Spin, spin, spin
It was on loan for audition and ended up securely settled on my audio rack. That’s how good it is; the Rega P9, Rega’s flagship turntable product, certainly rocks.
It doesn’t take an hour to be awed by what this turntable can do. The moment its tone arm is cued, and the styli (Benz Micro Glider on my system) touches the record’s groove, it is pure musical ecstasy. There have been countless turntable products I have reviewed, but I only got the urge to own the P9.
I used to think that turntables were meant only to spin, spin and spin; to be as good to go for as long as it is fitted with a reliable tone arm with an equally superb cartridge or if it can provide for an accurate rotation of 33 1/3 or 45 revolutions per minute. The P9 drastically changed my perception.
Engineers at Rega designed a tone arm exclusively for P9’s use: the structurally rigid, low friction RB 1000. This tone arm takes 30 times longer to produce than Rega’s entry level RB300. I believe that there are only two of Rega’s most trusted people who can put together this exceptional tone arm.
The RB 1000 has so many excellent engineering changes over previous Rega tone arms than any produced during the last two decades. Improvements were done in bearing assemblies, wiring and in choice of materials. Engineers have painstakingly worked to lessen mass in areas where it is significant to performance.
It designed the P9 with no monetary limits, making the P9 the best turntable they are capable of producing at any price. With the RB 1000 mounted on the P9, music lovers can thus expect no compromises from their analog musical sources.
The plinth is made of CNC machined skeletal structure sheathed in highly ridged and high temperature stable resin laminates making it a feather-light fiber compound. This translates to improved performance.
The 18mm platter is pure ceramic; the same material used by NASA on the missile nose cones’ insulation tiles of the space shuttle. Next to diamonds, ceramic is the hardest material known to man and costs more for Rega to produce than any of their turntable models.
All these technical innovations done on the P9 are meant to isolate the turntable from noise, a vital factor to a successful analog musical reproduction. Noise, whether from mechanical, electrical or electronic sources, can mask musical details that the cartridge unearths from the record grooves. Aside from having an accurate rotation speed for its platter, an excellent turntable thus has to provide complete isolation from noise.
The heart of P9, however, is its external power supply unit, a computer-controlled quart crystal locked system with microprocessors on all outputs. To guarantee accurate speed stability of the platter motor, two quartz crystal control reference oscillators have been used.
On other turntables, plinths are designed to float on a suspension system to ensure the elimination of motor resonance. On the Rega P9, the power supply has a pure output of around <0.03 total harmonic distortion. This effectively eradicates all vibration from the motor, making plinth suspension a thing of the past, while providing audiophiles a future filled with pure listening pleasure.
* * *
For comments or questions, please e-mail me at audioglow@yahoo.com or at vphl@hotmail.com. You can also visit www.wiredstate.com or you can tweet audiofiler at www.twitter.com for quick answers to your audio concerns.
