AudioMeca Romance Turntable Plus Romeo Arm - With New Sumiko Blackbird Cartridge

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This is simply a stunning turntable from French maker AudioMeca.

Finished in gloss black acrylic with brass machined parts.

Featuring a high performance Romance tonearm, and a brand new recommended Sumiko Blackbird High Output MC (Moving-Coil) phono cartridge.

Calibrated and working perfectly.

SkyFi is an official Sumiko dealer so you can choose an alternate cartridge at the bottom of this listing; or send in your own for our 11-step in-house calibration.

From a review of this 'table from tnt-audio:

So what else is unusual?

First the turntable. I mentioned the relatively low weight - relative to other expensive tables mind - and please don't imagine it's flimsy in any way, it's just that acrylic weighs less than metal. It is 'semi-suspended'. Rather than three springs allowing a fully floating subchassis, the Romance has foam 'springs' at the front and a spike forms a 'hinge' at the back. In theory this offers less isolation than a true three-point system, but vibrations are supposed to be 'sunk' through the spike and down to the base. The big advantage is that there's none of the side-to-side wobble of a suspended table and set-up, as explained above, is child's play. However placing a stylus onto a stationary record, turning the volume to normal listening level (for me ) and tapping the chassis produced a 'thud, thud' from the speakers, the Orbe sounds more like a gong. So the damping/isolation seems fine.

The main bearing is in the form of a point and needs just a touch of oil on the tip. There is no conventional shaft, just a ring around the bearing to stabilise it and provide only two points of contact.

Now the arm. This is a unipivot and is designed using Lurne's purist approach based on the idea of a 'perfect mass', a concept he's championed for over 30 years. This I will skim over for the moment as Pierre Lurne has promised an interview on this, but by having the centre of gravity only just below (and a little ahead to give downforce) the stylus/pivot axis and a straight arm with mass arranged symmetrically around it, the result is that the arm requires the same force to deflect it in any direction. With a low centre of gravity such as with the Kuzma or Hadcock (and many other) arms, when the arm has to rise to clear a warp the centre of gravity must be raised through a much greater arc, thus increasing tracking force at the worse possible moment, it also acts as a pendulum with its own resonance. Likewise with such a 'perfect mass' the arm can be deflected left and right with equal force - important with eccentric records (all of them). In fact in philosophy it's as far from the Kuzma as it is possible to get with a unipivot..

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