From the Vault

Few brands have been more dedicated to perfection than Alphason. Although the company is now also very successful as a supplier of hi-fi furniture, and has launched an innovative loudspeaker range, the £1860 Symphony turntable remains a flagship product.

Alphason’s first offering was the HR100 tonearm, introduced in 1981. With some refinements, this became the HR100S, which is still current, with the HR100MCS silver-wired version now retailing at £550. The company’s founder Mike Knowles had developed the one-piece headshell/arm tube concept with computer-aided design work conducted at Liverpool University.

Energy efficiency

All tonearms display mechanical resonances resulting from their physical construction, and which, when excited by the energy transmitted from the groove modulations, colour the sound. Alphason uses a one-piece tube, along with computer-aided prediction of its resonant behaviour, to push the first mode up as high as possible. Another part of the HR100 design was the use of very high quality bearings. In theory, a good pick-up cartridge can read a groove modulation of less than 0.0005mm, but such signals can easily be lost if the play in the arm bearings is of a greater order. Alphason’s solution was to design its own bearings with very accurate alignment and concentricity, which would allow a high pre-load for reliable zero play.

Cover of HFN May 1992

Its first turntable was built in 1983 as a test bed for tonearms, but after much development, the design was put on the market in 1986 as the Sonata, still current at £835 (standard black finish). Though a belt-drive suspended-subchassis design, the Sonata differs in important aspects from other well-known turntables of this type, with a massive cast-iron subchassis hung from three long springs with two motors (only one on some export productions) mounted directly on the subchassis, rather than on the top-plate or main chassis.

Mats off

To achieve rigidity in the platter/spindle assembly, a large-diameter spindle is embedded in the platter to a depth of three times its diameter. The platter itself is more than 25mm thick, and made from a special blend of polyurethanes said to have an internal damping factor of 70%. Dispensing with any kind of mat, the platter is in direct contact with the record, having a central depression to clear the label ‘bulge’.

A small washer placed over the spindle supports the very centre of the label, and a large weight is then placed on top of the record. This weight is machined underneath so as to act only at its rim, so its effect is to flex the record downwards towards the outer edge of the label and thus to clamp the playing area to the platter. The subchassis is made of the same material as the platter and is very thick, while the arm is mounted directly onto the subchassis, avoiding a potential loss of rigidity from a separate armboard.

Alphason’s Managing Director, Mike Knowles, snapped in the late 1980s

The Symphony comes with the Alphason Atlas external power supply, which provides the motors with a clean alternating-current supply independent of mains fluctuations and ‘noise’. The Atlas offers speed (pitch) adjustment, with coarse and fine adjusting screws for both 33.3rpm and 45rpm. The coarse adjusters change the speed by 0.4% per division, the fine ones by 0.02%, so speed accuracy can be maintained to within the latter figure. Fine speed adjustment will compensate for belt stretch over a long period of use.

Going for gold

Outwardly, the turntable is similar to the Sonata, but much improved in finish and general appearance. The plinth is of highly polished black acrylic with no visible joints, while the suspension towers and weights contrast nicely with this in gold plate. The turntable measures a reasonable 454x162x352mm (whd, including lid), though it needs a further 65mm clearance at the rear for the open lid and for the locking five-pin plug which carries power from the Atlas power supply. The Atlas unit itself measures 195x74x355mm (whd).

There are no controls on the turntable, other than a cueing lever for the manually operated arm. For the purposes of this review, the Symphony was supplied as a complete player system, fitted with the HR100MCS (this being a version wired with van den Hul cable) and an Ortofon MC5000 low-output moving-coil cartridge.

Alphason also supplied a suitable support system, this consisting of an Alphason New Concept R3 MDF equipment rack (£80), plus two further stages of isolation in the form of an R1 Isolation Platform (£45) and, on top of that, a GRI (glass/MDF sandwich) Isolation Platform (£85), stacked on their own spikes.

This array does not look as cumbersome as it sounds because the Isolation Platforms match the styling of the main rack, so that the visual effect of a triple top shelf (with a 35mm spacing between the elements) is not unpleasing, especially as the top surface is glass. Care has to be taken when positioning, though, as the sharp spikes will easily scratch the surfaces of the two lower tiers.

Arguably Alphason’s most iconic product – the HR100S tonearm seen here in MCS guise as fitted to the Symphony turntable

The New Concept rack is said to be much stiffer than conventional equipment racks because the shelves are cantilevered from the supporting columns, and form an integral part of the structure. It seems to be good value.

Back in black
Viewed as a complete system, this Alphason player certainly delivered the goods. One of the claims made by the designer is that the turntable (when properly installed) can offer deep, uncoloured bass, and this was quickly confirmed in listening. On classical recordings, the good bass extension was apparent from the system’s proper sense of weight and scale. Other claims in the literature, relating basically to the low mechanical noise of the system and its ability to retrieve very small signals from the groove, were also borne out.

For example, the Symphony did manage to convey the impression of a quieter, ‘blacker’ background; it did manage also to produce convincing ambient detail within a soundstage that remained deep and stable through dynamic changes in the music, and also remained convincing and comfortable over a surprisingly wide listening area; and it did sound crisp, detailed and free from any identifiable thickness or confusion.

Any number of ‘hi-fi’ virtues would be meaningless if the sound failed to come together as a coherent, convincing whole. But in the event, on good recordings the Symphony could offer that effortless delivery of music which makes vinyl still worth listening to and remains hard to obtain from CD. The overall impression was of a system in which tonal neutrality had been combined successfully with an unexaggerated presentation of fine detail and solid stereo.

A 70mm-diameter, 20mm-thick weight was supplied with the Symphony, its underside machined to optimise clamping of the record surface to the blended polyurethane platter below. There was no mat

Taken in isolation, the character of the Ortofon cartridge is nonetheless a little on the dry and bright side, and so this particular combination might not sound so happy in a forward-sounding system, particularly one using small speakers tuned for ‘punch’ rather than bass extension. The subject of bass extension and control leads naturally on to the question of pace or timing. On the right material, a comparison with a Roksan record player system could make the Symphony seem slightly slow or over-polite: certain 1950s jazz recordings, where the rhythm is founded on light-footed acoustic bass, came over with more weight but less bounce. On the other hand, nuances of jazz drumming (cymbals and snares) could be superbly conveyed.

Conclusion

In the Symphony literature, Knowles mentions the controversy over high- and low-mass design approaches in turntables, and refers to the ‘gobbledy-gook’ to be found on the subject of stored energy. He re-asserts the validity of mass damping, as used in Alphason turntables, and there is no doubt the Symphony, well installed, is free of what might be described as the likely failings of high-mass designs, namely a heavy, lacklustre or ‘plodding’ character.

I still have nagging doubts: I can’t help feeling that the use of two motors is akin to what someone once called ‘a complex solution to a simple problem’. It is hard not to be impressed by a turntable drive system that can accept a heavy clamping weight being plonked onto the record without slowing down, although personally, I would rather not have to put the weight on at all, especially when the disc is being pressed firmly against a hard platter.

But then, Alphason’s Symphony is not the turntable for lily-livered felt-mat compromisers. It is designed to get that last level of low-level detail out of the record groove, and its designer will have no truck with spurious euphony. The price is high, but it buys a real advance over the Sonata. Whatever quibbles there may be, the performance of this Symphony is a success.