Nagra sales and marketing manager René Laflamme, who's also a mastering engineer, gave a couple of playback presentations of his and (if I remember correctly) Wilson Audio's Peter McGrath's recordings.

Part of the buzz was around the first outing of the new Nagra Reference Anniversary Turntable, commemorating the Swiss company's 70th year (well, technically their 71st year now in 2022). It had been in development for four years. The platter is made of exotic Exium Aerospace material that was reportedly developed to reduce resonance and/or vibration in Europe's Ariane spaceship series. In other words, it's beyond capable of fulfilling a turntable's most serious sonic demands.

Nagra's reel-to-reel prowess reportedly inspired the belt drive' turntable's design. The motor system deploys dual decoupled DC motors for speed stability. A Nagra Modulometer (below) displays the platter's speed calibration. Speed control is passive and requires no user touch. According to Nagra's website information, an accelerometer monitors the floating chassis for stability before calibration happens. Platter speed is calibrated over a 20-second cycle during real-time playback. "During this 20-second cycle, the platter's speed is compared with a high precision quartz reference," their site said. So that should take care of speed accuracy and consistency.

The turntable uses a hydraulic spring suspension with a floating weight for "an isolation of 3Hz" so the speakers or subwoofers—here, a pair of Wilson WATCH Dogs—don't interfere with playback. "Even if you have a floor that is not solid, you can dance in front of the turntable," Laflamme added.

This analog heavyweight's MRSP? $175,000. It comes with a carbon-fiber tonearm with Crystal Cable's Mono-Crystal silver cable inside. There's also a new Nagra cartridge ($18,500), whose OCC silver coils run directly from the cartridge's motor to the tonearm cable, Laflamme said. The signal was fed into a Nagra HD Phono phono preamp, also brand-new—a prototype actually. It contains a new silver cobalt input transformer that's reported to supply between 20 and 26dB of passive gain. The first active gain stage uses a pair of low-noise EF86 tubes. Those two, two middle gain tubes, and two E88CC output tubes deliver 70dB of maximum gain in a dual-mono configuration. For EQ curves, there's the requisite RIAA and four other curves that are still TBC. Users can select (via remote control) input loading impedances—values from 35 ohms to 1500 ohms—to suit various moving coil cartridges; 47k ohms fixed for MM. The HD Phono is equipped with four inputs: MC balanced (XLR), MC unbalanced (RCA), MM (RCA); the fourth can be either another MC of choice, or a forthcoming tape-head input.

The rest of the rather comprehensive Nagra-focused setup included: Nagra CDC CD player, Nagra IV-S analog recorder (above), Nagra Classic PSU power supply. From the self-explanatory Nagra HD Series: a DAC X D/A processor, a PREAMP preamplifier, and an AMP power amplifier. Crystal Cable Da Vinci interconnects, uh, connected components, along with Shunyata Research Omega line cables; Shunyata also supplied an Everest 8000 power conditioner. Modulum Audio racks and amp stands supported the system. A Nagra VII Anniversary digital recorder alongside Nagra Audeze headphones was shown in a separate display (below).

A couple of Buena Vista Social Club tracks became a satisfying show closer. The HD gear sounded, well, HD: Highly resolved 3D images, convincing sense of life and scale. Full, flawless-seeming music emerged from dead-silent backgrounds in a seamless, continuous flow. Instrument timbres and vocals sounded right. I closed my eyes and felt swept away.

Log in or register to post comments COMMENTS Amazing stuff. Submitted by Anton on June 5, 2022 - 2:10pm I had to pass a credit check just to read this report! I like this part: "Even if you have a floor that is not solid, you can dance in front of the turntable." I admit to liking to do that. Log in or register to post comments Good stuff Submitted by Julie Mullins on June 10, 2022 - 9:45am I like this part: "Even if you have a floor that is not solid, you can dance in front of the turntable." I admit to liking to do that. I do too. Sometimes. But most of all it's nice not to have to worry about even average footfalls. Log in or register to post comments Perhaps the first time I've Submitted by MattJ on June 6, 2022 - 5:50am Perhaps the first time I've ever seen Wilson speakers and wasn't immediately repulsed. They actually look pretty good in black. Log in or register to post comments Pure drool... Submitted by Glotz on June 6, 2022 - 8:25am So striking and innovative in sooo many ways. Kudos Nagra! Log in or register to post comments

I had to pass a credit check just to read this report!

I like this part: "Even if you have a floor that is not solid, you can dance in front of the turntable."

I admit to liking to do that.

I like this part: "Even if you have a floor that is not solid, you can dance in front of the turntable."

I admit to liking to do that.

I do too. Sometimes. But most of all it's nice not to have to worry about even average footfalls.

Perhaps the first time I've ever seen Wilson speakers and wasn't immediately repulsed. They actually look pretty good in black.

So striking and innovative in sooo many ways. Kudos Nagra!