What Hi-Fi? Vinyl Week 2026 is in full flow, and we are celebrating all things related to the format as we build up to Record Store Day 2026 on Saturday, 18th of April.
We are rolling out a mix of reviews, features and buying advice, whether you’re a seasoned vinyl-spinner or taking your first steps as a budding collector.
As part of the celebrations, we’ve reached out to some of the biggest players in the turntable space to ask their opinions on turntable design and where they think the biggest scope for improvement is. Here’s what they had to say…
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“The area with the most untapped potential is vibration and energy management at the stylus–record interface.
"Most turntable design still focuses heavily on the larger, visible elements, plinths, platters, and motors, but the real challenge is what’s happening at a microscopic level where the stylus meets the groove. You’re dealing with incredibly small signals, and any unwanted energy, whether it’s coming from the motor, the room, or even the record itself, gets read as part of the music.
"What’s changed in recent years is our understanding of how energy moves through a system, not just how to isolate it. It’s no longer simply about decoupling everything or making structures as rigid as possible; it’s about controlling where energy goes and how it dissipates across different frequencies.
"Real progress will come from better modelling and measurement of resonance behaviour, smarter use of materials such as constrained layer structures, and designing the system as a whole rather than optimising individual parts in isolation.
"In simple terms, the next leap isn’t about making turntables heavier or more complex; it’s about making them more intelligently controlled systems. Like the new Gyro."
“One of the most commonly overlooked parts of the turntable is the platter bearing. A lot of well-known designs use a near sliding fit – meaning the gap between the spindle and the bearing housing is very small.
"This is used to control the bearing's stability, but the downside is that more friction is created between the spindle and bearing housing due to the tight fit. Friction causes vibration, which acts as direct mechanical interference with the cartridge signal, resulting in smearing.
"The double jeopardy here is that friction is rarely uniform, so it also causes minute changes in speed stability that affect the smooth delivery of the groove to the stylus, where the cartridge is such a sensitive generator (it's tracking a groove the width of a human hair moving side to side at up to 20,000 times a second).
"Minute shifts in speed can be more audibly harmful to the signal than a speed variation that's rising and falling smoothly over a few seconds.
"This is a compromise faced by designers, and also why wow measurements [measure of speed stability] can be misleading on sound quality – you could have a drive with vanishingly low wow, but a high friction bearing, or you could have a low friction bearing with 0.1-0.2 wow.
"One may have measurably perfect speed stability, but with smeared transients due to friction. The other would have clearer transients due to low friction, but slightly less speed stability.
"Finding a bearing design with the lowest possible friction, capable of absolute speed stability, is the challenge, and there are countless ways to approach the problem, conventional and unconventional.
"The key to improving bearing design is a willingness to experiment and a scepticism that measurable results are the be-all and end-all. Rather its about finding satisfying results in audible transients."
"If we're talking about an individual component of the TT system, then probably the cartridge.
"It's a transducer, so it is naturally the biggest source of nonlinearities. A lot of work has been done in the loudspeaker transducer world to improve linearity – largely made possible through multiphysics computer simulation of the mechanical, electrical and magnetic effects in the transducer. There is scope to apply this engineering to phono cartridges.
"However, a turntable is a complex system of components, and they all affect the sound. I believe that advanced computer simulation could be used to build a better understanding of how mechanical vibrations are transmitted through components and component interfaces.
"For example, when a vibration is generated at the cartridge and meets the boundary with the headshell, how much of it is transmitted and how much of it is reflected back into the cartridge, potentially causing distortion? And what about the next component interface? And the one after that?
"Could we optimise component geometries to allow maximum transmission of vibrations? All of these questions could be more thoroughly investigated with the use of advanced computer simulation."
"There are lots of elements that have scope for improvement, according to the overall design and price of the product. Setting aside tonearms and cartridges, which are an entire topic in themselves, I would say motor design and drive electronics.
"The different systems developed due to limitations in synchronous motor quality created so many opportunities to study alternative approaches. We have similar chances with direct drive technology and highly developed servo control systems.
"I feel that blending traditional analogue and digital power supply technology, along with a new motor drive, could prove highly effective.
"Turntables have become an integral part of our entertainment lifestyle, and so wireless connection, along with advanced codecs are a focus. What will help to make that happen is long-term stability and continued growth in the whole vinyl market.
"Helping higher-end technology trickle down to the mass market will assist adoption. I believe it’s important to have an eye on the past and one on the future, to better understand and respect the craft of record reproduction."
"Almost every area off a turntable was already perfectly designed in the end of the 1980s. The biggest improvement would be to use this know-how again. Many current designs are far behind this stage of technology."
"Almost any aspect of a turntable has the scope to be improved, but we need to remember, just like the design of any high-performance product, there are three steps which need to be carefully considered and carried out in order to ensure true improvement(s):
"Fundamental Design – how and what the function and objective(s) of the product are established and specified, that would then lead to the final design.
"Execution – how accurately the final design has been realised and materialised to ensure that it achieves what it was designed to do.
"Verification – how the design is finally tested to verify that it has indeed achieved its objective and performs the way it was intended, or at least to what degree.
"At Vertere, we have always stayed true to the principles and the statements above, and so we know where the next weak links are for any of our models, and we pursue the improvements of each model accordingly.
"To answer the question, it is important to refer to the first principle, fundamental design, as any error or shortcoming in this area, will ensure other attempts in ‘improving’ the performance would just be a sideways move and not really achieve anything meaningful.
"So to achieve true improvement, we must first work on our fundamental design – not unlike Formula 1, in fact.
"Once this aspect has been fully investigated and addressed, then we can attempt the second principle: execution. Here is where we can look at improvements in delivery – the performance.
"In terms of ‘absolute’ performance, let us consider Vertere’s RG-1 Record Player/Reference TA/RubyOne Cartridge/Reference Motor Drive/CALON Phono preamp, all connected with HB Cables.
"This record playing ‘system’ is the only one we know of that retrieves the music from an analogue disc – vinyl or acetate – closest to the L&R master signal that was sent to the cutting lathe to cut the lacquer.
"In this system, currently, the most important component to improve its performance would be the motor. All other aspects have already been optimised, and the motor is the only item that has not been designed entirely from the ground up, despite many aspects of its assembly that we have designed and optimised.
"Designing the entire motor ground-up would allow us to ensure the ‘drive’ of the stylus/cantilever is under our full control, and that should result in an almost indistinguishable performance to that of the master source. Maybe we'll get the chance to do this in the future."
“It is a symbiosis of many components. I would say that if you can achieve a perfect balance between motor control, the drive system, chassis materials and hyper bearing design, then we will see further meaningful improvements.”
“The aspect of TT design that has the most scope for improvement is not materials, or the science of the particular part, but the understanding and the motivation of the engineers/people/designers who are involved.
"The turntable, arm and cartridge are possibly unique in that a working product can be produced relatively easily, as can a working loudspeaker, but a vinyl LP contains more musical information than any other replay format, except for an analogue tape.
"In over 50 years of my life in hi-fi, I have never met a turntable designer who understands the precision engineering intricacies of measuring the minuscule vibration content of a rotating LP that contains varying mechanical vibrations with amplitudes of less than one micron.
"Many books have been written regarding loudspeaker design, and there are even available apps that can produce an adequately designed loudspeaker. There are thousands of articles written on amplifier and digital design contained in past trade magazines, AES papers etc. However, Rega has never found any books or science publications regarding the 'overall' subject of turntable design.
"So, we wrote our own. We have sold thousands of copies. Rega has never received a challenge regarding any of the engineering concepts or mythology in the book, but the world of turntable production is content to copy the overall 'cosmetic looks' of Rega turntables, but totally ignore the real and intricate engineering detail that Rega turntables contain.
"If a real competitor for Rega turntables existed, we would be able to compare innovative ideas, collaborate or compete, and thus improve turntable design. Instead, our world continues to follow the concept of 'that’s how it has always been done'. The heavier the better. Magnetic or air bearings, parallel tracking, adjustable VTA, stunningly beautiful acrylic platters, direct drive, and it needs to cost £300K.”
“We at Pro-Ject are always driven by new ideas to improve sound quality for our customers, whether we are producing a high-end or an affordable product. It’s for that reason we’ve always been amongst the first to bring true high-end technologies down to more affordable price points.
"For example, before Pro-Ject set the standard, you would not normally see carbon fibre tonearms, high-mass TPE-damped main platters, inverted ceramic ball main bearings, magnetically supported main bearings, or proper isolation feet at the prices you see them today. Now, more people expect these types of features thanks to us introducing them on more affordable players.
"Turntable technology is simply about mechanically correct designs. We see this executed in the high-end all the time – but our task at Pro-Ject is to bring that technology to more people. Only through seeing and hearing mechanically correct products can more people understand the benefits of a good turntable in their home, but we must accept not every customer can or wants to spend thousands to get good sound.
"For this reason, we do not believe there is one aspect to focus on. Instead, all aspects of turntable design should be continually assessed to see how modern technologies and production techniques can help us make the best, premium characteristics filter down to more products.
"With Pro-Ject, this is why you see (even in our lower cost turntables) almost no plastic parts, adjustable tonearms, height-adjustable feet, and balanced connection possibilities. We constantly are driven to give our customers the best materials and technologies for the price. We see these fundamentals as far more important to long-term pride of ownership for customers, rather than simply delivering as many features as possible.”
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