“We eat first with our eyes”. Roman intellectual and gourmand Apicius said that. And he said it over two thousand years ago whilst munching down on a tofu burger. It’s a notion that could be applied to almost anything that we buy, place in our homes, get hands-on with or, for whatever reason, cannot be tucked away out of sight.
When it comes to hi-fi, I refuse to board the “It’s only the sound that matters” thought train. The last time I saw those words written down was beneath a photo of a hi-fi system that looked like it had been attacked by a baseball bat. Aesthetics matter hugely in the world of audio hardware. And no more do they matter than with a turntable, which often occupies the top shelf of a hi-fi rack or takes pride of place on a sideboard. Put down the record sleeve and the turntable becomes the focal point when listening to vinyl. A turntable cannot be tucked away out of sight.
[Sidebar: why do you think so many digital audiophiles are going ga-ga for touchscreen-equipped network streamers in 2023? It’s because the screen gives them something to look at whilst listening.]
At the end of last year, we ran a YouTube poll to determine the best-looking turntable of 2022. Audio Technica took home the honours with its AT-LP2022: a belt-drive design built around a clear perspex plinth and transparent acrylic platter. Even part of the headshell was made from transparent plastic.
This year, we’ve seen an even greater number of terrific-looking turntables come to market. Putting together a shortlist of four contenders – the maximum permitted by YouTube’s picture poll mechanism – is this editor’s privilege. However, the winner resides in readers’ hands. Voting will take place over on the Darko.Audio YouTube channel but only for the next 48 hours; after that the poll will close and the winner will be announced. The poll is now closed.
NOTE! Two of the four options here are belt drive and the other two direct drive. That’s a pleasantly-balanced co-incidence but if your taste in turntables leans toward topological idealism or price minimisation/maximisation, I would urge you to park those inclinations to concentrate only on these decks’ outward appearance before casting your vote.
Denon doesn’t announce too many new turntables so when it does, they are more of an event than, say, new models from Pro-Ject which come thick and fast. The Japanese company’s new flagship turntable is called the DP-3000NE, features a 9″ S-bend tonearm with a detachable headshell and is directly driven by a switch-mode-powered PWM module. That SMPS, according to Denon, maximises speed accuracy and stability by reducing torque fluctuations.
But look at that plinth. It’s a beast. This is not a turntable for anyone who digs the sleek minimalism of a Rega. The DP-3000NE is built around a wooden structure that’s wrapped in a dark ebony veneer. And the feet on which the plinth sits are no slim Jims either. This is a turntable that nods slightly to the past with a maximalist aesthetic.
Pro-Ject – The Dark Side Of The Moon turntable (€1800)
Go to any hi-fi show and you’ll hear Pink Floyd’s seminal Dark Side Of The Moon spilling from many an exhibitor’s demo room. So much so that even attendees joking about the album’s hi-fi show ubiquity has become its own cliché. See also: ‘Gaucho’, Nils Lofgren, Diana Krall and slow acoustic covers of 90s rock hits performed by D-list girls with guitars. It’s a similar story over on hifi forums: mentions of Dark Side Of The Moon and its numerous re-incarnations and spin-offs are ev-er-ry-where.
And yet those who would play (or talk about) little else seem oblivious to the fact that their collective enthusiasm for DSOTM (and those other well-worn favourites) is slowly chiseling away at the pursuit of better sound, driving it further into a niche dominated by Baby Booming folk whose blinkered desire to stick with the same old same old, year in year out, kills it for anyone with a broader – or different – taste in music.
Yes, Pink Floyd’s 1972 album is a classic – a fantastic and terrific-sounding album – but it’s a long way from being the only terrific-sounding album ever made. We could level the same argument at Wish You Were Here, A Kind Of Blue, A Love Supreme and Aja. And yes, some young people are into hi-fi but their numbers are dwarfed by those listening on the other side of middle age. And so Dark Side Of The Moon spins on. And on. And on.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the hi-fi world does not need any more Dark Side Of The Moon. That’s why I didn’t cover Pro-Ject’s Dark Side Of The Moon turntable when it was formally announced the month before last. However, I did catch an early prototype at Munich High-End 2023 and was impressed – bizarrely – by its understated interpretation of Storm Thorgerson’s cover art. Mercifully, Pro-Ject, like Thorgerson, declined to display the artist name on his work; something that detracted from Pro-Ject’s Beatles and Rolling Stones turntables. We already know who the artist is so let the album art speak for itself. The DSOTM deck is an objet d’art that also spins records — and it’s why this player gets the nod over Pro-Ject’s other looker in 2023, the Perspective Final Edition (as seen in the header image).
Teased at the Britsol hi-fi show in February but not hitting shelves until October, Rega’s new flagship turntable that distills the R&D- Naiad project into a commercial reality: a high-end turntable with a skeletal frame made from carbon fibre and foam core whose ceramic platter is spun by a ‘triple belt’ on ceramic central bearing; the single-piece titanium tonearm not only looks beautiful but apparently rejects resonances more than any other tonearm hitherto built by the UK manufacturer. Oh – and the Naia’s outboard power supply is individually tuned to each turntable at the factory.
The Naia is an exercise in pushing low-mass turntable design further than the Planar 8 (which I own) and Planar 10 (which I wanted but couldn’t afford) whilst retaining those more affordable models’ switchback frame design. Seen only from an aesthetic perspective, the Naia’s sleek and slender plinth is as close as a turntable can get to Future-Fi without giving up on Rega’s core principles of minimising entry points for unwanted vibrations.
Thorens TD124 DD 140th Anniversary Edition (€11,999)
Limited to 140 pieces when it begins shipping this month (or next), the 2023 TD124 DD is an anniversary edition of the 2020 version. Gone, of course, is the 1950s original’s idler drive. It’s been replaced by a direct drive mechanism but the general appearance of this turntable hasn’t changed much since the original TD124 debuted in the 1950s. In its limited edition form, the TD124 DD’s mid-century styling has been enhanced by a 5mm layer of copper added to the aluminium platter with (according to Thorens) the central bearing and motor ready to more than cope with the extra weight. However, those with a keener eye for vintage talking points will note the presence of a high gloss wood veneer skirt and Ortofon’s SPU 124 MC pick-up, here wearing a Bakelite headshell (just as it did back in the TD124’s heyday). The 140th Anniversary TD124 DD is a turntable made to look like something we might have seen seventy years ago but with all the engineering prowess – and German no less – of a turntable designed and built in 2023.
The poll is now closed.
And remember: this isn’t life or death. It’s just a bit of fun.