Audio Technica has made 2022's BEST-LOOKING turntable

foreign or the fear of missing out it's what motivates us to buy today instead of tomorrow and fomo is why I'm talking about a new turntable that was this week announced by Audio Technica and it's called the atlp 2022 and it's been introduced to celebrate audio technica's 60th anniversary in the Hi-Fi business 60 years was that 1962 that's a long time and fomo Strikes Again here because only 3 000 units of the at LP 2022 will be made and like the NAD that we spoke about in the previous fomo episode each one of these turntables will be individually numbered and also like the NAD by the time I would get to a review of this turntable they will probably be all sold out which is why I'm talking about it now and not later down the line when I've got one but I'm also talking about this turntable today because of its looks as the famous saying goes we eat with our eyes first and I think the atlp 2022 is this year's best looking turntable and by quite some margin but hold that thought because we'll come back to it later let's break the new turntable down a bit the first thing we should really talk about is the plinth that's sometimes called the chassis and it's really in place to kind of hold all the necessary components of the turntable together but it's also there hopefully to stop many of the Airborne vibrations or any other kinds of vibrations maybe come to the floor from reaching the tone arm and therefore reaching the cartridge and therefore reaching the phono stage etc etc so the the plinth or the chassis is designed to minimize vibrations and here Audio Technica have gone with a three centimeter thick slab of high density acrylic and the platter upon which we place our record is also made of acrylic but what isn't clear at time of taping at least is if we place our record directly onto that platter or if there's a mat that needs to go on first before we put our record on because a mat especially a felt mat will yeah I guess really kind of spoil the looks of this turntable so I really don't know what Audio Technica have at this Leaf here on the rear underside of the plinth is a DC Servo motor which turns the flywheel which is on the top left of the the plinth which then turns or pulls on the belt that goes around the platter so yes this is a belt drive turntable and many of you familiar with audio technica's more affordable options especially the more popular ones will know that they are direct drive so yeah again just to be clear this is a belt drive turntable but I think it's worth pointing out that it's not whether it's belt drive or whether it's direct drive that makes the sound of a turntable but it's the implementation of that particular topology now unlike many other belt drive turntables we don't have to lift off the platter and move the belt to a different flywheel position in order to change the speed from 33 to 45 and back again oh no that's been a bit of a bug bear of mine with some other turntables it isn't present here what we do get then the bottom left of the plinth is a three position switch which acts as a power on switch to either 33 or to 45. now on the top right of the plinth is the metal tone arm base which gives us tracking Force adjustment VTA adjustment it also gives us anti-skate setting and it handles the lift mechanism of that tone arm the tone arm here is nine inches long and it's made of carbon fiber and I would assume that carbon fiber has been chosen because it's light and it's rigid and to the business end of that tone arm Audio Technica have fitted one of their own at VM 95 cartridges now the interesting thing about this cartridge well it's twofold really firstly it's not an especially luxurious cartridge it's moving magnet but it sells for about around 50 euros in its base configuration and I say base configuration because you can buy different stylus tips for this cartridge now in the box with the atlp 2022 the ATV m95 is fitted with an elliptical stylus tip but also in the Box Audio Technica Supply a second stylus tip with a shabbata profile now if you were to buy this cartridge with its shibata profile stylus tip elsewhere outside of this package it would run you about 200 Euros and the idea is basically that changing the stylus tip changes the sound of the turntable and I would guess that changing the stylus from the elliptical version to the shabbata version will improve the sound quality of this table quite considerably but I'm guessing because I don't know because I haven't heard this turntable because I don't have one yet yet and changing the stylus is nowhere near as complicated as changing the cartridge itself you can just slide the old one off and Slide the old one on super simple now it's crucial when setting up a turntable to make it completely level I know those are the words of Captain Obvious especially to turntable die-hards but you'd be amazed at the number of turntables that come to Market at this kind of price point that don't have height adjustable feet the Audio Technica does there's four of them so for me that's an essential when setting up a turntable because without those High adjustable feet you have to use coins or things like that to level it off and I find that a little bit inconvenient especially at this price point because the atlp 2022 sells for 1200 US Dollars 1200 Euros or a thousand British pounds now for me as alluded to earlier this atlp 2022 is really the epitome of futurefi as much as it can relate to turntables or at least it's closer to something like the rhaegar planar 8 or 10 but those are much more expensive tables but in me saying that I think that this is 2022's best looking turntable I know I'm going to meet some resistant to the comments below because I've already polled you people over on the Community page asking you basically which one of four different turntables you find the most visually pleasing and in that poll I put the Audio Technica obviously I put a regular planar 8 and then I chose two more fairly traditional turntables a project X2 and then also a Torrens TD 1500 or thorins if you're in the USA Germans say torrents and the poll results came back and I've got them here on my iPad and I gotta say I was a little bit surprised because the Audio Technica the new one came in last with 11 of votes and 11 000 people voted on this poll that's a whopping number of people especially in the Hi-Fi World in second place came the rhaeger planar 8 with 21 percent and then just ahead of that with 23 of the votes was the torrent TD 1500. but the clear winner here was the project x2 in its Walnut finish and that got 45 of the votes so to me it's pretty clear that most of you people out there voting in this poll prefer a more traditional looking turntable and will probably turn your noses up at the Audio Technica being announced and released for their 60th anniversary good because that leaves more of them for the rest of us because only 3 000 are being made and I want to try and buy one and I've got to find one I believe the atlp 2022 is already available for sale on audio technica's Us website but you can't buy on their German website it just says contact your local dealer so I'm going to have to do that I don't even know who that is in Berlin so I'm going to have to do some legwork here I'm gonna have to make some effort to get one of these because I really really want to get one basically because I love the look of it right this video is really about the looks of Hi-Fi or the appearance of Hi-Fi gear because I think that's a primary motivator in what we choose to buy and what we choose to use and what we have on display in our Lounge rooms right it's not like a turntable can be tucked away it's a visual focus when we're playing records so I'm making this video also as practice for filming myself but also as a another sort of video about fomo the fear of missing out because by the time I get to make a video review about this turntable it will likely already be sold out around the world so I'm letting you know now ahead of that review because it probably won't come for another two or three months maybe could be a while so I hope you appreciate that I hope you found this video in some way entertaining or useful don't forget a lot of what I do is based around entertainment as well as being information driven and if you can live with that and if you like that then please consider giving us a like down below if you like my attitude to fomo then please consider subscribing to this Channel and as always thank you ever so much for watching foreign

Channel: Darko Audio

Views: 174,039

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Id: kwstIEJ_Gp4

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2022