Clearaudio did advance the art with the development of the magnet thrust system on their bearings and their motors are excellent but otherwise their turntables do not offer much more than VPI tables do. Their tonearms vacillate between pretty good and downright terrible.
VPI's unipivot arms are downright terrible. Their new gimbal bearing arm is a vast improvement. Both VPI and Clearaudio are more interested in cosmetics than performance. Thus the turntables at the bottom end of their ranges give more performance for the money. With their more expensive units both companies become hyper focused on isolating the platter from the motor instead of isolating the entire turntable from everything else in the environment which IMHO is far more important given modern motors are very quiet and are spinning quite slowly.
VPI's unipivot arms are downright terrible. Their new gimbal bearing arm is a vast improvement. Both VPI and Clearaudio are more interested in cosmetics than performance. Thus the turntables at the bottom end of their ranges give more performance for the money. With their more expensive units both companies become hyper focused on isolating the platter from the motor instead of isolating the entire turntable from everything else in the environment which IMHO is far more important given modern motors are very quiet and are spinning quite slowly.
