The Townshend Rock 7 turntable
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg/CNET)
The CD player's days may be numbered, but we're seeing more and more turntables. They all share the common design features of a base, platter, and tonearm, but the Townshend Audio Rock 7 turntable is decidely less common: in addition to those three components, the Rock 7 employs proprietary features, mounted on the front of the tonearm, ahead of the phono cartridge. The cartridge and its needle are designed to convert the record groove's tiniest wiggles into electrical signals, but on other turntables the tonearm is unsupported and free to vibrate at the cartridge end, so some musical details are lost. That's where the Rock 7's curved trough comes into play (see picture below). The small paddle mounted on the front of the tonearm sits in a viscous fluid bath in the trough as the LP is being played, and the fluid absorbs deleterious energy from the cartridge. I admit the concept might at first sound totally bizarre, but it really works. The technology has been featured on Townshend's Rock turntables for more than 30 years to hush LP surface noise, clicks, and pops. Indeed, LPs seem quieter played on a Rock 7.
Townshend turntables have always been very expensive, and the $3,200 Rock 7 (the tonearm and cartridge are not included in the price) certainly qualifies as costly,... [Read more]
via CNET http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cnet/NnTv/~3/A_qIgzZGhe0/
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