In 1990, Stereophile’s Dick Olsher declared that the AURA turntable offered:
…..borderline Class A performance….. I’m not letting the Aura out of my grasp. It’s one hell of a ‘table and one that I’d be perfectly happy with until the end of time.
In 2008, Dave Whittaker made his last AURA. Incorporating many improvements over 20+ years, his later AURAs Continue reading
The Aura turntable was designed by New Zealander, Dave Whittaker and was manufactured in NZ and Australia over a period of 20 years from the mid 1980s.
This beautiful example of the Aura, is still in use in California at the home of Skipper Wise – musician, recording artist and co-founder of Blue Microphones.
Skipper’s interesting story about his Aura TT tells us also about the affable and gracious man that Dave Whittaker was: Continue reading
This guy costs US$395 / £198 – not a small sum, but in hi-fi terms, a bargain I’d suggest.
The current Rega tonearms are descendants of the original legendary RB250/300 tonearms introduced in 1983. They still sound excellent. And importantly I think, sound a lot like real music.
I owned (and enjoyed) a Linn Sondek with Ittok tonearm from the same period, for over 10 years, but I don’t remember the Ittok sounding this much fun! Continue reading
These Magnetic Feet are a recent update for the Trans-Fi Salvation turntable.
The original rubber shock-absorbing feet can be replaced with sets of opposing ring-magnets – ‘Mag-Lev’ (magnet levitation) feet.
To my humble ear, this is a significant advancement and highly recommended. Continue reading
From quite a few years ago, this was my version of a Uni-pivot tonearm design by the late Dave Whittaker, creator of the Aura Turntable.
Dave knew that wood would provide good damping – he chose to use lightweight Balsa wood.
He thought also that the open truss structure would be low in resonances. Continue reading
This is a follow-up to my Terminator linear tracking tonearm post in last Feb.
I mentioned Effective Mass and how it differs significantly in the horizontal and vertical planes.
Poul Ladegaard’s “Tangential Tonearm” experimental work is informative here. Continue reading
After using (and enjoying) belt-drive turntables for over 30 years, I wanted to try something new.
Also having used a Koetsu cartridge for more than 20 years, the realisation (thank you, Jean Nantais) that Yoshiaki Sugano used an idler drive turntable Continue reading
