Thorens New Reference Rack Black

**Rack only - Turntable not included**

The Thorens New Reference is the result of strive for the perfect rendition of music recordings. The electrical signals in a turntable are created by mechanical vibrations of the stylus of the cartridge while it moves along the grooves of a vinyl record. These vibrations are converted into the sound.

In exactly the same way, all other mechanical vibrations of the turntable are processed and lead to distortion and other unwanted effects. The sources of these vibrations are for example building vibrations, people walking around, the sound waves of the music and self-generated vibrations from the turntable itself. Since it is not possible to distinguish between the actual music vibrations and parasitic disturbances, these must be avoided as much as possible.

The Thorens design team around Helmut Thiele, who is responsible for the construction and design of the new Reference, have taken on this challenge.

With the Thorens New References, for the first time ever a turntable is designed and optimized from scratch together with a fully active vibration isolation system. Thorens teamed up with the German company Seismion, which is internationally renowned for its class-leading active vibration isolators, to create a turntable, that is designed around the vibration isolation system as an integral part of the system. Seismion fully exploited its expertise in active isolation systems used for semiconductor industry, nanotechnology and scientific laboratories, to create a vibration isolation never seen and experienced in turntables before.

The other fundamental part of every turntable is the drive unit. The ultimate goal is to realize the perfect and constant rotation speed of the platter. This concerns both the absolute speed and modulations of the speed around the mean value also called wow and flutter. The Thorens New Reference features a high-quality German-made 3-phase synchronous motor, which is driven by three all linear power amplifiers with 120° shifted sine signals. The motor torque is transmitted to the platter by a belt. The hydrodynamic bearing is optimized by use of lubrication theory equations. In this context the Sommerfeld-number is used, which describes the thickness of lubrication film and the diameter of the bearing. This number is named after German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, who conducted fundamental research in the field of hydrodynamics. A small Sommerfeld-number means the bearing is centred already at very low rotation speeds, which minimizes the wear and ensures minimum out of centre errors like eccentricity and whirl.