At Thrax we draw upon legacy and add innovation in our design philosophy. We have long been drawn by the sound of direct drive turntables and have spend considerable time contemplating our own design while studying the best from the past. Yatrus majors on new concepts and ideas about analogue system tuning and performance.
The Yatrus uses a new motor developed in Germany based in ideas from the old Dual direct drive motors like the EDS1000. This type of motors uses no permanent magnets at its core. Removing the magnetostriction from the motor removes the vibrations caused by permanent magnets entering varying magnetic fields. It is a cogless design by default. This motor was so vibration free and quiet we quickly halted further research on the matter. Differing to the Technics SP-10R concept for a closed loop the Dual drive system uses the induced electricity in the idle coils instead as separate sensor to provide feedback via hall sensors.
The guys that came up with this really knew what they where doing. It is so much clever than other direct drive systems with a reference oscillator or a solution with a servo drive. The turntable while spinning consumes a few hundred mW as it has to overcome only the friction of the Cartridge and bearing. By removing the motor related vibrations and noises Yatrus really makes the background quieter.
The mechanical construction of the table is unique as all the plates are held in place by a special bonding material. All turntable components are made of aluminium with the exception of the feet and platter top. The motor is mounted on a plate that rests on top of another plate connected to the base plate via the 3 pillars. While the tonearm is mounted on a separate plate resting on top of the base. There is no “hard” connection between the motor, tonearm or base. This was designed for vibration and energy absorption. The chassis is absolutely dead quiet and immune to any airborne or structural vibration. The goal with this damping and isolation was to prevent energy reflection and vibration coupling between the plates. When the needle is in the groove it transmits the vibrations to the cartridge, most of this energy is converted to signal but a part of those vibrations excite the cartridge body itself and get energy transmitted to the next element in the chain, the tonearm. The vibration traveling along the tonearm wand towards the bearing gets split again in two when it reaches it and part continues to the arm pillar finally reaching the arm base, again as part is reflected back to the tonearm tube going back to the cartridge making it move creating an unwanted and delayed signal known as reflected energy. The goal of the design was to absorb as much of the energy as possible in the arm base, so the amount of reflected energy back to the cartridge is minimised. The audibility of this effect is great.
The third unique feature is the high loss ultra low resonance suspension. The table was made to stand on 3 feet that always make contact with the surface they are on. We built a levelling bubble in the table plinth for easy levelling. The pillars supporting the structure house the special ultra low resonance gel absorbers. To prevent any twisting motion in the gels the bottom part of the feet are made of Delrin plastic housing a ball bearing each, so no scratches or markings are left on your furniture. The Gel suspension is tuned at very low frequency 6-7Hz absorbing everything above that. Providing absolutely the best isolation available today.
The tonearm mount is centred at 222mm from the spindle making it suitable for any arm with similar requirement.(most 9”) Arm bases for various tonearms are available.
As described above the vibration management of the turntable will take full advantage of a balanced force tonearm design like the Schroedr CB tonearm. (offered as a bundle with Yatrus)
Power to the table is supplied by a standard 24V laptop type power supply as all the regulation and speed control are built in the motor itself. Yatrus supports also 78rpm as we found out a lot of people where missing this feature on their tables.
Much of the performance of a system is dependent on the interaction of the components in it, more so than the performance of the individual components alone. Making them work in harmony to deliver unparalleled sonic performance was the design goal. Done. And now what? Go listen.