TT5

Reviewer: Marja & Henk
Financial Interests: click here
Sources: PS Audio PWT; Dr. Feickert Blackbird MKII/DFA 1o5/Zu DL-103; Gold Note Mediterraneo, B-7 Ceramic, Gold Note Donatello [in for review]
DAC: Phasure NOS1 DAC; T+A DAC8 [loaner]
Streaming sources: XXHighEnd; iTunes; Devialet AIR; La Rosita Beta; Qobuz Desktop, Tidal Desktop; Sound Galleries SGM 2015 [loaner]
Preamp/integrated/power: Audio Note Meishu with WE 300B (or AVVT, JJ, KR Audio 300B output tubes); dual Devialet D-Premier; PTP Audio Blok 20; Hypex Ncore 1200 based monoblocks; Trafomatic Kaivalya; Trafomatic Reference One; Trafomatic Reference Phono One; Music First Passive Magnetic
Speakers: Avantgarde Acoustic Duo Omega; Arcadian Audio Pnoe; Podium Sound One; WLM Sub 12; Sounddeco Alpha F3; dual Zu Submission MKI; Soltanus Virtuoso ESL. Shan Audio Lyra S [in for review]
Cables: complete loom of ASI LiveLine cables; full loom of Crystal Cable cables; full loom of Nanotec Golden Strada; Audiomica Pearl Consequence interconnect; Audiomica Pebble Consequence
Power line conditioning: PS Audio Powerplant Premier; PS Audio Humbuster III; IsoTek Evo 3 Syncro; AudioMica Allbit Consequence
Equipment racks: Solid Tech and ASI amplifier and TT shelf
Indispensable accessories: Furutech DeMag; ClearAudio Double Matrix; Franc Audio Ceramic Disc Classic; Shakti Stones; Kemp polarity checker; Akiko Audio Corelli,Costello and Phono Booster; Pink Faun LAN Isolator
Online Music purveyors: qobuz.com, tidal.com, bandcamp.com, amazon.co.uk
Room treatment: Acoustic System International resonators, sugar cubes, diffusers
Room size: ca. 14.50 x 7.50m with a ceiling height of 3.50m, brick walls, wooden flooring upstairs, ca 7 x 5m with a ceiling height of 3.50m, brick walls and concrete floor downstairs
Price of review item: TT3 $5'000 (includes 10" Viroa arm), TT5 $9'500 without arm, $11'000 with Viroa arm (arm length is customer's choice), second Viroa arm $2'600 at any length, Top Wing Blue Dragon cartridge €7'850 

Fitted with optional second arm

Innovation. We love innovation. It's the power of the mind to conceive an idea, then to further elaborate upon it and materialize it into something concrete. But it all starts with an invisible idea. Where do ideas come from?

It's true, many emerge in the shower but that's a follow-on effect already. Prior to receipt of an idea, the mind should be open, unoccupied and definitely not biased. Over time—which could be hours, days, weeks, months, even years—our magnificent brains, somewhere, store tiny snippets of random thoughts. How and why are still some of those really big scientific questions we can't answer yet. Regardless, our brains are incredible storage places. In modern lingo we'd call them data lakes. Contrary to a computer data lake which is used for so-called Big Data, our brains embed all necessary computing power in the same highly efficient gray mass where the data are stored. This combination we often call our wetware. It's the next level of hardware/software fusion already here, biologically.

Rear of TT5 base

In the scientific and computational uses of data lakes, algorithms must sift through all the data to perform a given task or process. Our brains are many steps ahead of what is now possible with artificial or better, assisted intelligence which remains guided and still exhibits very limited self-teaching and self-learning capabilities.

Our biological wetware is far more sophisticated. We can steer our thoughts across years of impressions and nibble on problems to arrive at a solution which is based on experiences now deliberately processed. That's a still fairly conscious task. It gets still better when we take the unconscious data processing of our wetware under consideration. During sleep, we process many of the stimuli we encountered during the day. Our sensory inputs get rearranged and stored differently than we first perceived them. It appears that our brain's synapses as the structures which permit neurons or nerve cells to 'talk' to other neurons shrink during sleep to make room for new memories to be stored. We are aware of only very little of this processing behind the scenes of our psyche. Dreams are a result of this and not many are recalled upon waking. If we recall a dream, we often wonder where the story, smells, colors and other notions came from. Sometimes events we encounter during the following day or days link up to a prior dream like a form of pre-cognition or déjà vu.

Bottom of TT3 upper whose USB controller cable plugs into the rear of the TT5 base

A very welcome byproduct of this 'background processing' is the forming of new neural synapses as pathways between the neurons. Here we encounter the proverbial light-bulb experience as a new insight or even image which pops up spontaneously and unbidden like a flash data string. Now an idea is born. Happy birthday. Make it so!