Before dropping the needle onto Christine's copy of Sold for Prevention of Disease Only, I shot the record a few times with the Milty Zerostat 3 ($100), a blue, gun-shaped gadget that helps eliminate static. Squeezing the Zerostat's thin black trigger releases positive ions; relaxing the trigger produces negative ions. A complete squeeze cycle results in a neutral static condition—one perfectly in balance, neither too heavy nor too light—and my LPs play quietly. This step in my LP-playing routine grew out of necessity…
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The original V-series products were housed in small (3.75" wide by 1.7" high by 6.7" long), black extrusions, and featured garish lettering in a font that goes by such names as Fiesta and Salsa. The products' names—V-CAN, V-DAC, V-LPS—seemed to dance across their faceplates. The whimsical logos had struck me as a failed attempt by Musical Fidelity to relate to a younger audience. Perhaps they went too far: If five-year-olds were buying hi-fi, the strategy might have worked. The products were affordable, but I would never want them in my home. Was it possible that MF, despite its success at…
Sidebar Contacts
Milty, US distributor: Music Hall Audio, 108 Station Road, Great Neck, NY 11023. Tel: (516) 487-3663. Web: www.musichallaudio.com.
Musical Fidelity Limited, 24-26 Fulton Road, Wembley, Middlesex, England HA9 0TF, UK. Tel: (44) (0)20-8900-2866. Fax: (44) (0)20-8900-2983. Web: www.musicalfidelity.com. US distributor: Tempo High Fidelity LLC. PO Box 541443, Waltham, MA 02454-1443. Tel: (617) 314-9296. Fax: (617) 336-3486. Web: www.tempohighfidelity.com.
Vinyl Flat LLC, PO Box 524, Rose City, TX 75189. Tel: (469) 426-8554. Web: www.vinylflat.com.
Everyone's got their prejudices, and mine are against turntables with box-like plinths and big slabs of undamped acrylic. I have no problem with either in models that cost a few grand or less, but once you get into high-priced terrain, less plinth and less acrylic usually yields better performance. Generally, though, all a plinth gets you is a vibrating surface to transmit or store and release energy. Who needs that? If your high-performance 'table has a plinth, you need to heroically damp it the way SME does in its Model 30, and the way Rockport did in its System III Sirius.
Like my…
A Balanced sound
Leaving aside the Rockport System III Sirius, which is in a class by itself, the only competition in my experience for the Brinkmann's sonic performance, aside from my reference Simon Yorke S7, are the SME 30/SME V, the Avid Acutus, and the Kuzma Stabi Reference. However, the Brinkmann's mass-loaded system was unchallenged in bass performance. I had never experienced such fundamentally correct, deep, tight, articulate, yet delicate bottom-end performance from any turntable, including, perhaps, the Rockport. As the Yorke shattered my then reference VPI TNT back in 1998,…
Leaving aside the Rockport System III Sirius, which is in a class by itself, the only competition in my experience for the Brinkmann's sonic performance, aside from my reference Simon Yorke S7, are the SME 30/SME V, the Avid Acutus, and the Kuzma Stabi Reference. However, the Brinkmann's mass-loaded system was unchallenged in bass performance. I had never experienced such fundamentally correct, deep, tight, articulate, yet delicate bottom-end performance from any turntable, including, perhaps, the Rockport. As the Yorke shattered my then reference VPI TNT back in 1998,…
Follow-Up from April 2012 (Vol.35 No.4):
The Brinkmann Balance epitomized elegance in turntable design when it was introduced more than 25 years ago, and it still does. With its understated architecture, compact and carefully considered shape, and jewel-like fit'n'finish, the maximum-mass, minimal-plinth Balance looks as good as it sounds—and its sound is, in my experience, still near the top of the turntable hill. (I reviewed the Balance in May 2005, Vol.28 No.5, and the less-expensive Brinkmann Bardo turntable in May 2011.) The Balance has been recently upgraded, with a new motor built…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Belt-drive turntable.
Prices: Brinkmann Balance turntable with extended armboard, $24,700; 12.1 tonearm, $7500; EMT-Ti cartridge, $4300; RöNt tubed power supply, $4300.
Manufacturer: Brinkmann Audio GmbH, Im Himmelreich 13, 88147 Achberg, Germany. Tel: (49) 8380-981195. Fax: (49) 8380-981233. Web: www.brinkmann-audio.com. US distributor: Brinkmann USA (2005); On a Higher Note LLC (2012), PO Box 698, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92693. Tel: (949) 488-3004. Fax: (949) 488-3284. Web: www.onahighernote.com.
Bryston describes its SP-3 ($9500) as comprising a true analog preamp plus a full-featured multichannel digital audio processor, and claims that none of those functions compromises any of the others. That statement is a slight modification of the sentence that began my September 2006 review of the SP-3's predecessor, the SP2. It is indicative of the enduring philosophy of the manufacturer that, in the more than five years since, Bryston has worked to create a new pre-pro that fully reflects new developments in audio and video but without compromising analogquality. Audio is extracted from an…
Through the Bryston's analog stereo inputs the sound was absolutely pristine, powerful, and a breath of fresh air. My regular reference discs provided a spacious and stable soundstage with good depth and balance. The SP-3 sounded full and rich, while imposing no undue warmth on the music. I had expected otherwise—my memory and notes told me that the SP2 had a clean but moderately lean tonal balance—so I was greatly surprised and pleased. Indeed, although I did no direct A/B comparisons between the SP-3 and the Parasound Halo JC 2, which sat below it on the rack, my overall impression was…
Sidebar: Contacts
Bryston Ltd. PO Box 2170, 677 Neal Drive, Peterborough, Ontario K9J 6X7, Canada. Tel: (800) 632-8217, (705) 742-5325. Fax: (705) 742-0882. Web: bryston.com.
XTZ AB, Gamla Nissastigen 19, 314 41 Torup, Sweden. Tel: (46) (0)345-20049. Fax: (46) (0)345-20800. Web: www.xtz.se. US distributor: XTZ Sound in Balance USA, Inc., 1298 Lakeview Drive, Romoeoville, IL 60446. Te;" (630) 441-2580. Web: www.xtzsound.com.