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Acoustic Signature Invictus Jr. Turntable and TA-9000 Tonearm

Acoustic Signature Invictus Jr. Turntable and TA-9000 Tonearm

About three years ago I reviewed what was then the best record player I’d heard—the $105k Acoustic Signature Invictus. As I wrote at the time, this 315-pound, FEA-engineered, CNC-milled, six-motor, dual-belt-driven, 2.6-foot-wide by 2.4-foot-deep, vaguely Mayan-looking objet du son from Gunther Frohnhoefer of Germany was not only the largest record player I’d ever come across; it was also the most versatile (accepting up to four tonearms), the easiest to set up (once you and an army of your pals had lifted it onto an extremely sturdy stand), and, most importantly, the quietest. Seemingly immune to external noise because of its enormous, constrained-layer-damped mass, you simply couldn’t make the Invictus feed back vibration, even by pounding on it with both fists while it was playing a record. It was also seemingly immune to what Robert Harley calls “self-noise”—the resonances of its constituent parts, both individually and as a system. 

The Invictus’ unparalleled resistance to feedback (and feed-forward) extended to its $22k TA-9000 tonearm, an engineering marvel built up millimeter by millimeter via a selective-laser-melting process that takes 23 hours of processing on a 12-million-euro SLM machine. The internal structure of the TA-9000—a network of tiny tree-like “branches” that connects its inner tube to its outer one—channels vibrational energy like a grounding wire channels RF, making the 9000 more sonically inert than anything else I’ve heard in a pivoted tonearm.

There were many other noise-cancelling strategies used in the Invictus—its six motors ran so smoothly that you could not tell, by touch, whether they were “on” or “off,” and its Timken aerospace-grade tonearm bearings were virtually jitter-free. The net result of all this quiet was a smoothness, power, and solidity that I’d only before heard via reel-to-reel tape machines. “The Invictus,” said I, was “detailed yet not aggressively so, quick on transients but never spitty or analytical, smooth but with no loss of pace or dynamic excitement, dense in timbre but not dark, neutral without being sterile, transparent without being colorless.” In short, the Invictus made records sound like mastertapes (or dubs of same).

Acoustic Signature Invictus Jr. Turntable and TA-9000 Tonearm

The chief problem with the Invictus was never sonic; it was ergonomic. Almost everyone with the means to purchase it loved the way it sounded, but was stopped short by the amount of space required to house it. To help resolve this issue, roughly two years ago Frohnhoefer and his design team began planning for a new version of Invictus. In addition to downsizing the beast, the Acoustic Signature team had fresh design ideas about both ’table and ’arm. After all, the original was created five years ago, and a lot has changed technologically in the past five years. Using more sophisticated computer programs, CAD analysis, and CLD (constrained-layer-damping) technology, the AS team aimed to build a sonically improved turntable of much smaller size and lower (though still substantial) weight.

Of course, there had to be some trade-offs in making Invictus into Invictus Jr. For instance, while the smaller ’table still uses AS’s hand-adjusted, self-lubricating Tidofloron turntable bearing (with zero slack), it runs on four motors rather than Sr.’s six. And though scarcely insubstantial, Jr. has shed about a hundred and seventeen pounds (going from a Sumo-wrestler-like 315 to a cruiserweight 198, and from a picnic-blanket-size 6.24 square feet to a large dinner-napkin 2.9). 

The parts of Jr. are smaller, improved versions of much the same “building-blocks” found in Sr.—an elaborately milled, 31-pound, aluminum subchassis/plinth, optimized for stiffness and low vibration and equipped with “floating” magnetic feet; a milled-aluminum, 126-pound main chassis, with underhung motor, cone bearing housing, four pulleys, and four tonearm mounts (one at each corner), that sits atop the plinth and magnetic feet; a 42-pound, bronze-and-aluminum-sandwich, constrained-layer- damped platter embedded with 54 of Acoustic Signature’s proprietary brass “silencers” (more CLD devices), which slips over the motor’s Tidofloron-bearing housing after belts have been attached to the motor’s pulleys; and an improved version (with internal, 3D-printed tweaks) of the CAD-designed TA-9000 tonearm, machined via SLM from a single piece of aluminum and then fitted with those astronautical-grade horizontal and vertical Timken bearings. Power to the motor is suppled via redesigned outboard digital electronics, though all controls (on/off, rotational speed) are accessed via pushbuttons on the turntable’s main chassis.

 In theory, assembly of Jr.’s constituent parts is relatively simple—one building block is simply set atop the other. In practice, however, the individual parts are heavy enough to require considerable manpower to manipulate, especially when the height of a suitable stand is taken into consideration. (Acoustic Signature makes a pricey, dedicated stand of its own.) I should note that AS has added an ergonomic improvement to Jr.’s ’arm mount. Whereas you had to completely remove the tonearm from the mount to plug in/out the supplied silver-wire DIN tonearm cable on Sr., you do not have to do so with Jr., which has an opening built into the bottom of the mount that makes plugging the cable in and out a snap.

 

Frankly, I did not know quite what to expect from Jr. sonically. After all, tremendous constrained-layer-damped mass (distributed over an unparalleled area) was key to Sr.’s unusually natural, tape-like presentation. There was this, though. Considerable mass has, in the past, somewhat “deadened” the sound of certain other ’tables (including Acoustic Signature’s own first-gen Ascona and the original TW Acustic Raven, though not subsequent versions of either). With these other ’tables the cost paid in dynamic “liveliness” and the consequent recovery of low-level transient-related detail was counterbalanced by the utter smoothness of the sonics and the sheer density of tone color, but there was a cost. 

I did not sense this trade-off with the original Invictus, which, in direct comparisons, made LPs sound more like 15ips dubs of mastertapes of the same source material than any other ’table I’d heard—reproducing dynamics as a ramp-like continuum (à la reel-to-reel machines) rather than as steps in a staircase (like virtually all other record players—or at least record players with pivoted ’arms), and seemingly not sacrificing inner detail for an increase in lifelike smoothness and, to quote the late great HP, continuousness. Without all of Sr.’s tremendous mass at its command, I wondered if Jr. would live up to Dad’s legacy.

Well, I am happy to report, Jr. does. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that Jr. exceeds Sr. (and other turntables I’ve heard) in certain key areas, including, most especially, noise floor, dynamics, and resolution. Does this then mean that Sr. was, in fact, overly damping the sound?

I don’t think so. What I do think is that Jr., which (of course) is still a pretty damn large and heavy record player, has not benefitted from the reduction of mass but from the advances in CLD technology that have been made since Sr. was introduced. Invictus Jr.’s more effective CLD construction (which involves two extra layers of damping) have increased resonance control, resulting in the deeper silences, better dynamics, and greater detail that I just noted. With select sources, it has also resulted in an uncanny sense of realism—of being in the presence of an actual singer or instrumentalist.

Though I’ve struggled for decades with explaining which sonic qualities make for a “real” or lifelike presentation (beyond, of course, superior LP engineering and mastering), I keep coming back to the fact that I know “real” when I hear it. Indeed, I know it instantly without rational analysis or reflection (which is part of what makes subsequent rational analysis so difficult). Though I distrust the concept (because it is hard to explain), it has come to me that perceiving a recorded copy as the real thing isn’t merely a matter of superior parts but of what psychologists call the gestalt grouping of those parts, wherein the many variables that we reviewers (and you readers) ascribe to real and recorded sound (i.e., true-to-life timbre, pitch, dynamics, duration, soundstaging, imaging, bloom, dimensionality, etc.) are no longer perceived as separable (or even as outstandingly well-reproduced) ingredients but as a collectively realistic representation of a whole. 

What triggers this switch between observing and evaluating exemplary parts and perceiving lifelike wholes remains a bit mysterious to me. As in one of those famous gestalt puzzles where a drawing of two vases is suddenly perceived as two human faces, it just happens, because the mind is somehow permitted to “re-group” what it observes.

This said, with recorded music I have noted that such a gestalt regrouping is invariably accompanied by the reproduction of markedly higher (across the board) amounts of information—not only about the tone color of a voice or an instrument (although this is essential), but also about the dynamically expressive way it is being used or played and, for lack of a better word, the mechanics of the way it makes sound in the space it was recorded. Just as essentially, this higher amount of information must be delivered in a neutral way, without undue emphasis on any frequency band or any segment of the dynamic/harmonic envelope, and with a blurless clarity and completeness that themselves make for greater presence and immediacy. The moment a transducer starts to overemphasize any one quality, we start to hear that added emphasis as a departure from realism, a coloration or distortion that makes the gestalt regrouping of parts into a lifelike whole more difficult or impossible for the ear/mind to accomplish. At its best, this overemphasis on certain parts can make recorded music sound quite beautiful; at its worst it can make recorded music difficult to enjoy. 

 

All this digressing is only meant to illustrate what I think makes Invictus Jr. such a remarkable piece of audio gear: It not only provides markedly higher amounts of information; it also does so with a neutrality—an absence of timbral and temporal overemphasis, coloration, or distortion I attribute to its more effective CLD damping and resonance control—that permits the ear/mind to perceive, collectively, the constituent sonic “parts” of exceptionally well-recorded LPs as lifelike wholes, to “mistake” (at least briefly) recorded for real. 

To illustrate the differences I hear with Jr., consider the sound of St. Vincent’s newest album, MassEducation [Loma Vista], an acoustic version—mainly Thomas “Doveman” Bartlett’s grand piano and Annie Clark’s (i.e., St. Vincent’s) voice, recorded live over two nights in Electric Ladyland Studios in Greenwich Village—of the same songs on St. Vincent’s next-to-last album, the electrified and electrifying Masseduction. 

I’ve listened to MassEducation on four different turntables in my home—and on several others at shows and in other people’s homes—and it has sounded very enjoyably intimate and musical on all, although there is (as I’ve just noted in detail) a difference between sounding enjoyable/musical and sounding like the actual thing. Pitted against even the very best competition—and I have some outstanding turntables and tonearms in-house—the Invictus Jr. simply reveals more information about, say, “Doveman” Bartlett’s touch and pedal work on the grand piano, and does so with far greater clarity than anything else I’ve got. This is not a little difference, folks. It is the difference between sounding “good” or even sounding “great” and sounding “real.”

Of course, a fair amount of this eye-blinking, head-slapping illusion of hearing a real piano (and, with Annie Clark’s singing, a real female voice) is owed to the other components that the Invictus Jr. is being fed by and is feeding its signal to. But in the right chain of reproduction—say the Voxativ 9.87 fed by Zanden’s Classic electronics and wired with Voxativ’s own cables or the Magico M3 fed by Constellation, Soulution, or ARC electronics and wired with Synergistic Research or Crystal Cable—the illusion of hearing a real piano is so profound that you could almost literally draw a diagram of how a piano’s keys and pedals work, both mechanically and sonically, on the basis of what you’re hearing, and write a detailed essay about how Doveman Bartlett’s touch on keys and pedals with fingers and feet vary the prominence and expressiveness of his accompaniment (and the effects that accompaniment have on the emotional weight of the words being sung). Via the Air Tight Opus 1 or the Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement cartridges, the Invictus Jr. retrieves such an abundance of information, delivered with such profound neutrality, that the piano and the way it works and is being played are not just present sonically but very nearly physically. 

Now I should note that a piano recorded close up is not the same sonic entity as an un-mic’d piano heard at a greater distance. Closely mic’d recordings generally pick up more “mechanical” detail than our ears do when we’re sitting in a recital hall. (Having literally just heard the immortal Leon Fleisher playing Bach, Mozart, and Chopin in concert, I can avow that from where I was sitting in Werner Hall his Steinway concert grand did not sound like Bartlett’s piano in Electric Ladyland Studio.) The point here being that “recorded realism” is almost always a bit different than “concert-hall realism.” And yet, allowing for the microphones and their placement and the differences in venues, when a component is still able to deliver the recorded “parts” it is reproducing in a way that allows for the ear/mind’s magical gestalt shift or regrouping of those parts into a realistic whole, it is doing something extraordinary. Indeed, being fooled momentarily by a stereophonic illusion while still hearing the differences between mic’d and purely acoustic, between recital hall and recording studio, just means you’re not only experiencing the gestalt shift that generates the illusion of the absolute sound; you’re also hearing the way a venue and a recording technique augments or diminishes the purely acoustic sound of instruments (i.e., you’re also hearing what I’ve called “fidelity to sources”).

Lest you think the Invictus Jr.’s magic act is restricted to one closely mic’d recording, let me assure you that is not the case. Its amazingly abundant recovery, and uncannily neutral delivery, of sonic information can make virtually any instrument or combo of instruments on very-well-recorded LPs sound “there.” From Gene Ammons’ sax on Boss Tenor [Prestige] to Chet Baker’s whispery tenor (or counter-tenor) on Chet Baker Sings [Blue Note] to David Abel’s Guarnerius and Julie Steinberg’s Hamburg Steinway D on the Debussy Sonata [Wilson Audiophile] to Belafonte and his terrific horn section on Belafonte at Carnegie Hall [Analogue Productions], to The Band’s Richard Manuel’s vocal and piano on “The Shape I’m In,” the Invictus Jr. is able to gestalt-shift you into an alternate universe where recorded artists sound “real,” and do so without losing a great turntable’s ability to tell you how well or poorly an LP was recorded.

I have any number of terrific record players in-house at the moment—some of which are in the process of being significantly upgraded—and have heard any number of others at trade shows. Without disparaging any of them, I can honestly say that, as of this writing, I haven’t heard another that is higher in resolution or more neutral in the delivery of timbral, temporal, spatial, and dynamic details than Invictus Jr. 

The word is thrown around too freely in this business, but to my ear Invictus Jr. with the TA-9000 tonearm is Gunther Frohnhoefer’s masterpiece—certainly the best turntable/tonearm Acoustic Signature has made and certainly one of the best analog source components you can buy. If you purchased Sr. in part because of my TAS review, well, you still have a great source component—no question. But, to be completely frank, you don’t have Jr.

Specs & Pricing

Acoustic Signature Invictus Jr. Turntable

Type: Unsuspended, belt-driven turntable
Dimensions: 526mm x 262mm x 526mm
Weight: 90kg (power supply, 4kg)
Price: $84,999

Acoustic Signature TA-9000 Tonearm

Type: 3D-printed, gimbal tonearm with Timken aerospace bearings
Size: 9″, 12″
Price: $22,000

FIDELIS (U.S. Distributor)
460 Amherst St. (Route 101A)
Nashua, NH 03063
(603) 880-4434
fidelisav.com

JV’s Reference System

Loudspeakers: MBL 101 X-treme, Magico M3, Voxativ 9.87, Avantgarde Acoustic Zero 1, MartinLogan CLX, Magnepan 1.7
Subwoofers: JL Audio Gotham (pair), Magico QSub 15 (pair)
Linestage preamplifiers: Soulution 725, Constellation Audio Altair II, Siltech SAGA System C1, Air Tight ATE-2001 Reference, MBL 6010 D, Aavik Acoustics C-300
Phonostage preamplifiers: Soulution 755, Walker Proscenium V, Constellation Audio Perseus
Power amplifiers: Soulution 711, Constellation Audio Hercules II Stereo, MBL 9008 A, Aavik Acoustics M-300, Siltech SAGA System V1/P1, Odyssey Audio Stratos, Voxativ Integrated 805 
Analog sources: Acoustic Signature Invictus Jr./TA-9000, Clearaudio Master Innovation/TT-1, Walker Audio Proscenium Black Diamond Mk V, TW Acustic Black Night/TW Raven 10.5, AMG Viella 12
Tape deck: United Home Audio Ultimate 1 OPS 
Phono cartridges: Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement, Air Tight Opus 1, Ortofon MC Anna, Ortofon MC A90
Digital sources: MSB Reference DAC, Berkeley Alpha DAC 2 
Cables and interconnects: Crystal Cable Ultimate Dream, Synergistic Research Galileo UEF, Ansuz Acoustics Diamond
Power cords: Crystal Cable Ultimate Dream, Synergistic Research Galileo UEF, Ansuz Acoustics Diamond
Power conditioners: AudioQuest Niagara 5000 (two), Synergistic Research Galileo UEF
Support systems: Critical Mass Systems MAXXUM and QXK equipment racks and amp stands
Room treatments: Stein Music H2 Harmonizer system, Synergistic Research UEF Acoustic Panels/Atmosphere XL4/UEF Acoustic Dot system, Synergistic Research ART system, Shakti Hallographs (6), Zanden Acoustic panels, A/V Room Services Metu acoustic panels and traps, ASC Tube Traps
Accessories: Symposium Isis and Ultra equipment platforms, Symposium Rollerblocks and Fat Padz, Walker Prologue Reference equipment and amp stands, Walker Valid Points and Resonance Control discs, Clearaudio Double Matrix Professional Sonic record cleaner, Synergistic Research RED Quantum fuses, HiFi-Tuning silver/gold fuses


 

Tags: ACOUSTIC SIGNATURE

Jonathan Valin

By Jonathan Valin

I’ve been a creative writer for most of life. Throughout the 80s and 90s, I wrote eleven novels and many stories—some of which were nominated for (and won) prizes, one of which was made into a not-very-good movie by Paramount, and all of which are still available hardbound and via download on Amazon. At the same time I taught creative writing at a couple of universities and worked brief stints in Hollywood. It looked as if teaching and writing more novels, stories, reviews, and scripts was going to be my life. Then HP called me up out of the blue, and everything changed. I’ve told this story several times, but it’s worth repeating because the second half of my life hinged on it. I’d been an audiophile since I was in my mid-teens, and did all the things a young audiophile did back then, buying what I could afford (mainly on the used market), hanging with audiophile friends almost exclusively, and poring over J. Gordon Holt’s Stereophile and Harry Pearson’s Absolute Sound. Come the early 90s, I took a year and a half off from writing my next novel and, music lover that I was, researched and wrote a book (now out of print) about my favorite classical records on the RCA label. Somehow Harry found out about that book (The RCA Bible), got my phone number (which was unlisted, so to this day I don’t know how he unearthed it), and called. Since I’d been reading him since I was a kid, I was shocked. “I feel like I’m talking to God,” I told him. “No,” said he, in that deep rumbling voice of his, “God is talking to you.” I laughed, of course. But in a way it worked out to be true, since from almost that moment forward I’ve devoted my life to writing about audio and music—first for Harry at TAS, then for Fi (the magazine I founded alongside Wayne Garcia), and in the new millennium at TAS again, when HP hired me back after Fi folded. It’s been an odd and, for the most part, serendipitous career, in which things have simply come my way, like Harry’s phone call, without me planning for them. For better and worse I’ve just gone with them on instinct and my talent to spin words, which is as close to being musical as I come.

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