Audiophilepure

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“The Dr. Feickert Firebird has a high-mass plinth and three motors, as I’ve repeatedly mentioned. There’s more to it than that, of course. This new design was based on the knowledge gained from designing two smaller turntables in the line, the Woodpecker and the Blackbird, but the actual blueprint had to be completely re-worked to accommodate the three motors. These motors had to be arranged in a precise equilateral triangle to reduce torque. This, in turn, greatly reduces wobble and rumble. Stability is also enhanced through the brass cylinders embedded in the poly-oxy-methylene (POM) platter.

The bearing was also re-designed to reduce friction through materials that are harder and stiffer than before, resulting in a 80% reduction in surface contact. The plinth consists of two aluminum plates that sandwich a core of MDF and was carefully designed to reduce vibrations generated by the three motors.”

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“Another example of the DC Wood’s evenhandedness (of drive system and unimpeded playback ease) serving repetitive percussive beats well and heightening their impact would be the tambourine strikes and funky bass lines on “Turn the Light” and “Woman” from Danger Mouse and Karen O’s Lux Prima. The variations of her idiosyncratic vocal style, by turns sweetly soothing and primally near-screechy, were also convincingly presented with requisite raw emotion. Ditto the prominent shakers and claves on “Fake Fur” from Calexico. On other tracks the album’s atmosphere was further enriched with rich and robust textures, combined with greater expansion and dispersion (due also in part to the MBL magic) into a wide-open desert space. I also noticed significant low-end presence and enhanced imaging, particularly in the beautifully natural sound and dimensional body of a multitude of instruments: mandolin, guitar, accordion, cymbals, etc. Each emerged from the three-dimensional sonic picture then returned to the ensemble without losing its individual outline and qualities.”

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“With the cartridge pre-mounted in the review deck, all I had to do was ease the platter over the vertical bearing, balance the arm, apply tracking force and fit the hanging-weight-on-a-thread for anti-skating. While this may seem daunting to novices, the instructions are thorough. For you lot, it will be instinctive. The belt is fitted around the pulley and platter, with speed change from 33.33rpm to 45rpm accomplished by moving the belt to the larger, lower section of the pulley.

On/off is a square press-button on the top of the plinth, lower right, and it lights up yellow/orange – to match the belt. The overall look is sleek, with the contrasting finishes on the deck’s upper surface, and those hints of citrous breaking up the Spinal Tappishness of it. And when I fitted the lime-green Jo No5 MC cartridge [HFN Dec ’18]… wow! What a look!”

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“The fact the Alva TT sounds a little bit more enjoyable, slightly more lushly analogue, when hard-wired into a system might be a dog-whistle to sceptics. It could be said to prove that analogue will always trump digital when discussing this most analogue of sources. But it really shouldn’t.

It’s possible to spend £1,500 on a turntable that comes with more hair-shirt suffering than the Alva TT. But for listeners who want a satisfying vinyl experience without jumping through hoops, who don’t want to be dictated to by their own electronics, or who are just turned on by some worthwhile modernity crashing into some venerable technology, the Cambridge Audio Alva TT is the obvious choice.”

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“If I had to sum up the sound of the Transcendence in a single word, that word would be “solidity.” Solidity of imaging, solidity of pitch and timbre, solidity of bass. Starting with imaging, the Transcendence’s portrayal of instrumental images, the space in which those instruments are playing, and the relationship between the sound source and the surrounding acoustic is absolutely stunning. It’s very different from any other turntable I’ve heard. Images have a tangibility, spatially and texturally, that is startling in its realism. Moreover, the Transcendence reveals, with exquisite precision and beauty, the sense of air around the image outlines and the way that the instrument’s dynamic envelope expands into space in three dimensions, lighting up the surrounding acoustic. Amplifying this impression, the Transcendence resolves the decays of notes, along with reverberation, with tremendous precision and finely detailed texture. Cymbals, for example, seem to hang in space for a very long time, and the decays are infused with rich detail. These sonic qualities go a long way toward creating the illusion of hearing real instruments in a real space, and consequently, allowing the system to disappear. ”

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“Of course, there was that surprising degree of quiet—but beyond that, with the Air Force V, the sound was bigger and more fully fleshed out than I had imagined was possible. The bass lines on “Mother Earth Blues” were firm, grippy, and forcefully presented. On the bottom end, bass extension was effortless from both guitar and kick drum, and neither got lost in the generously live room sound. The snare drum snapped and, of course, the guitar transients were sharp and cleanly drawn.

Shortly thereafter, I was off to Europe (see last month’s Analog Corner), but as soon as I returned home, I played a direct-to-disc record that mastering engineer Rainer Maillard had handed me in Berlin: the Joscho Stephan Trio’s Paris-Berlin (BMS 1817V). This “finger picking good” trio of double bass and dueling acoustic guitars plays Django Reinhardt-style acoustic swing music with remarkable speed and dexterity.”

Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/techdas-air-force-v-turntable-page-2#m8mXXiO3gZzHtJrI.99