Timelord

CES 2009

By Wes Phillips • Posted: Jan 14, 2009

Sutherland also had a nifty little record weight/strobe timer, the $900 Timeline. Yikes!

It's an awfully clever little dingus. The body is made of machined Delrin and machined aluminum. Set into the aluminum part is a laser pointer programmed to blink exactly 33.3 times per minute. Slip it onto your spindle, wait for the table to get up to speed and then you play "find the dot." The laser will project onto a surrounding wall and you simply observe whether it hits the same spot every time (spot on) or if it wanders.

Sutherland calls it the "last word in precision," since the laser's accuracy is 2ppm.

Comments

Submitted by Ima Truebeliver on January 14, 2009 - 5:13pm.

Oh, part of me misses the dancing wattage meters of the low fi that started my whole thing in particular; this thing kinda screams the same but on a classier note.And what a machined beauty! Can't wait for the price drop!

Submitted by Ole G. on January 15, 2009 - 12:44am.

Surely not on the stylus! More like on the spindle?

Submitted by KBK on January 15, 2009 - 8:14pm.

It's surprising how important wow and flutter is along with speed stability..and how the ear can hear quite minuscule changes in levels of these aspects of LP playback.Just last week I did a demonstration of how picoseconds of jitter reduction in a widebandwith characteristic or overall jitter reduction can be realized over SECONDS of interval. Seconds. Yes. You read that right. Everyone in the room 'got it'. And yes, I can repeat that to anyone,and the vast majority of folks will understand the difference between the two states. I refrain from saying what the test is/was - as that piece of information is priceless on it's own.But then there is what's in textbooks --and what is yet to be in textbooks. Never confuse the two. As in, don't let what is textbooks define what reality 'might be' -- as you'll never get there that way.