Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

Founder and Design Director Mark Döhmann spent his formative years working in the aerospace sector. This is a pathway claimed by a large number of audio engineers, but in this case we can see exactly how those experiences have informed the design of the Helix One and Two.

'The parts of an aircraft are shaking and vibrating all the time', says Mark, 'they just want to separate from one another. For example, on take off, the turbines on an A320 created such a violent vibration that the noise travelled up the fuselage, from the wings, leading to a beating effect in the first-class cabin – it sounded like someone starting up a chainsaw'.

That's not the case now, we assume? 'No, but to ameliorate that particular vibration we used tuned mass dampers (TMDs), actually a leaf with a weight on the end, connected to the root of the wing. The airline I worked for was the launch customer for the A320 and we were the first to uncover what was essentially a "passenger discomfort" issue. But left unchecked it could have ended up in fatigue. It's something that aircraft engineers are always looking out for', says Mark.

And the techniques used in minimising airframe resonances are just as applicable in turntable design? 'Yes, engineers will often use passive solutions to deal with active problems – TMDs, constrained-layer damping and also by deliberately deforming a plate (like hand-tuning a cymbal) to address stress in a particular area. We use all these techniques to manage unwanted vibration in the Helix.' PM