PRODUCTS
Genesis Record Player
PERFECTION IS IN SIMPLICITY
Every turntable adds something and/or takes something away. The Genesis Record Player was designed to replay the reference lacquer as close as possible to hearing it on the lathe where it was first made.
Genesis Chief Designer, Gary Koh started working on a turntable because he was "infected" by having access to excellent tape, and then later by the original VPI Vanquish direct-drive turntable.
The process of making the direct-to-disc album Four Seasons in Jazz - Live at Bernie's allowed us to hear the difference between a lacquer, a standard 3-step pressing, a one-step pressing, the direct-to-tape and a digital backup.
The principle of the Genesis Record Player design is to be “as simple as possible, but no simpler.” We begin by eschewing the “brute force” design of massive weight with thick columns of steel and aluminum in favor of a more considered approach.
The objective of a record player is very simple: to rotate a record smoothly without short-term or long-term fluctuations of speed. While short-term fluctuations can be measured in wow and flutter, long-term fluctuations are audible too, but lack their own quantification and are far more difficult to address.
To address this, we went the simpler route of direct drive; thus eliminating the need to design high-precision pulleys and belts. The direct-drive used on the Genesis Record Player is a unique brushless, iron-less, high-torque, ultra-low vibration motor drive system from VPI. To this, we added the Genesis Dynamic Power Delivery System (DPDS) tuned for the purpose.
The motor uses a unique composite stator with embedded electromagnetic coils instead of the usual wire-wound slotted iron – much like our experience of using an air-core inductor in a loudspeaker crossover. Thus, the “cogginess” that is normally associated with some direct-drive motors is completely eliminated due to the absence of magnetic materials in the stator.
The unique zero-feedback drive system from VPI means that there are no long time-scale fluctuations. The DPDS contributes the means to deliver constant and consistent current to the motor drive electronics and absorb the back EMF from the motor (much like how the DPDS delivers current to my reference amplifiers). Combined, these elements give record playback the coveted quality of tape (our reference source).
The music signal as inscribed in a long play record is tiny – a 3dB change in loudness is represented by a physical difference of about 0.1µm (0.004 mil) in the groove. With this in mind, we looked at the magnitude of vibration control on a completely different dimensional scale.
What was needed was the control of micro-vibrations; not the judder caused by bumping into the Record Player, or the tremor of foot-falls on a badly-constructed floor (those still need to be addressed, they are just not the focus of this design).
Therefore, we addressed vibration and resonance control from the point of:
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Stylus/Groove interface
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Impact of sound waves on the structure
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Motor (and bearing) generated noise
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Power supply transformer vibrations
The main component of this vibration control is done using an 11-layer carbon-fiber composite and wood sandwich that we’ve developed over the past 10 years and used effectively for our loudspeaker cabinets. This is the plinth for the all-important motor/tonearm interface. The plinth is then spiked to a HMWA platform and this platform is hung from the superstructure with a low-Q low-compliance suspension system.
The Record Player incorporates an integral rack that controls and manages any air-borne and transformer-generated vibration. Rather than being absolutely rigid, the rack has a slight “give” that absorbs and dampens vibrations generated by the various transformers in the power supply or carried through the air.
Structure-borne vibrations (assuming that the floor is adequately engineered) will be primarily vertical in amplitude. The potential frequency that this will occur at is filtered out by the spiked/hung suspension system. So, when you cue down, there is astonishing lack of vinyl noise when compared to other turntables.
With the proliferation of electronics, computers and digital equipment in the home, there is a lot of pollution on the sine wave of the power supply. This electrical pollution pushes power supplies to work harder to filter out all the noise.
Some power conditioners and many devices shunt this noise to ground, resulting in a noisy ground plane if impedance to Earth is not sufficiently low. Unfortunately, the system ground can be a backdoor for noise if this is not properly addressed. A power-conditioning “Juice Box” delivers pure power to the Motor Drive and the Premium Platinum phono stage. It filters the noise pollution on the AC mains by converting this noise to heat and it isolates noise in the ground plane, and still providing a ground for the tonearm to dissipate static.
Sometimes, noise can come in from the ground (pin 1) of the XLR output, or if a single-ended preamp is used, from the ground of the RCA connector. Such noise on the signal-ground can travel all the way to the cartridge and be amplified by the phono stage. Thus, the Genesis Premium Platinum phono stage is included as a package in the system to ensure that the care taken in eliminating mechanical and power noise does not get negated by in-coming noise from the ground of the output connector.
As a system, the Record Player by Genesis and VPI is designed to be a black-box source of music. It is isolated electrically from the mains power supply, and at the output it is isolated from the system it plays into. Simply the perfect high-performance audio component for your home music playback system.
