A Copernican View of the Turntable System

BTW RMAF is over. Did anyone listen to the Onedof player? what are your impressions?

best @ fun only

seems the Onedof was not a mayor focus point at RMAF 2011.

Did anyone see big inventions on the turntable design recently?

best @ fun only

Yes, from the former VP of Micro-Seiki (now CEO of Stellavox Japan). He showed up at the Tokyo International Audio Show with a turntable that looked like it completed what the SX's and SZ's started.

I believe that only one prototype (very nicely finished!) exists as of now; pricing has yet to be set.

kind regards, jonathan carr

this sounds very very interesting for me. Boku wa Micro Seiko ga dai suki desu. Dakara kyomiga arun desu kedo sono TT no imagu mitte kudasai.

Ja mada

Although the TechDAS design breaks all of the prerequisites for this thread, who cares when the turntable design is so interesting and focused on performance.

Driven via a woven aramid belt, but with a quartz-referenced, optically sensed servo system. The numerical display on the front of the pinth is a tachometer, and the user can adjust the speed with a dial.

Rather than having separate armpods, there appears to be a solid beam (machined from metal billet) which is dedicated to locking the armboard to the platter bearing and thereby preventing any relative motion between the two. Some of the later Micro-Seiki turntables were made like this.

The plinth is massive and seems to be largely machined from solid aluminum. A pneumatic suspension system has been built directly into the legs of the plinth. The suspension is self-levelling, I believe.

Platter is of two-piece construction, and by changing the top section, the user can choose from a conventional clamp, or a vacuum clamp. The lower part of the platter has a cavity machined out of it, which serves as an accumulation chamber when vacuum clamp is activated. The vacuum seals appear to be made of silicon rubber, but their shape is much like what you would find on the Micro SX or SZ series turntables.

The platter is nominally stainless (in the finest Micro-Seiki tradition), but the top part could be of chrome-copper, brass, aluminum or other materials.

http://www.phileweb.com/news/audio/201111/03/11428.html

http://www.phileweb.com/news/audio/image.php?id=11428&row=1

I have taken more and better photos, but don't have them hosted anywhere. Feel free to email me if you want copies of the photos that I took.

From talking to Nishikawa (the designer and Stellavox Japan CEO), my guess is that the Japanese retail price will land in the vicinity of 5,000,000 JPY.

Pity that the price (which I don't consider to be expensive, given the engineering content of the design) puts it completely out of my reach, and makes me wish that being an audio designer weren't such a poorly-paying profession.

kind regards, jonathan carr