Analog Corner

Meanwhile, I've enjoyed the Air Force Two's stay here 100%. It performed as a neutral conduit should, allowing the various tonearms, cartridges, and phono preamplifiers I tried with it to assert themselves, without inserting itself into the sound. And this was an exceptionally quiet turntable. Even using a stethoscope, I could hear no noise of any kind, even when I started up the motor. Speaking of which, it takes approximately 15 seconds for the AF2 to reach and lock to the chosen speed, but it's well worth the short wait, and a fluorescent screen at the front of the top panel lets you know when speed lock has been achieved.

The Air Force Two's speed stability was evident with well-pressed, concentric LPs of solo-piano music. One, "D'ombre et de lumière . . . ," a recital of music by Albéniz, Falla, Granados, and Villa-Lobos by the Brazilian pianist Magda Tagliaferro (1893–1986), got numerous late-evening plays (LP, EMI/Electric Recording Company ERC 012; all-tube-mastered, pressed in a limited, numbered edition of 300 copies; £300 each). Precise stability of speed results in far more than an absence of wow and consistent pitch. It also produces delicacy and precision of attacks, as well as solid, insistent sustain that's reminiscent of the real thing.

The AF2's quietness helped deliver generous decays into aural blackness—and, of course, the complex tonal bouquets that this LP can produce were fully expressed, perhaps thanks to the TechDAS's massive, well-isolated, and critically damped chassis. Overdamping a turntable kills sustain and squelches decays, resulting in a deadened sound. Underdamping lets resonances develop that kill detail, interfere with rhythm'n'pace, and can produce gross tonal colorations—probably the most obtrusive and objectionable sins a turntable can commit. This is why turntable design is a combination of the proper application of technology and very careful listening. From what I heard, I'd say that the Air Force Two's designers listened very well indeed: Its overall balance of all of these aspects of sound struck me as ideal.

In a side-by-side comparison, the Air Force One might produce a bit more weight and low-energy texture and drive than the Two (just guessing), but even driving a system (mine) that goes down low, the AF2 sounded in no way lightweight.

No doubt its accuracy of speed made possible the Air Force Two's sensational image stability and solidity, and well-defined soundstages that vividly expressed the width, depth, and height of the venues of familiar live recordings. When everything locks in the way it did with the AF2, I start pulling live recordings from my shelves and stay up way too late playing them. That didn't happen with the AF1; I reviewed it, then went back to the Continuum Caliburn. With the AF2, as with VPI's Classic Direct Drive, I was happy to let the Caliburn gather some dust (though I happily returned to it later).

I tried many familiar cartridges on the Air Force Two, and I found that its essential tonal neutrality let each express its distinct personality—though these days, the best cartridges don't exhibit gross colorations. The Ortofon Anna, for instance, has more bottom-end warmth and majesty than punch; a turntable or, especially, a tonearm that can't deal with that bass energy will produce excessive warmth that can muddy the bottom end. The Anna sounded full-bodied and weighty in all three of the arms I used for this review, but the Swedish Analog Technologies (SAT) pulled from it the most weight and rhythmic authority. The Kuzma 4Point had the weight but lost some of the texture; the Graham Elite had the texture, but definitely not the full weight.

Anyone who thinks that Lyra's Atlas or Titan i sounds too analytical should hear either on the Air Force Two with any of these arms, but especially the SAT. Both sounded positively creamy in the mids on all three arms. The silky sound of the Fuuga cartridge, which I reviewed in my October 2015 column, was as fully expressed through the Air Force Two as through the Caliburn. (Incidentally, both of those turntables were far kinder to the Fuuga than was Sperling-Audio's $9750 TA-1 arm, which pushed its own lower-midrange muddiness into the silk.)

Just before deadline I received Gregorio Paniagua and Atrium Musicæ de Madrid's La Spagna: A Tune through Five Centuries (2 LPs, AudioNautes AN-1401), a limited-edition reissue of a classic recording from 1980 long regarded as a sonic spectacular (SACD/CD, BIS 1963). The reissue was one of the late Stan Ricker's final projects, and is a fitting farewell from the second master of lacquer cutting we've lost this year. (The other was Doug Sax; Analogue Productions' Chad Kassem bought Sax's The Mastering Lab and is moving it to Salina, Kansas.)

Ricker cut the lacquers for La Spagna at half-speed from the original analog master tapes, using no noise reduction, equalization, compression, or limiting. It took a dozen tries to get it right, and his work was worth the effort. This ultraspacious, spectacular-sounding recording was made in the Chapel of the Imperial College, Madrid, using two Sennheiser MKH 105 microphones and a ReVox A-77 tape recorder. It's mostly dance music of the 15th and 16th centuries, performed on original instruments—the kind of percussion-laden nightmare no phonograph is supposed to be able to reproduce without smearing transients and/or mistracking. The music will knock you out; if your system can handle it, so will the sound. The transparency, spaciousness, transient clarity, macro- and microdynamic expression, and instrumental three-dimensionality and solidity are absolutely sensational.

Listening to these two LPs over and over made me wonder if any analog front end could reproduce them—or any of the other records I played on the Air Force Two—with any greater authority or verisimilitude. Everything I played provided an I-was-there experience.

I loved the TechDAS Air Force Two. It's among the very finest turntables that I've reviewed, at any price (especially a "reasonably improved" one). But other contenders are already on the way. (And next time, more on Graham's Phantom Elite tonearm.)

10 Years After: Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn turntable
It's difficult to believe that 10 years have passed since I first reviewed Continuum Audio Labs' Caliburn turntable, Cobra tonearm, and Castellon turntable stand. Don't let the photo fool you! In the service of someone who reviews audio gear and records, this complex piece of machinery has been beaten up in ways no consumer would ever subject it to, but it has never broken down or presented me with any kind of problem. That's the sort of longevity you should expect from any pricey audio component—especially a record-playing system that costs $200,000—but not all of them deliver. Nonetheless, despite the punishing work schedule I've set the Continuum, it's never troubled me with problems having to do with the motor, speed control, bearing, or vacuum hold-down.

What's more, once I set the speed, it stayed put, precisely. The Caliburn hasn't needed tweaking or constant adjusting or trimming of anything. It's proven to be the reliable workhorse Continuum claimed it was, and it's still my favorite-sounding turntable. Its balance of information retrieval and musicality has yet to be topped, though the Onedof, the VPI Classic Direct, and one or two turntables—now including the TechDAS Air Force Two—are right up there.

At audio shows, when I play high-resolution files I've made of LPs played on the Continuum system, people hear what's special about it without knowing what it is. The Ypsilon Electronics VPS-100 phono preamplifier (just back from being updated, after five years of heavy use and no problems) also contributes to the special sound produced by these files, which you can now hear on my new weekly Analog Planet radio show on WFDU.fm (footnote 4).

So why is my Caliburn in pieces? I'm having a new armboard made to accommodate the Swedish Analog Technologies tonearm, which will replace the Cobra: As good as the Cobra is, the SAT is so much better.

I confirmed that opinion recently at a friend's place, where we listened to his Caliburn rig, then replaced his Cobra with the SAT. Thank God, he and everyone in the room heard what I'd heard here—my friend had bought the expensive ($28,000) SAT arm based only on my review. Whew! This job is a pressure cooker.

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Footnote 1: TechDAS, Stella Inc., 51-10 Nakamarucho. Itabashi-ku Tokyo 173-0026, Japan. Web: www.techdas.jp

Footnote 2: I reviewed the Air Force One in April 2013.

Footnote 3: Graham Engineering, Inc., 25M Olympia Avenue, Woburn, MA 01801. Tel: (781) 932-8777. Web: www.graham-engineering.com

Footnote 4: Broadcast live every Monday at noon EST. Click on the Listen tab, then on Listen Live HD2. By the time you read this, the HD radio channel should be broadcasting and the shows should be archived and available on demand; if not, you can stream them at AnalogPlanet.com.