21st Century Tech Applied to 1887 HiFi Concept!

In 1887 a dude named Emile Berliner patented the first gramophone that we might recognise today. Before that, Tom Edison of stolen light bulb patent fame, also had a patent, in 1877 for his cylinder phonograph, just a year after Alex G-B made the first phone call. And that was two decades after the frenchman Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville made the very first ever recording in 1850.

Ever since then engineers have been making these devices better and better and despite the digital dawn of CD and the subsequent soaring of resolution making that format itself archaic, the vinyl record will not go away.

I was so happy when CD came along as it sounded better than any gramophone engineering that I could afford and apart from all the coolness and benefits of the format, I was also free from the inevitability of me messing up. MeJulie tells me I am dyspraxic. All I know is that real record players are not automated tone-arm and that I was likely to do damage if left alone with a record player. So I remained almost in awe of the record’s refusal to lie down and die. I mean DAT and MD died, completely… so how come?

Well, it has to do with the mysteries of analogue recording and our hearing. Astonishingly, we keep on learning that we can ‘tell’ about stuff that the rules of conscious perceptive measurement, tell us we cannot. I used to be able to hear the beginning of bat squeaks when I was a lad and thought it normal. The relatively recent development of the super tweeter and recordings and reproduction up to the same neo-bat frequencies have proven that. Folks call it ‘airyness’. The Aphex Aural Exciter that added these breathy super-over-tones was a thing that took advantage of this, way back in the Eighties. And the oldest analogue magnetic tape masters made in studios have been found time and again to have more detail in them than the recordists even knew.

The most famous tragedy of this knowledge was the late Frank Zappa believing what was said about human hearing and 44.1kHz digital recordings and keeping all his material in CD grade digital and binning all the magnetic tapes. It was like keeping a photocopy of the Sistine chapel ceiling.

Thus the gramophone and ever yet higher quality engineering has been a mainstay of hifi writers for all time. And it isn’t going away.

Now here is where it gets bonkers. In my youth, I knew a lad who’s dad was a real HiFi nutter. He told me about LINN, who were ‘just an engineeering company’ and made just this one turntable that was revered, the Sondek LP12. And he had one in his uni digs! He bragged about it and told me it was all about the absolute precision with which it rotated. The makers of the motor were the thing.

Now, here, solidly in the 21st Century, top end audio kit is still often a cottage industry when compared to big tech and designers and manufacturers of top quality turntables will be using motors from precision manufacturers. But those motors, no matter how fabulous, were not made for us and our records, as we are massively outnumbered by the real world and industrial needs. Which means that the power supply inside the turntable chassis needs to control it well to keep it smooth.

To be specific, I am talking about Vertere, who make high end turntables and are lauded by everybody from the utterly impartial no-ads-at-all HiFi Critic to the pay-for-hanging-a-five-star-review-swing-ticket-on-your-stuff-in-shops HiFi mags.

They have got a new device out that adds-on to their turntables. I was sent a press release about it and boggled. For the thick end of three grand (£2,850) Vertere dealers can now sell you a digitally microprocessor controlled power supply unit that plugs into the back of your turntable. So confident are they of the hearable difference from award-winning awesome to, I guess, even more goosebumps, that they offer a demo for customers to try it out.

But what got me was that yes, it MAKES A DIFFERENCE and folks can tell. In decades of HiFi listening, show going and reviewing, there are two flavours of promotional approach. Chord cables alone, use both. One is the emotional impact – “Can you see the look on her face as she emotes into that microphone?” And the other is physics – like Chord using expensive connectors to reduce microscopic contact bounce. Contact bounce is why the ON switch at a power station uses quarter-inch thick gold plated parts and operates in a bath of oil. We can hear that…odd but true.

And when a HiFi manufacturer is able to state in a few bald words that they have achieved something and can prove it, it is only ever done when they bloody can. Nothing abstruse or too poetic, just “Listen – it IS better.”

And this new device, hundreds and hundreds of pound’s worth, could not be more up to the minute. I had chapter and verse from the man, TM at Vertere, as I felt compelled to call them up and ask some daft questions. As often happens, actually getting someone to talk to who is understanding a bit more than every third word, seemed entertaining for him and we spoke of sines and cosine waves and power supply frequencies. I kinda got most of it.. and it all adds up to years of the very best suck it and see R&D and the cojones to admit one approach was not economically viable and to try a different tack, instead. The man has passion and that rocks. Engineers, artists and musicians….. best people, ever! And the best engineers have a bit of the other two in their souls.

The result you would have to judge yourself, and I haven’t had a chance to hear it but admit I am beyond curious. A big piece of my puzzle is whether I will still be able to tell. But Vertere think so!