What's Inside - Diva II SP

Power Supply
Diva II SP raises the performance bar against its sibling Diva II by stealing the power supply from the Volvere turntable. with Avid’s latest generation DSP signal-generating interface, this totally removes the vagaries of the mains power signal and allowing precise calibration of motor speed. Like all Avid’s turntables, each power supply is calibrated to the drive motor, tuning out vibration and maximising torque power, giving you clear, transparent sound with fast and controlled dynamic bass response, everything you need to enjoy your favourite music.

Motor
Machined from solid steel, the stand-alone 5Kg motor housing absorbs any vibration, preventing any getting into the turntable structure. The high torque motor providing the smooth silent operation to rotate the platter, making sure you keep the rhythmic pace of your music rock solid. Completing the motor package is the twin belt drive pulley. Raising the performance level with twin belt drive, the sound tightens up, singers and instruments become etched in their own holographic space.

Clamp
Avid’s single action clamp, crafted from solid aluminium with a stainless-steel grounding point, automatically flattens your records to the platter surface and aids the negative vibration present within the record to pass through the spindle to the subchassis below.

This reduces the noise floor of the record itself, allowing you to hear more information and realism from your cherished records.

Platter
Machined from solid aluminium to the same exacting standards of all Avid’s products, the platter is critical in giving have a high rotational inertia to maintain speed stability. Coupling with the conical shaped bearing cascaded from Avid’s Volvere design, there is no lateral movement as it self-centres. The cork composite mat offers a perfect interface to reflect vibration, retaining it within the record until it passes away more efficiently to the spindle.

Bearing
Following Avid’s cascading approach to product design, Avid employ the same bearing used on Avid’s Sequel and Volvere models to great advantage with the Diva II SP. Allowing optimum vibration transmission from the record to the chassis, your music sounds open, smooth, plenty of detail and dynamic, directly because of the noise normally associated with turntable bearings. Due to Avid’s uniquely designed sapphire jewelled thrust point, there is zero lateral movement which eliminates rumble, a noise common to lesser designs. The bearing is also self-lubricating and maintenance free for life.

Chassis
Avid’s uniquely designed chassis, with optimised rigidity, keeps the tonearm and bearing locked into their respective positions. Any unwanted movement here will result in loss of musical information. A coating is applied to specifically damp high frequency vibration, so that both high and low frequency vibration is time aligned during dissipation, give a clear, focused, and neutral sound.

Suspension
Avid’s resilient coupled suspension offers formidable immunity against acoustic feedback, keeping your listening experience focused and full of detail. Trapped between two layers of Sorbothane, a high absorption elastomer damps both plains of vertical movement. An additional foot layer maximises isolation from the supporting surface, adding another barrier to unwanted noise.

What's Inside - Altus Arm

Headshell
Produced through a precise laser cutting process on solid aluminium, ensuring the highest degree of accuracy in terms of tolerances, and providing a steadfast base for the cartridge, but without the presence of weight reducing holes frequently found in other headshells, which can negatively impact the transmission of vibrations and lead to a distorted sound, especially hindering image focus and sound solidity. The headshell is then fitted to a solid aluminium collar, ensuring a seamless integration with the arm tube, resulting in a heightened sense of dimensionality in the representation of vocals and instruments, offering a more realistic sound experience.

Arm Tube
Ensuring the secure placement of the cartridge above the record is vital to preventing distortions or loss of information in the music. Poor rigidity of the arm tube can result in loss of detail, especially for backing vocals, and to mitigate this, the Altus uses an arm tube with a 2mm thick wall. A rigid arm tube enhances vibration transmission away from the cartridge, reducing the impact of higher frequency vibrations on sound quality.

Bearings
The overall rigidity of the tonearm structure is critical to ensuring faithful reproduction of everything that is captured within your records. In the same way the bearing of the turntable is critical to performance, tonearm bearings are no less vital and directly affect the quality of the sound you ultimately hear.

For this reason, all AVID tonearms are meticulously hand-built and individually tested to extreme limits. High specification ball race bearings are painstakingly fitted and both horizontal and vertical bearing shafts are machined and ground to micron limits to ensure the only movement possible is in the desired directions with almost zero friction and zero loss of sound quality.

Bias
Progressive inner groove distortion is something that occurs as the platter rotates and centripetal forces pull the tonearm towards the centre of the record. This causes the stylus to have an imbalanced pressure on the groove wall and can result in a distorted sound.

Bias adjustment is a mechanism that counteracts this, however as the centripetal force is not the same across the record the amount of force required will be different, with more force required towards the centre.

Our tonearms designs have a mechanism which will increase force gradually to counteract the centripetal affect as it gets closer to the centre, so your musical enjoyment remains constant from start to finish.