Wilson Benesch has shared further details of a built-from-the-ground-up turntable system it says "sets the new benchmark from which all other analogue replay systems will be judged by".
The GMT One System – named after the reference GMT time zone – is the outcome of the South Yorkshire company's latest collaborative R&D project and has been created primarily to preserve valuable recordings, promising to minimise the impact of transcription and deliver "unprecedented levels of accuracy".
The project was funded with the help of £327,000 of Innovate U.K. funding, won by a Consortium comprised of Sheffield Hallam University (namely Dr F. Al-Naemi, Dr J. Travis and Professor G. Cockerham) and CAAS Audio (helmed by Dr C. Broomfield and N. Broomfield).
Together, they developed a new and "innovative" motor and dedicated poly-phase motor power supply system called The Omega Drive, which patents are being applied for and which comprises many design registrations. Within the motor drive system, poly-phase drive signals are synthesised by a microprocessor-controlled DAC module that controls each critical variable in real-time, while analogue, linear amplifiers then handle the transfer of these synthesised signals.
The GMT One System turntable sits within the R1 rack Wilson Beneach created for it years ago and features its N6 Carbon-reinforced, low-mass Moment tonearm (pictured above), which was developed collaboratively with a team of five engineers at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, Sheffield. We believe it to be one of three tonearms that will be made available, alongside the higher-mass, reference Graviton – made from a single piece of carbon fibre tube – and the low-to-medium mass CTi-30.
The GMT has been designed and developed in-house, which is where it will also be manufactured (including the electronics supplied by CAAS Audio). Pricing is yet to be confirmed but, following previous unveilings of prototype models (one of which we spied at High End Munich back in 2019), Wilson Benesch is hoping to publicly launch the turntable in January. We'll keep an eye out for more details.
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