Why will no other turntable beat the EMT 927?

Hi Peterayer,

We had the Airforce One in our room at CES. The electronics were all Lamm which I'm intimately familiar with. The cartridges were a ZYX and an Ortofon which I use daily. The only unknown were the Graham arms.

The Airforce One is really a Micro Seiki SX-8000 mk2 at heart with some upgrades? or refinements? or whatever you want to call it. Sonically it was pretty close to the 8000 mk2 but it was still under show conditions and things aren't optimized as should be, so further listening is needed with known tonearms. Airforce One has 3 platter options that affect the sound giving the user further options to tune it to his/her liking. Over all its the best sounding table that I know of made today. Of course nothing is perfect and there are some things about its design that I didn't like and don't understand why the designers made these choices. I'll have more to say when I get mine.

Tbg, digital killed many turntable manufacturers almost overnight. The 927 wasn't a dj table, it was originally designed for mastering purposes. It was a very expensive no compromise work horse impossible to copy without in depth knowledge of the product and a production facility capable of manufacturing all the various parts that make a 927, just to get the motor is an impossible task today. It doesn't take much to turn a piece of acrylic on a lathe and stick a cheap servo motor on side and connect it together with a rubber band, that's all most record players are today!

You're right it's not always about money. Products like 927 are personal expressions of self and ego, caring about the audience as much as the object itself. Of course a high degree of competence and knowledge is a prerequisite. The 930 was the money side of things!

PS. You still owe me a visit to your lair Johnathan!

Dkarmeli, EMT still exists; why don't they make a new model? I have had 300B amps and sought and bought even 1950's WEs. There is no question that they are better than the 1960s or '70s WE 300Bs. The '88s are junk. Why is this so? I think because the quality makers were still around and QC was still rigorous.

I doubt if any of these are responsible for the EMT 927.

I'm guilty of not explaining further. The tt is a playback system made up of many different components including setup and dependent on another reproduction chain that includes your listening space; so by definition neutrality is relative and imo not the right adjective. But if you insist, In this relative world, great tts like the EMT 927, Thorens Reference, Micro Seiki 8000, Goldmund Reference, The American Sound and now Airforce One are as neutral as they come. If set up properly in a playback chain of equal quality, sans audiophile tweaks!, you'll never notice any overt characteristics from them. There is no so called Vinyl Sound. No big fat bloated bass, thick midrange, overly sweet highs, or any audiophile attributes that are often the focus here. Basically nothing that stands out and creates a distraction from the music. Instead what you get is the music with its life and soul, energy, majesty or horror as the case may be. Its extremely natural and real, no vinyl or digital sound, no sound, nothing discernible missing or added. Natural or Real is what I would call these wonderful machines instead of neutral.

This Natural is the hardest thing to explain if you've never heard it and even more difficult to achieve. We all know it but we're not always aware of it and tend to ignore it when it comes to things audio. The best way that I used to explain it to my clients was to imagine being across from someone and have a face to face conversation. It could be friendly, passionate with a loved one, adversarial or even boring. Now imagine the same conversation over the phone, Skype, PA system, whatever. The content is the same and many of the emotions are there but the experience is totally totally different. Today we can look at someone through the monitor, feel and express love for them but its just not the same as looking them int the eye while saying the same words or better still, being able to put your arms around that person or their neck as the case may be. Under the right circumstances this Natural/Real experience is what the EMT 927 or the American Sound will give you, more so than any other piece of equipment that I heard and there lies the magic for me. Look somewhere else if your definition of audio nirvana is based on the latest TAS/Stereophile issue.