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Editors’ Choice: Turntables $50,000 and Up

Editors’ Choice: Turntables $50,000 and Up

Editors’ Choice: Turntables $50,000 and Up

Clearaudio Master Innovation

$62,000 ($32,000 table only)

The key to great LP playback is lower noise (which equals higher fidelity). The trouble is that mechanical resonances transmitted from turntable, motor, and tonearm tend to fight against this goal, adding distortion rather than subtracting it. Not so with the Clearaudio’s Master Innovation turntable equipped with the extremely low-mass, near-vestigial, carbon-fiber, linear-tracking TT-1MI tonearm. This brilliant Peter Suchy design not only effectively isolates the drive system from the platter (the main platter “floats” on a magnetic field above the drive platter, eliminating any points of physical contact—and thus any transmission of friction and noise); it also eliminates the inevitable tracking/tracing error of pivoted ’arms via Suchy’s equally brilliantly designed linear-tracking tonearm. An engineering masterpiece, one of JV’s references, and TAS’s 2019 Turntable of the Year.

Editors’ Choice: Turntables $50,000 and Up

Basis Audio Inspiration

$70,950–$90,200 

(depending on tonearm and vacuum option)

Although it looks like Basis’ 2800 Signature, the Inspiration has more in common with the $165k Work of Art. Sonically, it is revelatory, playing in an entirely different league than the 2800. It is astonishingly quiet, not just in an absence of background noise, but also in stripping a layer of grunge from instrumental timbres. It also seems to allow instrumental decays to hang in space longer, such is its low-level resolving power. When paired with the Basis SuperArm 9, the Inspiration is stunning.

Editors’ Choice: Turntables $50,000 and Up

Walker Audio Black Diamond Mk. V

$110,000

With Walker’s diamond-crystal-enhanced SLT tonearm, revised multi-vented air bearing, substantially improved air-bearing feet, more effective clamp and damping fluid, and phenomenal new pump (which no longer needs regular maintenance and is remote-controllable, to boot), this long-time reference phonograph has taken a significant leap forward in overall sonic quality and ease of use. Gorgeous in tone color, extraordinary at retrieving low-level detail, superb in the bass, and exceptional in soundstaging, the Walker has been JV’s benchmark for the better part of a decade. Even after all these years, it remains the best turntable he’s used or heard.

Editors’ Choice: Turntables $50,000 and Up

Acoustic Signature Invictus Jr. NEO

$122,995 

A couple of years ago, Acoustic Signature introduced a behemoth turntable—the ultra-wide, ultra-deep, ultra-heavy, ultra-expensive Invictus. Quieter and more imperturbable than any analog front end JV had heard up until then, the Invictus sounded uncannily like a tape player. It was just smoother and, to use an HP phrase, more continuous than the competition in every sonic respect. Comes now a far smaller, more affordable, and, interestingly, more advanced version of the Invictus—the Invictus, Jr. Designed over the last two years (the original was conceived better than six years ago), the Junior takes technological and sonic advantage of all that Acoustic Signature has learned in about half a decade. The result is in certain ways an even better record player (harder-hitting, higher resolution) than the Senior for a lot less dough. TAS’ 2019 Turntable of the Year.

Editors’ Choice: Turntables $50,000 and Up

Basis Audio A.J. Conti Transcendence with SuperArm 12.5 

$127,000

The Transcendence is designer A.J. Conti’s radical rethinking of the turntable after more than 30 years of creating some of the world’s best record players. An all-out design, the Transcendence is the result of Conti’s heroic attempt to make LPs sounds like mastertape—his reference in creating the Transcendence. In a design departure from previous Basis ‘tables, the Transcendence is built from stainless-steel rather than acrylic, and the suspension system is entirely new. Sonically, the Transcendence lives up to its name; this turntable has achieved some kind of breakthrough in LP reproduction, rendering the sound of records with a previously unimaginable body, solidity, dynamics, and texture that indeed sound like tape, not vinyl. RH’s reference, and TAS’ Overall Product of the Year for 2019. 

Editors’ Choice: Turntables $50,000 and Up

TechDAS Air Force One Premium

$145,000/$162,000 w/titanium platter

This turntable from the distinguished Asian veteran-designer Hideaki Nishikawa is an all-out attempt to exceed every aspect and parameter of turntable performance. An air bearing for the platter, air suction for the vacuum hold-down, and air bladders for the suspension system triangulate the nucleus of the AF One Premium, the first to combine them in a single design. The sonic results are a background blackness and consequent dynamic range the like of which reviewer PS never experienced with vinyl.

Editors’ Choice: Turntables $50,000 and Up

Acoustic Signature Invictus Neo

$195,995 

Not too long ago TAS’ Paul Seydor reported that the TechDAS Air Force One turntable with Graham Phantom Elite tonearm produced a sound from LPs that was “not likely to be surpassed in our lifetime.” Well…beep, beep! Here comes the surpasser—and, checking his pulse, JV still thinks it’s his lifetime. This incredibly massive (375 pounds of CNC-milled aluminum and brass), almost Mayan-looking objet du son from Gunther Frohnhoefer of Germany is not only the biggest, heaviest, and most imperturbable record player JV has ever come across, it is also the simplest to use (at least, once you’ve hoisted it onto a suitable support system) and, ahem, (alongside the Walker) the best-sounding. Unbelievably quiet in playback, its SLM-constructed tonearm tracks with the precision of a cutterhead, reproducing instruments with outstanding dimensionality, solidity, color, detail, power, pace—all those good things—and turning the soundstage into a veritable diorama of a symphony orchestra, a string quartet, a jazz quintet, or a rock trio.

af_zero

TechDAS Air Force Zero 

$450,000

The Air Force Zero, a 700-pound+ beast devoted to spinning a vinyl platter as unobtrusively as possible, is an immensely impressive creation, a tribute to the ingenuity and seriousness of purpose of its legendary designer, Hideaki Nishikawa. The massive air-bearing platter, composed of multiple layers of stainless steel, gun metal, and tungsten, makes the LP itself look positively diminutive. But the sound that this gorgeous belt-drive ’table produces is something altogether different. It can ramp up to dynamic fortissimos that will shake a room, whether the music is a Mahler symphony or a Led Zeppelin tune. But perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Zero is its refinement. There is a sense of ease to the proceedings, a blissfulness that transports it into a truly lofty realm that perhaps no other competitor can quite match. 

Tags: EDITORS' CHOICE TURNTABLES

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