VPI ARIES SCOUT II (£ 1500)

摘要

Tested with the JMW 9 unipivot tonearm, the Aries Scout II turntable put in a generally impressive performance. Start-up and stop times are very fast thanks to the torque of its AC synchronous motor and traction afforded by the platter's peripheral grooves. With the belt running in the mid-groove of both the top motor spindle and platter, the deck does run a little fast, as illustrated by the shift to higher frequency of the wow and flutter test tone [see graph 2, below]. A 1.1% pitch shift is unlikely to be audible, however, as a semitone represents a change of 6%. Also, as motors tend to run slower over time, it's not uncommon to find them running slightly fast fresh out of the box. More importantly, the generally sharp shape of this peak is evidence of the Scout's impressively low 0.03& peak wow - the 100Hz flutter sidebands being of secondary importance. The higher pivot point of the tonearm may make it slightly more sensitive to record 'warp wow', however.