the coils to the terminal posts at the rear of the cartridge body. Moving magnet designs are the most commonly available cartridge type used in high fidelity systems.

Moving iron designs from companies such as ADC, Bang & Olufsen, Grado, Stanton/Pickering, and Ortofon utilize a small piece of iron sitting between the magnet and the coil, which interrupts the field between the magnet and the coil causing electrical flow to the output terminals.

With a Moving coil design, the coils are mounted to the cantilever and move in the gap between the magnets. Moving coil designs traditionally have lower electrical output and require additional amplification to raise the output voltage to equal that of a moving magnet/iron design. Advancements in rare earth magnets and improvements in manufacturing techniques allowed the development of high-output moving coil designs with output similar to MM designs, but low-output moving coil designs are still very popular

Ceramic cartridges have the stylus trace the grooves of the record and the cantilever bends the crystal causing a small amount of output voltage. I should mention that the output of a ceramic cartridge is significantly higher than that of a MM/MI design.

Cartridge design advantages and disadvantages

As with most things, there are proponents of each cartridge type. Generally speaking, however, the best performance comes from low-output moving coil designs because of the reduced moving mass of the stylus and cantilever assembly. The disadvantage of a moving coil is that the stylus is normally not user replaceable. There have been exceptions in the past (from Denon, Audio Technica, and Panasonic), but as of this writing there are no MC cartridges being built with a user-replaceable stylus.

MM, MI and ceramic designs have the advantage of user-replaceable styli. There are exceptions, such as the Grado Reference and Statement designs where the precision is so exacting the manufacturer opted to make the stylus non-replaceable.

I can say with confidence that, universally, ceramic cartridges are considered the poorest quality. The advantage of a ceramic cartridge, however, is that it doesn’t require a phono preamp for gain due to its high output voltage. And they are cheap to manufacture.

When I first saw the Thales TTT-Slim Turntable and Easy Tonearm, my first thought was, “my word, a new version of the Garrard Zero 100.” The truth is only the tonearm reminds me of the Zero 100. If you’re not familiar with the Zero 100, it was built in the early 70s. It was advertised to have an ingenious tonearm with virtually no tracking error and a magnetic tonearm anti-skating system. While the design of the tonearm was amazing, the execution wasn’t. The table had way too much plastic and the tonearm just didn’t work all that well.

The Swiss-made Thales Slim Turntable, and Easy Tonearm combination couldn’t be more different from the Zero 100 in build and sound quality. The build of both the table and arm are what you would expect if built by the best Swiss watchmakers. Both are built in Thales’ workshop in Switzerland. The look of the turntable is exactly what the name implies. There are other small, simple looking but advanced turntables, but I think this one may be the smallest. Still, it is very advanced in design and very elegant in appearance.

Although I find the turntable most impressive, I think it is the tonearm that excites most people. The tonearm design sets out to combine the best of linear tracking tonearms with the strengths of the best pivot tonearms. It uses an arrangement of six bearing points that creates three null points for the horizontal tracking error, plus a zero point for the variable offset angle as well. This means the cartridge is guided along the ideal tracing line just like that of a parallel tracking tonearm. It is beautifully simple and so sophisticated at the same time.

Thales used their experience of building micro-bearings for high-end tonearms, to develop what they call TTF Bearings or Thales-Tension-Free bearing technology. This technology strives to combine the advantages of traditional jewel bearings with the benefit of the ball bearing. Thales says that TTF technology gives incredibly low friction values, absolute freedom of backlash as they use an integrated shock absorbing system.

The main-arm is made of aluminum while the guiding arm that provides the mechanism for the variable offset angle is made of carbon. The tonearm is connected by a right angle 5-pin-DIN plug. It comes with two different size counter weights to help you get the best performance from the widest range of cartridges (5 to 20 grams).

While the tonearm design may get the most attention, we shouldn’t overlook The Slim Turntable itself. It is designed to match the Thales Easy tonearm perfectly. Thales believes that a turntable with its tonearm works best when designed as if it is one single unit. They have designed a special fitting on the Slim Turntable for the Thales Easy Tonearm. The Slim has 75 parts that they have carefully designed to perform its job of playing LPs. According to Thales, this concept of total unity in design produces an LP playing system that is incredibly accurate, with rich harmonics and good tonality. All of this comes in a super-compact and sublime design never seen before.

Thales says the job of a turntable is easy to describe; it’s to turn a LP at the speed of 33 1⁄3 or 45 rpm. They say the real key to designing a turntable is what it should not do, and I agree. It should not have a sound of its own, it should not vibrate, and it should not be influenced by the mechanical tracking.

The turntable uses a short-belt-drive system that transfers the moment of inertia of the motor and flywheel effectively to the main platter. The rotary-speed of the motor and flywheel is 12 times higher than that of the platter. Thales says this allows The Slim Turntable drive system to combine the advantages of the traditional idle wheel drive (strength and constancy) with those of belt drives (silence and decoupling). The motor itself is a brushless DC design that provides a maximum output of 15 Watts, and which is mounted and carefully calculated to be decoupled from the rest of the turntable.

The Slim Turntable is a battery-operated turntable. The only time it needs to be plugged into AC is to charge the battery. It uses a very modern battery-drive system with peak capacity of 100 W that offers more than twenty hours of listening without connection to the charger. The battery fully charges in just a few hours.

Prospective

In 2010, I purchased and then reviewed what I honestly thought would be the last turntable I would ever own, the Shindo 301 turntable, tonearm, and cartridge. Then, two years later I reviewed the AMG Viella V12 turntable and tonearm. The AMG Viella V12, when set on the HRS M3X-1921-AMG V12, gave me everything I was getting from the Shindo with the versatility to use more cartridges. It also had a slightly more transparent sound. So, after just two years of buying the last turntable, I replaced it, proving I am an audiophile. Here it is four years later, and I still own the AMG Viella V12.

During that time I have had the pleasure to review the wonderful and beautiful Artisan Fidelity Garrard 301 Statement turntable and the surprising little Tri-Art Audio Pebbles turntable. Then in the last six months, I’ve had in house for review the Thales TTT-Slim turntable and Easy Tonearm as well as the TriangleART Symphony. Each was a very good turntable system, and while only the Artisan Fidelity tempted me, in the end, I preferred my AMG Viella V12. Now, just after spending the last few months with those two turntables, I have the TriangleART Symphony SE Turntable with the Osiris Tonearm. So the question is, will this similarly priced turntable tempt me to change again? Read on to find out.

When I was talking to Tom Vu of TriangleART about returning the Symphony, he asked me if I would like to be the first to review the new Symphony SE. I hesitated when I found out it weighed in at 200 pounds. So  I told him I would love to if he came and picked up the Symphony while delivering and setting up the Symphony SE. Now, I already knew Tom was one of the real gentlemen of the audio world, but when he said he would love to, I was blown away.

He left L.A at 3:00am on a Friday morning and drove to Concord in the San Francisco Bay Area. By the way, he came on Friday because my Saturday was already full. When this kind gentleman arrived, he and my son brought in the turntable, and he spent the next hour setting it up. When I asked him to use my Soundsmith Strain Gauge cartridge instead of his top-of-the-line Apollo MC, which he had brought with him, he didn’t bat an eye. I did promise that when I had finished this review with the Strain Gauge (with which I am quite familiar), I would be honored to review the Apollo MC. This was a no brainer as I had already enjoyed his less expensive Zeus MC.

One last thing before I get into the review itself: I wish manufacturers wouldn’t make minor name changes to products that are anything but a minor change from the product with which it shares part of its name. I first felt this way when reviewing the Pass Labs XA30.8. It was a totally different product from the XA30.5 and a huge step forward. From the first tunes I spun on the Symphony SE, I knew this was true of this turntable as well, compared to the very good Symphony I had just reviewed.

Description

On its website, TriangleArt lists six turntables that they manufacture in Anaheim, California. The Symphony SE sits in the middle of the line, along with the Signature turntable. The Signature is an open structure table without a plinth and with a separate pod for the tonearm and another pod for the motor. The Signature weighs in around 200 pounds, just like the Symphony SE.

On the other hand, the Symphony SE looks much more traditional. It has a 3” plinth made of a hefty solid composite metal. The rosewood veneer sandwich is beautiful, I would say furniture grade, but very little furniture these days looks nearly as well made. The plinth is hollowed out in three places; one for the tonearm, one for the motor to fit into and one for the main bearing. Mounted on the extra-large bearing and spinning above this beautiful plinth is a solid metal platter that weighs in at 35 pounds. The platter is turned by a belt that is driven by a high-torque AC motor.

The high-torque AC motor is powered by TriAngleArt’s newly designed motor controller, “Crystal Digital Controller.” On their website Tom Vu tells us “it is enclosed in a beautifully CNC, and Laser Cut Aluminum Enclosure. Inside the unit are three robust transformers that supply power to a microprocessor-based digital controller using an ultra-precise quartz crystal oscillator to produce an exact speed for the motor. As the unit is microprocessor based, it can be later firmware upgraded for future modification or improvements. The controller can also be configured to work with either 120v or 230v by few simple internal switches.”

I like more traditional looking turntables and for my taste, the Symphony SE when paired with the Osiris tonearm may just be the most beautiful turntable I have seen. The only thing I would change would be if the brass work on the tonearm and platter were in a brushed platinum finish. This is just personal though, and just by the way it sits I feel it is a thing of beauty!

Speaking of the Osiris Tonearm, it is really something special. It is named for the Egyptian goddess who brought forth life from the ashes. I have to admit that when paired with the Symphony SE it did an exceptional job of bringing LPs to life. I was surprised when I first used my AMG V12 tonearm because I had never seen a tonearm with a needle roller bearing mounted on springs. Well, the Osiris was equally unusual, it has two small ball bearing magnets that suspended the tone arm. There was one magnet facing up and one facing down; the top magnet attach to the arm’s base and are stabilized by the downward facing magnet. This results in what could be seen as an inverted unipivot tonearm.

A word of explanation if not a warning is needed here. Until you get used to it, you might move the arm so that it becomes disengaged from the top magnet. The good news is that the bottom magnet will “grab” the arm and keep it from flying off the table. I quickly got used to how to handle the tonearm and preferred picking it up to using the arm lift. Still, the first few times I pulled or pushed the top magnet loose from the top magnet it was a little unnerving. Don’t let this deter you from using this tonearm, it is no more difficult to handle than other unipivot tonearms.

The Osiris tonearm is construed of gold-plated, polished brass with a 12” tonearm wand made from Macassar ebony. Ebony is an extremely dense wood that seems to be very good for making tonearm wands and cartridge bodies. Tom Vu said that he tried many different kinds of wood and metal, but the combination of the Macassar ebony and brass sounded best. I can tell you this tonearm looks and sounds beautiful.

Setting VTA and VTF were pretty straight forward and well explained in the manual. I must admit I missed the bubble level found on my AMG tonearm, but the bubble was just for getting things close to start with and then you still have to do the fine tuning by ear. The counterbalance was very easy to adjust so that I could track my Soundsmith SG-220 Strain-Ggauge at 2.3 grams. VTA was as simple as unlocking a screw and turning a knob. Azimuth adjustment was also as simple as unlocking a couple of very small hex nuts and slightly rotating the arm tube. The magnetic inverted unipivot bearing did cause a slight difficulty in how the arm lift works. When I raised the tonearm, it drifted back toward the pivot. It was not going to go up and come down in the same place. This never bothered me, but I thought I should note it.

Initial Impressions

This tonearm and turntable combination made a great first impression both visually and more importantly, audibly. For the first couple of days, the overall sound was a WOW! Now, I don’t mean it didn’t stay a wow, but with any component with time the wow wears off. The real question is how you feel about listening to music after the new wears off. More about that later.

My only negative first impression was the fact that the platter rang like a bell when I set the clamp on it without a record on the platter.  However, my overwhelming initial impression was that this TriangleArt combo sounded very alive, with a wonderful and beautiful tonal quality. In some ways, the sound reminded me very much of a really good 300B amp. This was especially true with female vocals; they simply sounded stunning. One other positive first impression was that my system seemed incredibly quiet while using this turntable, which included a reduction in surface noise.  So, it’s obvious that this turntable/tonearm combo made a great first impression.

Long Term Listening Impression

Let me start by sharing some impression from several listening sessions. I had been listening to the SE for several days when I sat down to take some serious notes. My son was with me, and he wanted to hear Rickie Lee Jone’s album Pop Pop. I have two pressing of this LP; one is the reissue from ORG, it is excellent and dead quiet. Still, I prefer the more alive sound of my early Geffin copy even though it has been played many times and has a few clicks, pops, and surface noise. It definitely sounded quieter played on the SE than the original Symphony. From cut to cut her voice was shockingly alive, and full of body and soul. The instruments had beautiful tone, and my impression was that even though I had heard this LP a few hundred times, I had never heard it sound better.

Next, we put on Billie Holiday’s album Songs For Distingued Lovers. I was again impressed with how quiet the background was and how well placed in space the instruments were. On “Stars Fell On Alabama,” her voice was luscious but with her special edge apparent. How special this recording came through loud and clear. The sax was full and airy, and the piano was placed behind and to the outside of the left speaker in a very natural way.

One afternoon while I had this setup, Garth Leerer of Musical Surroundings came by to drop off the DS Audio Optical Phono Cartridge to review. While he was here, we set down to spin some tunes, using the system as described above. We started with Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s album, Americana. He had never heard this LP and just like when John DeVore visited he said he had to get it. What I really wanted to play for him though was Rob Wasserman’s album Duets. Garth had introduced me to this LP, and I knew he used the cut “Angel Eyes” sung by Cheryl Bentyne to set up systems and evaluate them. He was very kind in his praise for the sound of the system on this song. He ended up staying to spin tunes for over an hour.

My two favorite cuts on this LP are “Ballad Of The Runaway Horse” sung by Jennifer Warnes and “Over The Rainbow” performed with Stephane Grappelli on violin. Jennifer Warnes’ voice sounded haunting, and Rob’s bass sounded spot on. The “Over The Rainbow” duet has some special spatial cues allowing one to hear the bass low and to the left of center and Grappelli’s violin slightly left of center and higher in the soundstage. Again these spatial cues were played as well as I had ever heard them. On every cut on this LP Garth and I both were impressed with how the system allowed us to hear the layering of detail inside the soundstage.

The next day our publisher Constantine came over to hear my system with the TriangleArts SE turntable and Osiris tonearm. He had just spent a couple of hours listening to my system with the AMG V12 turntable and tonearm the week before. Like myself, he had the same initial WOW! He also pointed out it was hard to put into words what he liked so much about the sound, but he felt more drawn into the music.

As we moved into more and more different kinds of music, I begin to notice something about his demeanor. When listening to the Beatles’ Love album, he was ready to move on to something else more quickly than normal. This also happened when I played a Kronus album. When I asked him about it, he at first, said he just wanted to hear more different kinds of music on the system. Then I put on Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, and he was locked in again. Then he turned to me and said this combo seemed more sensitive to the quality of recordings than the AMG combo did.

I understand this statement but after long term listening, I don’t think that was it. It’s not so much the quality of the recording as it is the music itself. While the SE was truly world class on most all music, it is without a doubt more magical with music that is focused on the midrange. What this table could do in the midrange was very SET-like and quite magical. It surely did draw you deep into the musical experience with these recordings. Don’t take this as a criticism but as a bonus. With the SE and Osiris, you would be getting a world class record player that will simply blow your mind with certain vocal or jazz recordings.

In August of 2012, I reviewed the AMG Viella V12 Turntable and V12 Tonearm. After the addition of the HRS platform, I purchase this combination. Before that, I had owned the Shindo turntable and since then I have reviewed the Artisan Fidelity Garrard Statement, the wonderful little Tri-Art Audio Pebbles TA-1, the highly innovative Thales TTT-Slim, the TriangleART Symphony, and Symphony SE. There were some exceptional turntables in that group, especially the Artisan Fidelity Garrard Statement and the Thales TTT-Slim, but I still own the AMG V12 combo.

Now, it’s my privilege to review the AMG Giro with its nine-inch tonearm. It looked so simple that it’s beautiful; I would go so far as to say a “work of art.” It’s comprised two identical circles, the platter, and I guess for the lack of a better word, the plinth. The platter mounted on the bearing near the edge of the circular plinth. The overlap looked like a figure of eight with two discs where one was just a little off centered. The metal surfaces were a satin finished, aircraft grade aluminum. It’s hard to explain how it looked, and I’ve not seen pictures that do it justice. It was a very refined, almost zen like “work of art.”

I think this is a pretty ambitious undertaking for AMG. The AMG V12 at $16,000 without the wood skirt plus the addition of the custom-made, $3,495 HRS platform plays in a field of turntables and arms that cost so much more that its combined cost of $19,495. I’ve found no combo that can do everything as well and I’ve tried listening to turntables that cost more than three times as much. So, I thought they already made the best bargain in high-end turntables and arms. I just wondered what AMG could offer in a table that costs $10,000. The problem I saw was that $10,000 was still much more than the average person can spend on a turntable. This leaves us with the question, is there a market for people who will spend $10,000 but not $15,000. Well, that’s not my problem and I hope there is, for this is surely a great turntable for $10,000.

This combo was around $6,000 less expensive than the V12 without a wooden skirt. The only turntable on the list of turntables I’ve reviewed lately that cost less with their own tonearm is the little Art Audio Pebbles. So, it is with great anticipation that I come to see how close AMG can get you to a V12 for around $10,000.  The Giro, like my V12, is entirely manufactured in AMG’s Bavarian factory. I think it is accurate to say the Giro is a scaled down version of the V12.

Like the Viella, the Giro is a non-suspended table so it will benefit from being placed on something like the HRS base made for the Viella or at least a heavy piece of granite or slate. Both the platter and bearing housing are CNC machined from POM, a high tech synthetic, with the same special manufacturing process of the V12 for greater precision, cost-effectiveness, and high finish quality. The Giro’s circular plinth is machined from aircraft-grade aluminum and provides both 33 and 45 RPM via an electronic control. It shares the same high-mass stainless steel machined pulley of the V12, coupled to a precision Swiss-made DC motor. The belt-driven platter features the single-piece construction and decoupled spindle design of the Viella turntable. The platter bearing is a hydrodynamically lubricated, radial 16mm axle with PFTE thrust pad and integral flywheel. It is a scaled version from the V12.

The 9W2 9-inch tonearm shares the identical, revolutionary bearing design of the 12J2 but scaled for the shorter arm length and the Giro’s smaller footprint. This bearing is a dual-pivot design with the vertical bearing design being similar to that used in the rotor heads of helicopters. It uses two 0.5mm thick “spring steel wires” that allow the fine tuning of the azimuth while also eliminating any play in the bearing. The horizontal axle is hardened tool steel, precision ground to a backlash-free fit with a needle roller bearing. AMG claims it is extremely precise, maintenance free, and never requiring adjustment. The tonearm wand is made of aircraft quality, anodized aluminum tube for resonance control. It is wired with three strands of 50 micron high-quality copper per leg. Anti-Skating is of the magnetic design with a decoupled ring magnet and two bar magnets. The magnetic fields are isolated in their patented bearing housing. VTA can be easily adjusted during play, but you will need to lock the arm after setting it. To make this even easier, there is a spirit bubble built into the top of the bearing cap.

Not only is it scaled down in design; it is also scaled down in size. I think the  “double circle” plinth is a really neat looking design. Compared to the V12, the Artisan Fidelity or the TriangleArt tables I reviewed, the Giro seemed small, not as small as the Thales TTT-Slim but small. It was the arm that really seemed small to me since I’m used to a twelve-inch tonearm, and this is a nine-inch tonearm. Like the Thales arm, the Giro’s small and short tonearm tube just made it seem small to me. The fact that it’s small didn’t matter; it is still a very refined and eye catching turntable.

Setup

Setting up a new turntable from scratch is often quite a chore. There’s the table itself to set up, then the tonearm, and finally the cartridge. Not the Giro, I set the table and the tonearm up in less than an hour, including unpacking. I think most of you like me will be shocked by how small the box for the Giro is but as you unpack it you will be impressed how well designed it is. You should take everything out and set it somewhere safe. Then, place the plinth on its shelf and run the tonearm wire through the small hole in the plinth. This is easier done before you mount the platter or the tonearm. This is also a good time to plug in the turntable.

Next, you should pick up the platter and put the belt around the grove on the inside of the platter and place it on the pivot while you place the belt over the pulley. This is much easier than with the V12, but it still may take a couple of tries the first time you do this. It’s just a little daunting since like the V12 the pulley is under the platter. Because of the weight of the platter, it is much easier to do on the Giro.

Now you should level the turntable; there are two small holes in the plinth. One hole is on the back behind the platter the other is on the left in front of the platter. In the tonearm box are all the tools you need. You take the number 3 driver and place it in the holes to adjust the level. I think this is easier to do before the tonearm is mounted on the plinth.

Now it’s time to mount the tonearm and align the cartridges. Since the hole is predrilled and you should already have the phono cable with the straight DIN plug coming through the hole, all you have to do is carefully plug in the phono cable. Put the counterweight on the tonearm and then place the tonearm pillar in the mounting collar and orientate it so that it’s just slightly pass the power buttons. You need room to touch the buttons, but don’t put it much further toward the platter because of the magnetic anti-skating.

Now it’s time to get the cartridge mounted and setup. I started by getting the tracking force close to 1.5 grams; it’s not critical yet. Then I checked to see if the bubble level in the tonearm pillar to see if it was level. This adjustment is done by using the #1.5 driver to unlock the collar and adjust the VTA screw until the bubble is dead level. Then you need to lock the collar back as described above. Now, use a protractor, I used the Clearaudio one, to get the cartridge set up and the set the tracking force to 1.5g. Again, all this is very straightforward and takes very little time to do.

I made no other changes to my reference system than swapping the two AMG turntables for one another. The reference system consist of a pair of Teresonic Ingenium XR Silver speakers, a Pass Labs XA30.8 amp, an Emia Remote Autoformer Volume Control, cables by High Fidelity Cables, and the turntable was set on the same HRS platform as I use for the AMG V12.

I’ve been using the AMG Viela turntable and 12J2 tonearm as my personal reference for better than four years. AMG recently announced a new version of 12J2, called the 12JT (for Turbo). As a standalone arm, the 12J2 sells for $4,500 whereas the new arm comes in at $8,500. I was excited to see and hear what AMG had achieved with the new arm.

Description

Anyone familiar with the original AMG 12J2 tonearm will immediately see the family resemblance of these two tonearms. You will also immediately see that the 12JT is more impressive looking. It features a slightly larger bearing housing, an even more beautifully-machined counterbalance and equally impressive-looking silver locking thumbscrews. It’s still not a tonearm with much bling, but it simply looks of precision and impressive build quality.

In use, the most obvious difference between the two arms is in how you set them up. The original 12J2 tonearm came with a really nice set of precision tools that you used for all the adjustments of the tonearm. The Turbo does away with those tools and instead has nice thumbscrews you use to set everything: VTA, VTF, azimuth, and anti-skating. It also has a bubble level in the top of the bearing housing and a very easy to read micrometer to assist with setting VTA.

Those aren’t the only changes, though. With the 12J2, the horizontal bearing used an axle of hardened tool steel configured as a needle on one end and as a roller bearing on the other end. The Turbo has a larger horizontal axle featuring dual micro-ball bearing assemblies. According to AMG, these changes yield enhanced stability and reduced friction, and my listening bears this out. The vertical bearing uses AMG’s patented bearing that is similar to that used in the rotor heads of helicopters. It uses two “spring steel wires” (the Turbo uses a newer wire) that allow fine tuning of azimuth while also eliminating any play in the bearing.

The Turbo’s tonearm wand is made of an aircraft quality, anodized aluminum tube for resonance control and has an effective mass of 13.9 grams, slightly higher than the 12J2. The counterweight is a two-piece design with a Teflon decoupled sleeve with a thumbscrew to tighten it. The 12J2 is wired with three strands of 50 micron high-quality copper per leg whereas the Turbo uses multiple gauges of high-quality copper. Anti-skating is of the magnetic design with a decoupled ring magnet and two bar magnets.

Like the 12J2, the new 12JT is designed to work with a wide range of phono cartridges..

Setup

There is a not lot to say about setting up the AMG Turbo tonearm; it is simply the easiest tonearm I have ever set up. In that respect, AMG certainly met one of their main design goals for the Turbo. If you have an AMG turntable, the 12JT Turbo simply drops into the same mount that the 12J2 uses. Anyway, after you have the mounting hole in the right place, you simply connect a tonearm cable of your choice (requires a straight DIN connector). The cartridge mounting system is ingenious and makes setting up the geometry a less than five-minute job if you use the jig that comes with the arm. I used the supplied jig and then went and got my arc protractor, which I had made for the 12J2, and double checked my results; I was surprised that it was absolutely correct all the way across the arc. The complete setup can be done without any tools. What could be simpler? One word of advice, though: while the large thumb screw for locking the base rendered the locking nut not needed after you get VTA set, I found it sound even better if you tightened them both; I confess I was not the first to notice this.

Listening with the DS Audio DSW1 Optical Cartridge

I have reviewed or personally used some pretty impressive tonearms, including the Clearaudio Universal Radial Tonearm, DaVinciAudio Grand Reference Grandezza, Graham Phantom, Ikeda Sound Labs IT-407CR12, RS Labs RS-A1, Thales Easy, TriangleArt Oris, Tri-Planar, and the VPI JMW 12.7 Tapered Twelve-Inch Tonearm. All of these are wonderful arms. But for me, the best tonearm I have used in my system up to now was the AMG 12J2. So, what I was expecting from the Turbo was a more impressive looking and easier to set up tonearm with sound that would match my 12J2.

It turns out I was in for a big surprise sonically. From the first LP I played I knew there was something special about how my system sounded with the Turbo tonearm. The first two things that jumped out at me were how much more stable the imaging was and how much better the bass was controlled. In fact, all frequencies were controlled better. Don’t misunderstand me, neither the bass nor the midrange lost any of their bloom, they just sounded more like real instruments and less like a phono cartridge retrieving music from a record groove. In my review of the DS Audio DS-W1 cartridge, I wrote, “One of the other early impressions I had with the DS-W1 in my system was that it was more like tape than vinyl.” Well, that is even truer when it is played in the AMG12JT Turbo. (This finding also applied with the two more conventional moving coils I used in this review.)

For example, when Rickie Lee Jones sings “New Mother Earth,” the bass has all its bloom, but it drives the rhythm better, which results in a much more musical and emotional experience. On that same cut, the guitar has realistic attack and has enough solidity to sound like a real instrument, not just music floating in space.

Another great example is Cassandra Wilson’s LP Blue Light ’til Dawn. This album is full of power and emotion. Cassandra Wilson is one of those singers who can make the smallest vocal phrases resonate with meaning, emotion, and power. The only time I have heard this conveyed better than my system played it with the 12JT was when I have heard her live. This album also has beautiful, full-sounding bass instruments. Like her voice, these instruments just sounded better with the Turbo than I had ever heard in my system. This album also has an impressive soundstage. Soundstaging isn’t the DSW1’s most impressive quality, though it’s more than adequate in this area. But when mounted in the 12JT, it produced as good a soundstage as I have heard from my system. That, combined with the air within and around those bass instruments, completely drew me into the performances.

Listening with the AMG Teatro moving coil cartridge

I thought the AMG Teatro, which I reviewed in August 2016, would be the perfect moving coil cartridge to use to compare the two AMG tonearms. I asked Garth Leerer at Musical Surroundings if I could borrow a Teatro and he graciously agreed. I wasn’t surprised that the difference between the two arms was even greater with a moving coil than it was with the DS optical cartridge. I suspect this is because of the 12JT’s ability to control the vibrations of the coils and magnets in the cartridge.

With the Teatro mounted in the 12JT my system had beautiful, rich tonal colors. The leading edges of instruments were more precise and more musical sounding. The decay and space around and within instruments was simply “right,” which made for a wonderful and emotional listening experience. I think one of the reasons why it sounds so good is that with the 12JT, the Teatro is able to do an even better job at getting out of its own way, an area where it already excelled. This tonearm allows the Teatro to almost rival the Soundsmith Strain Gauge or the new Optical DS cartridge. It doesn’t quite match them in this area of getting out of the way, but I feel you are getting everything you can get from this cartridge when used with the 12JT tonearm.

Listening with the Allnic Verito Z moving coil cartridge

The Allnic is a low compliance cartridge that usually needs a high mass arm to sound its best. One of the things that surprised me about the original AMG 12J2 tonearm was how well it worked with different cartridges, so I was interested in howthe 12JT would be with low compliance cartridges.

The 12JT didn’t let me down with the Verito Z. It was the best I had ever heard this cartridge sound. I don’t know what it is about the design of the AMG tonearms that gets them towork almost equally well with high and low compliance cartridges. I would guess it has something to do with the ingenious bearing design, but all I know for sure is that it is a real blessing.

Conclusion

I have been dying to hear the new DS Audio Master One cartridge in my system. I now wonder if it will make as big a difference as the AMG 12JT Turbo tonearm has. In many ways this tonearm does for my cartridges what the Pass Labs XA30.8 amp did for my speakers. It controls the cartridge in a way that makes a recording sound more focused, more powerful and more beautifully detailed than I had heard from my system before. It does this while making the system sound even more alive. By the way, the longer I listen to my system with this arm the more I love it. I’ll conclude by saying that the two twelve-inch arms from AMG are the two best tonearms I have ever used, but if you can afford the difference get the Turbo.

Copy editor: Dan Rubin

Hartvig TT black

Turntable design can be as much a fashion statement as that of sports cars and watches. By far, the turntable is the only component next to the loudspeaker that offers its designer considerable freedom in exercising artistic licenses. One extremity of such creative freedom comes in the form of turntables complete in their own five-foot tall, five-hundred-pound superstructure that houses a massive turntable plinth and correspondingly massive power supplies for the motors. For the vast majority of us, physically less colossal designs are more sensible, although they can still remain rather costly. The Hartvig TT, the subject of this review and a product of Denmark, retails for $13,500 and is a prime specimen in the minimalist school of design.

Weighing 29 pounds and taking up less square footage than the Bricasti M1 dual-mono DAC, the belt-drive Hartvig TT features a square block of handcrafted plinth made of a sandwich of MDF and acrylic, which is barely larger than its stacked 2-inch thick platters, with the top being made of acrylic and the bottom one of T6 series aluminum. In addition, the TT’s top acrylic platter is integrated with a stainless steel center shaft that is fastened to the platter itself. Once taken out of the original packaging, the two stacked platters needed to be separated for initial lubrication treatment before being installed together again over the spindle.

The Hartvig’s spindle is a hardened steel shaft with an aluminum base. At the top of the spindle is a precision honed bronze shell on which a tiny, lubricated ceramic ball is to be placed. The stacked platters are then fitted over the ceramic ball and the spindle.

My listening room is on a thin layer of hardwood over concrete floor, so vibration is not an issue and the Hartvig TT functioned accordingly on a Salamander Design audio rack. For readers in apartments or houses with raised wood slab flooring, additional, more elaborate footers and audio racks may be in order to facilitate further isolation of the Hartvig from vibrations. Two adjustable elastic-core feet adorn the front left and right of the turntable while a third, fixed one supports the rear.

A supplied acrylic arm board for mounting over the side of the plinth at rear right is secured with a single hexagonal bolt. This constitutes a variable geometry that can accommodate a slew of tonearms of different lengths. The Hartvig is a belt-drive design and a free-standing brushless, electronically regulated DC motor is relegated to the opposite corner of the arm board.

The review sample came in the standard high gloss black finish, while real wood veneer, wood with inlay and custom pearl paint are available for additional costs.

Three 0.04 lb (17 grams) polished steel and chrome plated Isoclean TT-007 small Tip Toe Base were placed under the Hartvig TT’s elastic-core feet. $60 for a set of four, these little jewel-like footers are the finishing touch of the Hartvig turntable system and I can envision an even more positive listening experience with the larger, 0.26 lb (120 gram) TT-008 ($160 set of four).

For this review, a Japanese, nine-inch, high-mass pivoting tonearm, the $6,900 Ikeda IT-345CR1 and a fully broken-in, $4,400 Ikeda 9TT moving-coil cartridge was also provided. The entire Hartvig TT and Ikeda system was of dealer stock, provided by Kaveh Saffari of Audiologic in Irvine, CA, via special arrangement by Brian Ackerman, the U.S. importer of both Hartvig and Ikeda. To complete the system, Brian shipped a $3,100 Stage III Analord Prime Extreme Resolution phono cable to me.

A Millennium M-LP-Mat and Boston Audio Design “The Mat” were alternated for use in this review.

A Pass Labs XP-25 twin-chassis phono preamp and Xs Preamp handled the feeble signal. A pair of Magnepan 3.7i was used in the auditioning along with a pair of Pass Labs XA200.5 pure class A monoblocks. With the exception of the $3,100 Stage III Analord Prime Extreme Resolution phono cable, this review was conducted with a complete Music Interface Technologies Cables Oracle network cable system. The Oracle MA-X SHD network cables between the Pass Labs XP-25 and Xs Preamp, and the Oracle MA-X for the XA200.8 monoblocks were set to a low impedance setting of 5-50k ohm and at maximum articulation. The Music Interface Technologies Z-Powerbar mitigated the power to the Hartvig, the Pass Labs XP-25 Phono and Xs Preamp via the MIT Cables AC II network power cables. Two columns of stacked Acoustic Science Corporation 14-inch TubeTraps were positioned on the front wall to diffuse the rear reflection of each speaker and another pair of TubeTraps, specifically a 14-inch atop a BassTrap, were put in the corners.

Vinyl music playback can be compromised by residual pressing mold and the very distracting surface noise of clicks and pops. Therefore, the first and foremost requirement for an enjoyable vinyl experience for me came in the form of the German Audiodesksysteme Glass Ultrasonic Vinyl Cleaner. The upright device submerges the down-side of a vinyl in its mixed solution of a proprietary solvent and distilled water and rotates it in cleaning cycles before blow-drying it. The Audiodesksysteme’s method is ingeniously conceived and executed and had thus immediately become indispensable to me for an immaculate listening experience.

Ikeda IT-345CR1

Ikeda IT-345CR1 tonearm, 9TT moving-coil cartridge

Vinylphiles in their fifties and older will likely recognize the Ikeda name, a marquee from the 1980s that was synonymous with innovation, quality and exclusivity. Senior Reviewer Jack Roberts reviewed the Ikeda IT-407CR1 tonearm in 2012 and gave it high marks. The historical detail that Jack put together on the company and its owner is a good read.

The Ikeda IT-345CR1 tonearm is quite a treat to hold in one’s palms. The wand is consisted of a dual pipe structure with the outer pipe made of stainless steel and the inner pipe aluminum. three pieces of O-shaped ring are installed between the outer and inner pipes to dampen vibration. The body and shaft of the tonearm are made of brass.

The tonearm’s connector pin is rhodium-plated and the headshell is chrome-plated aluminum. The headshell’s connector, however, is made of titanium. Azimuth adjustment is provided on the headshell.

The IT-345CR1 is one of those rare metallic apparatus that magnificently withstands time after time of close-up scrutiny-turn-admiration. Vertical and weight adjustments is straightforward though relying largely on feel and visual cue. The upside to this is it is easy to loosen the bottom security bolt and adjust the VTA. The aluminum headshell with solid metallic feel is quite a beauty in itself, too, and straightforward to use. Answering my inquiry, the company claimed the tonearm employs dynamic balance as opposed to static balance, thus a “far superior tracing ability because the inner spring always control the stylus pressure stably and constantly.”

The Ikeda 9TT moving-coil cartridge used in this review is the second top cartridge in the company’s 9 Series, producing 0.16mVrms, flaunting a golden finish of an aluminum alloy body coupled to a neodymium magnet and lightweight, double layered duralumin cantilever. A very promising and potent mix. The upper model to the 9TT is the $8,500 flagship Ikeda KAI in a blue alumite buff finish with titanium top and base, boron cantilever, samarium-cobalt embedded generator, while the $2,800 entry-level 9TS in emerald finish tops the output at 0.35mVrms, also fitted with a double layered duralumin cantilever.

Auditioning

My reference system used to be the $4,800 47 Laboratory Miyabi/47 moving-coil, fitted to the company’s $14,500 47 Laboratory 4724 Koma turntable with the $2,250 Tsurube tonearm. While I had found the system to liberate dynamics and tonality colossally, the Hartvig/Ikeda system approached that dynamic finesse with more nuances.

Via the Pass Labs electronics and the Magnepan, playing the 45 Angel Sonic Series chamber music records such as the Mozart disk of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Albinoni’s Adagio by Neville Marriner and Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the Hartvig/Ikeda system yielded the most energetic and engaging sound to date. The hallmark of the best analog sound that is the liquid texture of instruments brass and string was also on sweeping display. The soundstaging was solid and spacious, giving the ensemble a substantial presence. I credit this exemplary performance to the Hartvig/Ikeda system’s ability to get out of the way of music.

Another 45 Angel disk, the Smetana “The Moldau” and Sibelius “Finlandia” reading by Herbert von Karajan and the BPO further testified towards the Hartvig/Ikeda’s solid performance. The presentation was the most spectrally extended for a 33 1/3rpm in recent memory. Although I would prefer even less euphony in general, there was remarkable neutrality in the midrange throughout. 33 1/3rpm LPs, on the other hand, carried less of that lushness than the 45rpms, with the Premium Records “Best Audiophile Oldies” being the astounding exception. The Ikeda 9TT delivered a slightly texturally richer performance from the LP than my Esoteric K-03/G-01 did with the same-titled XRCD, spreading the analog contagion to me.

On 33s such as the Deutsche Grammophon Horowitz 1984 recitals or a Living Stereo Rubinstein Chopin, the Hartvig TT/Ikeda stood testimonial to the most enduring aspect of the vinyl format, namely a sound that withstood the passage of decades, one that descended from the pressings of the LPs’ original releases. Being able to conjure up the flagrant tonalities of a physical media cut from some thirty years ago is monumental.

Conclusion

The $14k Hartvig TT belt-drive turntable system’s construction and use of materials, such as a MDF and acrylic-sandwiched plinth, a 2-inch acrylic platter over another 2-inch of aluminum platter are exotic and impressive and serves remarkably as the foundation of a high-end system. This construction exoticness and total turntable mass makes the Hartvig notable amongst similarly priced, substantial turntable designs although it’s highly economical footprint does make for a polarized appeal. By the same token, its ability to assume a pure, non-intrusive sonic footprint, however, is remarkable for the size. The $16,750 47 Lab 4724 Koma turntable with the 4725 Tsurube tonearm system is comparable in compactness and performance of the Hartvig with the Ikeda 9TT, thus represents considerable competition.

It is arguable that the true star of this system are the Ikeda CR-345 CR1 tonearm and the 9TT cartridge and the Hartvig provided a platform for them to glisten. The caliber of the Ikeda tonearm and the 9TT cartridge, in particular, is undisputed at the asking prices; one can easily visualize, in particular, the use of the 9TT in more ambitious setups. Employing an aluminum alloy body, the 9TT, in my opinion, produced a more controlled, uniform tonality than those with wood or polymer material. Coupled to a neodymium magnet and lightweight, double layered duralumin cantilever, the 9TT ought to be quite dynamic and even accurate than many.

For Dagogo readers wanting upgrade options later on, Hartvig also supplies a $6,100 battery power supply. Then, there is the 52lb, $28,400 Hartvig TT Signature Gramophone reference table available which can also be fitted with a solid copper platter.

Copy editor: Dan Rubin

Clearaudio Master Innovation (pictured with Clearaudio Universal tonearm).

After reviewing three high-end turntable systems by boutique shops, one from Europe and two from the U.S., I wanted to find out how the big boys such as Clearaudio are doing it.

Clearaudio GmbH was founded by Peter Suchy in 1978 and is known for its pioneering, original designs. The company’s first product in 1978 was a moving coil cartridge with boron cantilever, an industry first. Today, Clearaudio employs 61 workers with trained specialists in both product design and production, manufacturing turntables, cartridges, tonearms and associated phono electronics.

Clearaudio Concept

The company offers ten turntables, beginning with the $1,600 Concept and the $2,500 Concept Wood, both with a tonearm and a cartridge installed, the former a Concept arm and a $250 Concept MM or $1,000 Concept MC cartridge, the latter a Satisfy Kardan Aluminum tonearm and the Concept MM, Concept MC, or Maestro v2 Ebony MM cartridge. The remaining turntables feature open armboard architecture for use with various Clearaudio tonearms or other brand tonearms. They include the $2,600 Performance DC, the $3,600 Performance DC Wood, the $6,200 Ovation, the $6,400 Innovation Basic, the $7,900 Innovation Compact, the $11,000 Innovation Wood, and the $28,000 Master Innovation, subject of this review, and finally, the $200,000 Statement V2 system including the TT-1 tangential tonearm and Goldfinger Statement cartridge. Remarkably, even the company’s entry-level Concept turntable is lavishly equipped with a POM (Polyoxymethylene) platter, aluminum sub-platter, low-friction bearing and a scaled-down version of the Satisfy Carbon tonearm.

Among the six phono preamplifiers produced by the company are multiple variants designed for headphone listening of the vinyl disk no less. Among the 16 cartridges the company manufactures is the critically acclaimed $15,999 Goldfinger Statement flagship, a medium compliance moving coil that uses 12 magnets, 24-Karat gold coil, 14-Karat gold body and reaches a 100dB dynamic range. It is hailed by many as the ultimate cartridge design. Of course, Clearaudio would not be an analog playback system industry leader without record cleaning machines of its own, and it offers three models indeed.

Clearaudio Goldfinger

Manufacturing of the company’s top products such as the Goldfinger Statement, TT2 linear tracking arm and the Statement turntable system is done by a core team led by a master builder who oversees the process. The Master Innovation turntable system, subject of this review, is also built by this elite team.

Clearaudio turntables are known for their 3-pillar “tri-star” design. Per Garth Leerer of Musical Surroundings, Clearaudio’s U.S. Importer, the company first introduced the “tri-star” design in its $15,000 turntable system named Master Reference in the mid-1990s. The Oracle turntable from Canada adopted a 3-tower turntable design earlier on in the eighties and utilized active suspension in the pillars.

The original MR was the result of Clearaudio pushing the performance envelope with an eye on aesthetics, taking a systematic approach back then in its research for the creation of a turntable of high quality in materials, strength in rigidity, freedom from vibration, compact in footprint and one that screams value. The turntable bore the “Master” designation because it was designed to such specifications as to be fit for use as reference in mastering studios. More than twenty years have passed since then and the new Master is now part of the Innovation series. The Master Innovation features the following evolved design highlights:

• Materials – Panzerholz, aluminum skins and pods, diamond coated polished ceramic shaft for platter and driven platter bearing.
• Drive system – magnetic drive, optical speed control, high precision bearing.
• Finishes – Panzerholz comes in 4 finishes (natural, black, white and red lacquer) aluminum in 2 (black and silver) , and platters in 2 (POM black and translucent acrylic)
• Upgradeability (an Innovation can be field upgraded to a Master)
• Tonearms supported (both Clearaudio and other brands)
• Product consistency – no unit to unit discrepancy or variation.

According to Garth, a preceding model, the Master Reference AMG Wood of 2006 was adorned with some of the above advancements, costing $20,500 then and $28,000 in 2011. It was the last version to feature aluminum magnesium skins, Panzerholz wood plinths, and Ceramic Magnetic Bearing (CMB). The Master Innovation is its successor, introduced at the end of 2011. Price was $25,000 then and currently is $28,000 and includes the diamond coated bearing.

The Master Innovation first entered into development in the summer of 2011. It is a double-stack design conceptualized to accommodate the company’s exclusive five-platter structure. In its official launch in December 2011, the turntable was revealed to utilize two different magnetic levitation systems, one for the drive system and another for the CMB for the main platter bearing.

In fact, the Master Innovation is the 2nd turntable to use the Magnetic Drive, first introduced in the Clearaudio Statement around 2005. Per Garth, “The system consists of a drive or lower platter that is connected to a sophisticated 24-volt motor via a flat belt. This drive platter uses the Optical Speed Control (OSC) with an optical sensor mounted under the stainless steel flywheel which has a stroboscope engraved into it. The OSC creates a feedback system between the drive platter and motor, assuring stable speed regardless of stylus drag. This OSC system was used in the Innovation model in 2007 and now we have a combination of a passive rotational stability with the stainless steel flywheel together with the active OSC.”
The Drive platter magnetically couples to the Driven platter using a ring of magnets, one in the top of the Drive platter and the second ring at the bottom of the Driven platter. There is no actual contact between these two platters, creating enhanced isolation between the turntable motor and the stylus in the record groove. The Driven platter is connected to the actual platter via a sophisticated bearing assembly. The Drive/Driven platter can either be acrylic or POM as its material is not critical to the sound. The platter is also shielded due to the strength of the magnets needed to levitate the 70mm POM platter and 15mm stainless steel sub-platter.

The ON/OFF, 33-, 45- and 78-rpm push-buttons were built into one of the Master Innovation’s three pillars, and the platform can be rotated to where the control is on the left column and the primary tonearm setup is on the right column. Having the tonearm upfront and closer was a major convenience in setups. In this orientation, the three neatly camouflaged speed adjustment pin tabs would be facing forward on the bridge under the lower platters.

The review sample is accompanied by the optional $3,000 Smart Power 24V DC power supply, an otherwise ritzy-glitzy all-aluminum chassis compact device consisting of a pair of rechargeable nickel-metal hydride batteries in a complex electronic security mechanism for isolating the proprietary, sensitive optical speed control (OSC) found in Clearaudio’s top turntables from short circuits, overloads, noise and voltage fluctuations in the mains power supply. The goal is to attain pitch stability and thus sonic purity from the turntable. The Smart Power is designed for use in turntables in the Ovation, Innovation and Statement series.

Clearaudio Smart Power 24V

Importer Musical Surroundings also distributes the AMG turntables and tonearms from Germany, and the Master Innovation is fitted with a $4,500 AMG 12J2 12-inch tonearm. Cartridge used for this review was the $10,995 Koetsu Jade Platinum moving coil the review of which was published earlier this month, and a $10,400 Stealth Audio Cables Helios phono cable completed the turntable system.

The Master Innovation took the left most top spot of a 6 feet wide, 15.5 inches deep and 16.5 inches tall 2-level home entertainment shelf. The Pass Laboratories duo of the Xs Phono and Xs Preamp, each boasting a twin, 6.25 inches high, 19 inches wide and 14 inches deep large chassis design, one for the control chassis and the other for the power supply, took the most spots on the shelf. The control chassis of the Xs Preamp needed to connect to monoblock power amplifiers to the far left and right, so it earned itself the central spot on the top shelf to the right of the Clearaudio, with the Xs Phono’s control chassis occupying the top right spot. The two Pass units’ power supply chassis were relegated to the bottom shelf under the Clearaudio, stacked atop each other.

The Bricasti Design M21 flagship DSD DAC was placed atop the Xs Preamp on a trio of Combak Harmonix TU-66ZX footers to allow easy access to the DAC’s rear panel SPDIF, Toslink, USB, and LAN connections. An Oppo UDP-205 Blu-ray SACD player sat atop the Xs Phono, also on a trio of the Combak Harmonix footers.

Vinyl is alive in 2020 and records have made a strong comeback over the last several years. Unlike CD, SACD, or computer audio, I have always felt that turntables require a certain level of mechanical quality to play them back properly.  While on audio forums I would often read that vinyl was better than digital but my experience never mirrored the lore when I would audition budget LP spinners. Indeed, my experience was generally a mixed bag of sonic performance. Due to the nature of turntables it seemed to me that they rely on so many things to be correct or there is a good chance the sound will often be charitably called so-so.

The problem for those of us who largely grew up on the CD format we would read all these vinyl-phile exaltations, largely on forums, exclaiming that every $400 turntable would trounce CD players at 10 times the price. It wasn’t the case in my experience. Back in the late 1980s I went with CD and dumped my vinyl collection. The $400ish turntables from the usual suspects did very little to sway me back especially considering the numerous issues associated with vinyl replay such as noisy tables with some speed issues, bad pressings, surface noise and compressed phono stages and of course the difficulty to set the things up to avoid excessive inner groove distortion or channel imbalance.  And when you got all of these things correct – you would often not get performance that beat a good CD player.

More than a decade later, circa 2001, I had a transformative experience listening to vinyl. This time, however, it was on a world class turntable, the Voyd Reference. The Voyd Reference was Terry Crabbe’s personal turntable, owner of Soundhounds located in Victoria British Columbia and when I met him he reminded me of a man who never left the 1960s hippie generation. His shop was unlike any other high end dealer I had seen. Firstly, they allowed dogs.  Secondly, they never pushed you into making quick decisions. Stay, listen for hours and go home and have a think about it. Come back and try something else but the store always had a big selection of vinyl to play.

Terry demonstrated vinyl on the Voyd Reference (which would later become the Audio Note’s first version of the TT3).  He was not trying to sell me on it because it was well beyond my means. However, the demonstration was an eye opener to what was possible with the oversized black coasters. Terry’s turntable was vastly superior to the other tables by no small margin. That is saying something as the store carried some well known players. However, it was the Voyd that was “special.”  The problem of course was trying to get the sound of the 5 figure turntable for 3 or low 4 figures.

With my university beer budget I dabbled with second hand Duals, Rega’s and even my dad’s Fisher.  But none of these were providing me the “promise of vinyl.” The NAD 533 (Rega P2 Clone) with Rega’s 250 arm and Shure M97xE cartridge wasn’t sounding better than my modest Cambridge Audio CD 6.  I would hear hints of what the Voyd Reference was doing – but only hints.  It merely teased at what could be. My record collection had grown to a little over 500 and with the middling performance I had once again contemplated chucking it all. I was not likely to be able to afford something as nice as the Voyd Reference and I was not hearing the “magic” with such players. Furthermore, I was not hearing that magic from players in the $2,000 range either.

On a subsequent to Soundhounds they demonstrated the Audio Note UK TT2 – I was impressed.  This had the tactile speed and lightness of touch of the Voyd – it had the nimble bounce and energy of the Voyd – well – almost. The TT2 sounded more transparent and “locked in” in terms of pace. It had energy and pizzazz where some of the store’s high mass turntables sounded bloodless and overly polite to me in comparison.  I was drawn to the sound of the TT2 over some dearer turntables from Linn, Clearaudio, and Oracle.

Audio Note UK TT-2 Deluxe

I bought the TT2 turntable. The TT2 stands for TurnTable 2 and the 2 means that it has two motors. Audio Note makes an entry level model called; you guessed it, the TT1. And yes it has one motor. Both tables are based on the famed suspended SystemDek IIx. The TT2 is a rather big improvement on the original SystemDek IIx and it was able to get me back into my vinyl collection. As good as the TT2 is it still wasn’t transformative like the Voyd Reference.

Enter the new Audio Note UK TT3 with the PSU1 (Power Supply Unit 1), accompanied by Audio Note UK’s Arm 3/II tone arm and IQ3 moving-magnet cartridge.

I mentioned earlier that the first Audio Note UK TT3 was based on the Voyd Reference. Well the more things change the more they stay the same. The new TT3 looks wildly different. It looks modern and solid. Nevertheless, it shares the bloodlines, heart and soul of that amazing Voyd Reference. It is still a three motor turntable with an external power supply. The table is still a suspended turntable design. Thus, you will need to ensure it sits on a rock steady stand or have it wall-mounted so that foot falls do not have the arm bounce around while it plays.

Audio Note UK PSU-1

The power supply keeps the turntable speed constant and adjusts for 33 and 45 records. Audio Note UK claims that this high torque platter has the equivalent mass of a 50kg platter. Audio Note’s design is a different approach to most other turntable manufacturers and this alone makes it worthy of an audition to perhaps unsettle some preconceived expectations.

So what is it about the TT3 that makes it special? Well it helps to have an owner of a company who is a vinyl fanatic with tens of thousands of albums as a baseline for the listening.  It is also helpful to hire engineers who clearly know what they are doing.  Obviously this is critical if you are going to design and try to sell a premium priced turntable against some big name turntable brands on the market. Designing and manufacturing your own tone arms, cartridges and turntables when you know the market is filled with well established products from the likes of VPI, Rega, Clearaudio, Linn, Thorens, and Mitchell etc.

There are currently three colour options for the turntable: matte black, white, gloss white and a gloss black.  The power supply unit comes in a standard black and tone arms come in silver or black.

The power supply unit 1 is a large box – it is housed in an Audio Note M2 preamp case. This unit comes with an umbilical cord that connects to the back of the turntable.  There is a power switch on the back. The power supply has universal voltage so it will work in both the East and West. On the front, there are two knobs, one is to start and stop the table and the other is to control for 33/45 rpm.

As with most things Audio Note there are multiple options with the power supply. Audio Note currently has three PSUs and a PSU4 is coming. The TT3 turntable itself remains the same. I can’t speak to the difference or improvements that can be achieved with upgraded power supplies. I am told by ears I trust that these power supplies offer striking levels of improvement.  If I receive an upgraded unit in the future I will circle back to this review to provide additional thoughts.

In a recent letter published on online retail website MrStylus, President and CEO of Jelco parent company Ichikawa Jewel Co. Ltd. announced the closure of business:

It is with deepest regret to inform you this sad announcement.

The novel corona virus pandemic continue to have a significant impact on our production lines, and so I have decided to terminate our business effective immediately.

For the past few years, the business has endured a decline in labor productivity due to health issues arising from our aging skilled engineers. Furthermore, due to our obsolete mechanical equipment, performing maintenance on them has become difficult.

I sincerely ask for your understanding on the following points:
• No new orders will be accepted.
• Repair of products will not be accepted.

I would like to thank everyone for their warm support that was extended to us throughout the years. I would also like to express in writing my deepest gratitude for your kindness and wish you all the best for your continued development.

Sincerely yours,

Takako Ichikawa
President & CEO
ICHIKAWA JEWEL CO.,LTD.

Reported by Byron Baba

The following is a press release from Linn

Linn, maker of the iconic Sondek LP12, upgrades its Majik turntable with new improved tonearm

Majik LP12 is the second Linn source to get a boost in performance in as many months

Further to the August launch of new Majik DSM, Linn has now announced an update for its Majik LP12: the entry level variant of the iconic turntable will shortly receive a new, higher performance tonearm.

Produced in partnership with Clearaudio, the much-respected German turntable brand, the new tonearm will replace the current Majik tonearm from November. Based on an existing Clearaudio model, the design has been modified to Linn specification and improved to become the new Krane tonearm.

Gilad Tiefenbrun, Linn Managing Director, said, ‘We see this change as an opportunity to deliver increased performance from Majik LP12, with the new Krane tonearm achieving ever greater detail from the record for even better sound quality. Krane, coupled with the improvements provided by the new Karousel bearing, propels Majik LP12 performance to another level and firmly retains its position of best value, highest performing entry level turntable.’

More information will follow at launch of the tonearm in November, along with pricing.

About Linn

Linn designs and makes the world’s best music systems.

We have just one goal in mind: to bring you ever closer to the music you love, for you to feel every note and experience your music with a clarity and power unlike anything you’ve ever heard.

Every Linn system is precision engineered just outside Glasgow and signed with pride by the person who made it.

In a world of planned obsolescence, we do the opposite. Our hardware is modular, our software upgradeable, our eyes firmly on the future.

We believe that music makes life better, and we know that our systems make music sound better.

 The following is a press release from Linn.

Announced in September, the new Krane tonearm for Linn Majik LP12 has been given a shipping date of 23rd November. From this date, all new Majik LP12 turntables will ship with the new higher performance arm fitted as standard.

The new Krane tonearm boosts the performance of Linn’s entry level vinyl source in line with the recent Majik DSM enhancements and, in combination with the new Karousel bearing, offers even better value while giving vinyl lovers a chance to experience the iconic LP12 in an affordable package.

Developed in partnership with renowned manufacturer, Clearaudio, the new higher performance arm has been designed for Linn effective length and offset angle to ensure complete congruity with all Linn cartridges and other related LP12 components and accessories.

The static-balanced design is hand assembled with high quality, precision aluminium and stainless steel components and features a polished Tungsten and Sapphire vertical bearing with dual ceramic horizontal bearing assembly, both of which are long-lasting and provide very low friction/rotational mass.

Krane has a range of adjustments making it easy to set up, including a laser etched scale for accurate and repeatable VTA adjustment, azimuth adjustment combined with a fixed offset angle to ensure perfect alignment of the cartridge and stylus, and an adjustable headshell design to ensure effective length is absolutely precise for proper cartridge alignment and performance.

The two-piece CNC Aluminium headshell, featuring the distinctive Linn 3-point design, makes it a perfect match for Linn’s Adikt Moving Magnet cartridge. However, the easily adjustable design means that Krane is also compatible with all Linn cartridges plus most 3rd party offerings.

Gilad Tiefenbrun, Linn Managing Director, said, ‘We’re delighted to give Majik LP12 a further boost in performance with the addition of the new Krane tonearm. Retrieving even more detail from the record, the improved tonearm delivers even better sound quality and will bring vinyl lovers closer to the music that moves them. The dual improvements of Krane and the Karousel bearing ensure that no other entry level turntable comes close to the value and performance of Majik LP12.’

Pricing & availability

Krane tonearm is available as part of a full Majik LP12 turntable order and can be heard at Linn Specialists worldwide. All Linn Specialists offer socially distanced demonstrations and are ready to welcome you safely into their store but please contact in advance as local restrictions may be in place.

Majik LP12 with Karousel bearing, Krane tonearm and standard wood finish is $4,995 ex. tax.

Majik LP12 with a special finish is $5,424ex. tax.

Krane tonearm will be made available as an upgrade for existing Majik LP12 owners in 2021.

Krane tonearm – technical details

Krane features:

• Designed & built to Linn geometry and effective length
• Static-balanced design with dual ceramic bearing assembly for longevity and low friction & rotational mass
• Anti-skating control via an easily accessible magnetic mechanism on the side of the tonearm
• Various adjustments for easy, accurate set-up
• 3-point headshell for correct Linn alignment geometry and compatibility with all Linn cartridges and most third-party designs
• 5-Pin DIN cable connection for use with Linn T-Kable
• Linn designed arm collar to fit Majik and Kore sub-chassis
• Supplied with a cartridge weighting scale

Krane Specifications:

• Effective Length – 229 mm
• Overhang – 18 mm
• Offset Angle – 24°
• Pivot to Spindle distance – 211 mm

About Linn

Linn designs and makes the world’s best music systems.

We have just one goal in mind: to bring you ever closer to the music you love, for you to feel every note and experience your music with a clarity and power unlike anything you’ve ever heard.

Every Linn system is precision engineered just outside Glasgow and signed with pride by the person who made it.

In a world of planned obsolescence, we do the opposite. Our hardware is modular, our software upgradeable, our eyes firmly on the future.

We believe that music makes life better, and we know that our systems make music sound better.