Turntable Reviews

International audio shows are a white-knuckle thrill ride. The moment I first entered one of the four colossal, cathedral-like "Halles" of High End Munich 2024, my brain short-circuited. Among the products that gripped my senses that weekend, the Brutalist allure of the BennyAudio Odyssey Turntable ($45,000) spoke to me loudest.

The late Jonathan Tinn of Blue Light Audio, importer of darTZeel electronics and a partner in Playback Designs with DSD expert Andreas Koch, loved vinyl. He approached Wave Kinetics' Matt Schuster and proposed that they together produce a turntable. Matt Schuster came up with the Wave Kinetics NVS Reference turntable ($45,000).

Allen Perkins's Spiral Groove SG1.1 turntable ($25,000) is a remarkably dense, compact, belt-driven design that weighs a surprising 75lb. With the motor isolated inside its 18.5" wide by 15" deep plinth, the SG1.1 has a small footprint, and its height of ca 5", including feet, permits a flexibility of placement seldom found with premium-priced turntables.

Every first love leaves a strong impression. Hopefully it's a good one. Those of us who are phonography-positive fondly remember our first good record playing system, the first turntable-cartridge combo that let the music turn us on. Maybe it was simple, maybe it was fussy, maybe it was unreliable—no matter, it had that special ability to bring the excitement, beauty, and humanity out of the vinyl grooves, through our audio systems, and into our souls.

In vinyl's heyday, Roy Matthews ran EMI's record-pressing plant in Hayes, Middlesex, in the UK. He even had a hand in designing and building new presses for the company. But when EMI shut down their plant and scrapped most of their presses, Matthews retired. I thought of Matthews when, at the 2013 CES, I spoke with the chief designer of TechDAS's Air Force One turntable, Hideaki Nishikawa.

In the high-end audio industry, the representation of women in professional roles is strikingly low. Yet these women are integral to every facet of the industry, from engineering and design to leadership, proving that their contributions are vital.

There are incredible values in audio, and then there are incredible values. The ones that deserve italics are those like Pioneer's SP-FS52 floorstanding speaker, designed by TAD's Andrew Jones and recently reviewed.