Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

Soulines’ choice of DC motor brings the 30mm-thick, 2.5kg acrylic platter up to speed within 2-3 seconds and settles with very little of the low-rate drift often seen with this type of drive format. Our sample was initially running slightly fast but, with fine speed adjustment achieved via two little trimpots buried inside the control pod, an absolute accuracy of ±0.15% is easily achievable with a strobe disc. Wow is low at 0.04% (peak wtd), with a main component at ±3Hz, while flutter is slightly more diffuse albeit adding up to a similar 0.04% overall [see Graph 1].

The tt9’s inverted main bearing features a Delrin thrust pad and stainless spindle running within a brass sleeve – a trusted formula – although the through-bearing noise is just a little below average at –64.5dB (DIN-B wtd re. 1kHz/5cm/sec). More importantly, the damping action of the Delrin sub-platter and main acrylic platter succeeds in reducing the through-groove noise to a very fine –70.5dB. The clamp has little effect here but will still be useful in securing less-than-flat LPs.

The partnering KiVi M3 tonearm’s one-piece (Delrin) bearing yoke and conical tube has a primary bending resonance deferred to an impressively high 175Hz with no obvious harmonic or torsional modes [CSD waterfall, Graph 2]. The high-Q resonance at ~600Hz looks to be associated with the alloy headshell bolted to the narrow end of the tube. Otherwise there’s no counterweight calibration to discuss or bearing ‘play’ – this is, after all, a captive unipivot centred within three ball bearings – but the horizontal outriggers are very successful at stabilising the azimuth of the cartridge during play. Pick-up bodyweights up to 15g are accommodated while the high-ish 16g effective mass suggests it’s best suited to medium/low compliance MCs. PM