Newsletter March 2022

In terms of initial impressions, we’ve listened to a lot of turntables over the years, but the Reference Anniversary turntable is a totally different and unique experience. One of our customers said it sounds like the music is just hanging in the room and if you closed your eyes you’d think you were in an intimate jazz club and the musicians were sitting in front of you. The turntable is very dynamic with great control at all frequencies. The bass is tight and articulate and the highs are delicate and well defined. Cymbals have incredible detail and accuracy to them. It feels like you can hear inside the various instruments with a richness and three dimensional feel to them that we haven’t heard before. This is true of vocals also. Everything has speed and an immediacy to it, with no hangover or bloat to the sound. The first impression might be that the sound is a little lean until you realize that it’s just incredibly clean, accurate and transparent with a new level of realism not heard before. We learned that every minor adjustment to the turntable including VTA adjustments, tracking force weight, antiskating made a huge difference, and you don’t have to change the adjustments very much to hear the difference. Because of this we believe we haven’t yet seen what the turntable can really do, and needs more time and experimentation to maximize it’s potential. All in all it’s an  amazing effort from Nagra and clearly sets a new benchmark.

David Michael Audio