Naim introduce a turntable - the Solstice Special Edition

Established audio brands adding a turntable to their line-up is an interesting trend which confirms that vinyl is here to stay. Not that I ever doubled that, but for many years all these big companies did. They now seem to think the vinyl market is strong enough to warrant such products. McIntosh (also by Clearaudio) and Mark Levinson (by VPI) immediately come to mind, but I’m sure there are many others.

I assume these products will mostly appeal to the ’one brand life style’ crowd, who feel they miss out if they don’t own a turntable. They don’t mind a hefty price tag, quite the contrary. Nothing wrong with that and as OEM it opens a bigger market for the turntable specialists, which is good for business and keeps the analog industry alive.

I'm pretty sure that Clearaudio builds turntables for other brands.  McIntosh is Clearaudio, is it not?  But Mac's don't reach that price point, even with a great cartridge upgrade.  

@rossb ,

"Funnily enough, the ARO remains the worst tonearm I have owned. I couldn’t wait to get rid of it!"


Although it sounded very organic on the LP12, better I thought than Linn's own Ekos, I can easily imagine it could be a nightmare to use.

Manually cueing turntables can be tricky enough with any deck, but a unipivot arm on a spring suspended turntable?

Not for everyone I guess.

The ARO was certainly an ergonomic challenge. But my real objection was that it sounded awful - thin, lightweight, no bass. Typical of the worst aspects of unipivots. I much preferred the Ekos I that preceded it and the Ekos II that replaced it.

The ARO was certainly an ergonomic challenge. But my real objection was that it sounded awful - thin, lightweight, no bass. 

Thats not my experience.
I own several arms including Aro/Dynavector/FR64S plus many others.
In a direct comparison using the same cartridge on both the Aro & Dynavector there was no lack of bass from the Aro. Dynavector was tighter in the bass, but the Aro went as low and remained tuneful ( good timing ).

I would be looking elsewhere in your system for the thin sound. What I do know of the Aro ( I've owned it for over 20 years ) is that I beleive it has a narrow operating range with regard to compliance & tracking weight. High compliant cartridges and very low compliant cartridges with long cantilevers tend to be less compatible with the Aro.

My Aro has been set up with a custom tonearm lift and on the fly VTA via thumbwheel.