High End Direct Drive Turntable.

Hi,

I have recently read a glowing review of a newish direct turntable. The Grand Prix Audio Monaco turntable. With all the interest in old direct drives, it is good to see someone having a go with a new deck. The downside is that it is not cheap. Just a few pennies at £12,000.





The deck features a carbon fibre plinth, an oil supended bearing, low speed error, dc motor and a floating platter.

http://www.grandprixaudio.com/prod_monaco_turntable.php


A white paper on the deck is here.

http://www.grandprixaudio.com/Monaco-Turntable-Whitepaper.pdf

Will we see more companies having a go?

SCIDB

 

Would love to hear a Brinkmann Oasis.... Direct Drive, Breuer-style arm and Brinkmann/EMT cart for £3.5k. Never seen a review of it yet.

 

Hi,

I was thinking about the Brinkmann as well. There isn't much info on it. I'm not sure that it is being made at the moment. It is not on the Brinkmann website in germany but it is on the Audio salon website and the Brinkmann USA site. It is not mentioned on the Symmetry Audio (UK importers) website.


SCIDB

 

The 'oasis ' was on static display ( I never saw it playing while I was in the room anyway ) at Munich last year, I seem to rememeber that the price is going to be pretty similar to the La Grange though.
Re the Monaco, Ralph ( Cessaro ) used one at CES this year through Zanden electronics, he said it was ok! Fremer thought it less than ok in his Stereophile review.

 

no surprise there really

 

Hi,

I've just read the Michael Fremer review from Stereophile. Very interesting. He likes certain aspects of it's performance but not others.

http://www.stereophile.com/turntables/1107gp/

SCIDB

 

Brinkmann Oasis is not £3.5K. More like €10K.

Technics is obviously massively better value. All boutique dd's are getting on for five figures.

 

Audiosalon have it listed at £3.5k on their website.... but given that the arm alone costs about £2800 and the cart isn't exactly cheap then I think that is a bit optimistic.

Should be getting my SP-10 soon... I wish Slatedeck would answer the phone!

 

Try sending an email from their site (if you haven't already). Darren was good at getting back to me.

 

Slatedeck's SP-10 plinths cost £1400, I heard. IIRC, someone on ZG paid less than £300 for a slate plinth from a stone merchant (with two levels of slate and plywood).

 

Just came across the Teres Certus Model 450 ($13,700 - $14,700)

"The new Certus Turntable employs a unique magnetic damped multi-phase synchronous drive system to directly drive a massive, heavily damped brass and hardwood platter. The patent pending Certus drive systems innovative approach eliminates speed and timing distortions inherent in other drive systems".

Staying with the SP-10 for now

 

Am i missing something here.

"The controller works with an encoder disc on the platter's underside, on which are printed more than 4700 lines, and an optical reader mounted in the vicinity of the armboard. This servo system allows speed corrections over 4000 times per second"

If the optical disc contains 4700 lines then surely only 2600 ish pass the sensor every second.... as the platter only does one revolution every 1.8 seconds or thereabouts.

I can see how speed alterations are only limited by the slew rate of the output devices driving the DC feed to the motor, but the math seems not to add up perfectly. Sure the processing can work faster than the optical encoders, but isn't it just interpolating and guessing where the speed is half the time if it does 4000+ calculations.

 

2600lines /second is 5200 edges... opto should get a pulse off both transitions. A bit of low-passing and voila, over 4K per second. At a guess!

Use more than one optical reader and, like a vernier scale, you could probably achieve pointlessly-fine resolution

 

Hi,

The Slatedeck plinth cost from £595 or £695 for a plinth that can take a 12" arm.

SCIDB

 

See Michael Fremers review in Stereophile http://www.stereophile.com/turntables/1107gp/index.html for a slightly more ballanced, and less 'gushing' review than the one in Hi-Fi+ (thanks Si for pointing it out to me) of the Grand Prix Audio deck.

 

That's for just one layer of 25mm slate. I can assure you from experience that two layers is an enormous jump in quality. Sadly we then get into four figures with Darren. Mine cost £250.

 

Was that direct from a stonemason?

 

£595 is for a 30mm SP10 plinth. +£145 for the 40mm version.

SlateDeck Prices:
http://www.slatedeck.com/turntables/Drawings.html

The twin plinths are for the Garrards & Lencos, Darren may be able to do twin plinths for the SP10 but I'm not sure if it would be worth it.

 

Yes I just took the template along to my local stone mason and asked them to cut it for me. They did a fine job. It's no different really to a kitchen worktop afterall.

For the cost of a single slab from Darren, I have two isolated with Stillpoints and Risers - the difference in soundquality compared with the single layer is very large indeed.

I am so disappointed by the costs of the Slatedeck. Still the Oswald Mill ones are even more ridiculous.

 

I would imagine £3.5k would be for without arm and cartridge.