Vertere Acoustics MOC Munich Thursday 19th May 2022. Touraj Moghaddam Vertere's founder and chief designer today announced the new Silencer equipment supports. These and an Iso-Shelf are part of the demo record player system in Atrium 4.1 E121.
The Vertere Iso-shelf sits under a record player supported by low profile Iso-balls or the superior Silencers.
Silencer is available now in packs of 3, selling for £895, and sets of 4 for £1195
Silencer the story
A debate has raged for many years about the principles of 'isolation' feet, spikes, and equipment tables. The question is, do they isolate or couple? Or a combination of both? We know that hi-fi products, especially turntables, are sensitive to external vibrations / energy sources. We also know that power supplies and significant current-carrying circuits vibrate in sympathy with the signal (usually music) that they are carrying.
Therefore, there is a reason for supports that sink unwanted vibrations to ground. But at the same time, we know that ground isn't free of vibrations, but in general, they are of very low frequency and very low amplitude. So, it's a complicated minefield filled with far more BS than fact.
Given the vast variation in the design of hi-fi products, it would be unrealistically confident (that is to say stupid) to expect anyone's 'isolation' product to improve the performance of everything. So, no promises on anything other than a Vertere product but a suggestion that the benefits are more widespread from our experimentation.
Silencer combines a hard felt resistive coupling foot, a direct coupling ball and an isolating layer of Sorbothane. From listening tests carried out with all Vertere record players, the Silencer addition, especially with an Iso-Shelf, brought about an improvement in stereo focus, a reduction in background noise and greater LF resolution. The sort of improvement that a significant upgrade in MC cartridge might bring.
Silencers can also assist with levelling as there is approximately 5mm of height adjustability in its design. The range of possible weight that Silencer can support is quite extensive. We have heard sonic benefits supporting the Phono-1 phono stage, which is relatively light, through to the RG-1 record player, which is heavy.
Touraj explains the source of some of his background knowledge
"Our collaboration with music industry engineers has given us invaluable insights into the art of cutting. This knowledge has enabled us to advance our record player design in many ways to extract the maximum from vinyl records.
For example, with his recent remixes of the Beatles albums, Giles Martin – son of the late Sir George – used a Vertere MG-1 record player, including SG-1 tonearm and PHONO-1 preamplifier throughout, to check and approve the acetates and the test pressings.
And we've worked closely with the multi-award-winning mastering engineer Miles Showell: since February 2017. Miles has been using his own extensively customised Neumann VMS 80 lathe, incorporating Vertere cables, to cut normal and half-speed masters for the likes of ABBA, Cream, The Police and The Rolling Stones, and also the 50th-anniversary release of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Beatles (otherwise known as 'The White Album').Working closely with Miles has led to the first releases on our record label Vertere Records. Releases: a three-track EP and first album by Scottish band Caezar, and the first album by Dutch singer/songwriter Elles Springs, which was specially tape-transferred and then half-speed mastered and cut by Miles for our label.
It's only by involving ourselves at every stage of the record-making process that we can ensure our players bring you as close as possible to what the artists and engineers wanted you to hear."
About Vertere
Reducing engineering to its fundamentals, to get you even closer to the original recording.
When aiming to reproduce the complexities of music, it's all too easy to introduce even more significant complication in the engineering of audio equipment, putting in place one element to solve the problems until the whole design escalates into something fiendishly intricate – and expensive.
That's not the Vertere way: coming at the whole problem with decades of audio and mechanical engineering experience, plus close collaboration with the recording and mastering industry, we step back, take a long hard look at the fundamentals, and look for simple, elegant solutions.
That may sound like a simple 'less is more' philosophy, but we prefer to look at it this way: the best audio equipment shouldn't add anything to or remove anything from the original recording. Instead, it should affect it as little as possible; bringing the listener ever closer to what the artist, producer and mastering engineer wanted you to hear.
