Analog Corner

In my January 2014 column, I reviewed HiFiction's Thales TTT-Compact turntable and Simplicity tangential-tracking pivoted tonearm, an intriguing combo from Micha Huber, a talented Swiss watchmaker turned turntable designer (footnote 1). It's a dense, compact, self-contained assembly of refreshingly understated industrial design, and the packaging and instructions are equally well thought out.

The TTT-Compact's particulars, including its battery-powered motor and exceptional ease of setup, are described in detail in that review, which includes a link to a useful animation that shows how the design, as Huber says, "reduces the perfectly tangential tracking to pivot points, while the pick-up cartridge is taken and aligned on the Thales' Circle." (www.tonarm.ch/index.php?page=thales).

Suffice it to say that while the HiFiction tonearm is named Simplicity, its design is anything but. Huber had to solve many problems to make his design work properly, including using two counterweights—one for each of the arm's two armtubes, which slide past one another as the arm moves across the record—and antiskating compensation, the latter needed because, in the outer-groove area, the headshell's offset relative to the bearing produces some skating force that decreases to near zero toward the center, even as the offset angle also approaches zero.

Constructive Criticism and Construction Improvements: In my January review, I wrote, "Because the fragile tonearm wires are already soldered to the RCA jack block, great care must be taken when it comes to this part of the installation, though hopefully your dealer will do this." Admittedly, I somewhat glossed over this surprisingly inelegant aspect of the Simplicity's design and setup, but Micha Huber has since redesigned the tonearm post and its interface with the armboard, improving both and eliminating the problem. I also criticized Huber's Sight Unit, a large jig used to set overhang, because the coarseness of the crosshairs etched into its acrylic top plate made it almost impossible to see the cartridge's cantilever and stylus.

But those problems were minor compared to the sticky bearings on the review sample, and then on a pair of Simplicity tonearms I saw and handled at the 2013 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. I'd mentioned this problem in my review, yet following its publication, happy Thales owners let me know that the problem wasn't global. Still, I doubt that my review sample and the two at RMAF were the only ones with this problem.

HiFiction's new Simplicity II tonearm replaces the original's ruby bearings with micro-ball-bearings, and its armtubes are more precisely tuned and damped. (Interestingly, VPI's Traveler tonearm originally had ruby bearings, later replaced with more robust ball bearings.) The Simplicity's tracking error has been reduced, from 0.008° to 0.006°. And I was happy to see that the Sight Unit is now etched with far finer crosshairs that make setting the overhang and zenith angle much easier and more accurate.

Micha Huber visited to complete the setup I'd begun—given my last results, I can't blame him for flying over to make sure I'd done everything correctly. I had. He laughed, showed me the Sight Unit's new crosshairs, and we talked a bit about the greatly improved arm post and armboard interface.

The Simplicity II performed flawlessly. Its bearing system was perfectly behaved, and seemed frictionless. Everything I'd written about the sound of the TTT-Compact fitted with the original Simplicity last January was true of the new arm, except that the brightness I'd complained of—probably caused by the sticky bearing(s)—had disappeared.

The combo of TTT-Compact ($13,200) and Simplicity II ($9200) was a pleasure to look at, use, and, most important, listen to. Before packing the combination up to ship back to Aaudio Imports, HiFiction's US distributor, I used it to record, as I had with the previous sample, the conclusion of a symphonic work. I then used the same cartridge mounted in the Kuzma 4Point, a conventional pivoted tonearm. By the time you read this, I'll have taken both recordings to the 2014 RMAF 2014 in Denver, to see if listeners can hear the difference between digitally recorded hi-rez needle drops of the same LP played on a conventional pivoted arm and one that produces far less measurable lateral tracking error.

Regardless of the outcome of those informal trials, I feel that HiFiction's TTT-Compact and Simplicity II are—for their sound quality, outstanding build quality, and industrial design—very competitive for $22,400. The combo makes for a very sweet yet detailed listening experience.

Miyajima Labs Madake moving-coil cartridge
Cartridge cantilevers can be made of aluminum, ruby, boron, even diamond. In fact, Robin Wyatt of Robyatt Audio, US importer of Miyajima Laboratory products (footnote 2), once showed me a Sony cartridge featuring a one-piece cantilever-stylus of diamond. Break it and you break the bank. Soundsmith's Hyperion moving-iron cartridge sports a cantilever of cactus needle, which combines superior stiffness and excellent damping properties.

Miyajima Laboratory's Madake moving-coil cartridge ($5895) boasts yet another exotic cantilever design, this one of bamboo—a particular kind of bamboo said to grow only on the mountains surrounding Kyoto, Japan (madake is Japanese for bamboo). Bamboo is lightweight, but exceedingly stiff and inherently well-damped. The cantilever is not 100% bamboo; it combines a bamboo shaft fitted with a short aluminum shaft, to which is affixed a Shibata stylus. For all intents and purposes, the Madake is a Miyajima Kansui fitted with a mostly bamboo cantilever. (I favorably reviewed the Kansui, which costs $3600, in the November 2011 issue.)

Like the Kansui and all Miyajima cartridges, the Madake has the company's unique cross-ring motor, which centers the fulcrum within the coil former. Also like other Miyajimas, the Madake's generator is housed in a curvaceous body of African Blackwood, through which pass long brass bolts, secured to the headshell with brass nuts. You could say that it takes brass nuts to market a cartridge with a cactus or bamboo cantilever, but the proof is in the listening.

Again like the Kansui, the Madake has a mass of 9.7gm, an output voltage of 0.23mV, and a low compliance of 9×10^–6cm/dyne. Its severe, detail-grabbing Shibata stylus is best tracked at 2.5gm, or 0.5gm less than the Miyajima Shilabe ($2995). The Shibata demands a stylus rake angle (SRA) of precisely 92°—or, if you don't use a digital microscope, whatever your ears prefer.

Like all Miyajima cartridges, the Madake's internal impedance is 16 ohms; a good starting point for loading is 10 times the internal impedance, in this case around 160 ohms. Since the 16-turn Ypsilon MC16 step-up transformer presents a 200 ohm load with no loading plugs inserted in its primary or secondary loading sockets, that's how I initially ran the Madake.

Much as I love the rich sound of these Miyajima cartridges, and understand why they're so popular, their sonic signatures—a uniquely understated but not-dull top end and a meaty midrange—make them, in my opinion, ill suited for a reviewer's system, which I feel should more closely approach neutrality.

The miraculous Madake was something else entirely—it took but a few minutes for me to realize that, for whatever reason or reasons, the Madake is not your father's Shilabe. It was a much faster performer that manages to considerably extend the top end without making it sound thin or bright, as the indictment reads against many more extended-sounding cartridges, while at the same time it somewhat reins in the midrange riches that make the Shilabe sound so attractive to some but pleasingly colored to others. The Madake nips and tucks some of the Shilabe's lower-midband-to-midband meatiness and transplants it to the fast, extended upper octaves. The result is the most neutral-sounding Miyajima cartridge to date, but one that retains the qualities that make Miyajimas so attractive to so many.

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Footnote 1: HiFiction AG, Stäffelistrasse 6, CH-8409 Winterthur, Switzerland. Tel: (41) 52-202-43-12. Web: www.thales.swiss/home.html. US distributor: Aaudio Imports, Parker, CO 80134 (2014); MoFi Distribution (2025), 1811 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., Chicago, IL 60660. Tel: (312) 738-5025. Web: www.mofidistribution.com/. Also see stereophile.com/audaciousaudio/hifiction_thales_av_tonearm/index.html.

Footnote 2: Miyajima Laboratory/Otono-Edison, 1-45-111, Katae 5-chome, Jounan-ku, Fufuoka 814-0142, Japan. Web: www.miyajima-lab.com. US distributor: Robyatt Audio, Web: www.robyattaudio.com