Clearaudio’s £12,900 Innovation Wood is our current reference turntable. Along with the company’s Universal arm and DaVinci V2 cartridge it wowed us when we reviewed it six years ago, and it still does to this very day.
MORE: Clearaudio Innovation Wood review
At first glance, this piece of engineering magnificence seems to have little in common with the company’s entry-level product, the Concept, but they’re more alike than you’d think.
MORE: Clearaudio Concept review
Both use carefully configured wood and aluminium plinths to produce a rigid but low-resonance structure. The Innovation uses exotic Panzerholz wood while the Concept makes do with MDF, but the principle is the same.
There’s also the use of smooth-spinning DC motors and platters made of fancy plastics that can ‘sink’ unwanted resonances away from the playing surface.
The result in both cases is a class-leading sound. These decks share a common sonic signature – responsive, massively detailed and brilliantly articulate. As we’ve seen, that’s not by accident.
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