Turntables — Audio Note TT-Three

The TT-Three is a three-motor suspended turntable from Audio Note UK. It is built on the idea that high torque can come from the motors rather than from a heavy platter, which avoids the energy-storage problems a high-mass platter creates. It shares its lineage with the Voyd Reference and sits above the two-motor TT-Two and the single-motor TT-One in Audio Note's turntable range. Audio Note regards the design as close to the ultimate solution to most of the solvable problems in vinyl replay.

Key specs that matter

Three very powerful German motors are mounted equilaterally under Mu-metal shields on the rectangular base plate. They drive the platter with external rubber belts running around its outer rim, and the separate power supply locks their speed together with a fully analogue control system. Audio Note fine-tunes the three motors against each other by a method it does not disclose and considers this parallel arrangement essential to the result. Its Lexan platter is light and inert, a material chosen because it has virtually no reflective properties and no tendency to store resonance. The sole arm board available is cut for the 9-inch /II tonearms that Audio Note makes itself.

Engineering and use context

The design reverses the usual high-mass approach. With the mass placed in the motors, the energy delivered to the light platter goes into rotation instead of being stored and released as unwanted resonance. The suspended sub-chassis uses a three-point design whose centre point lies exactly at the bearing, the same spot where the inertia of the motors is centred. This removes a common fault of suspended turntables, where the motor and suspension centres do not coincide and the platter keeps shifting between the two. The sub-chassis has three arms. One carries the tonearm in the usual right-hand position, and the other two carry balancing weights matching what the arm and cartridge weigh together, so the load on each suspension tower is identical.

Pairing

Since no other manufacturer's arm boards are offered, buying the TT-Three means choosing an Audio Note tonearm. Audio Note presents this as a deliberate choice, because its tonearms are engineered as an integral part of the complete turntable system.

Alternatives

The Audio Note TT-Three Reference sits above this model at the top of the range, comes with the larger 10-inch AN-1S tonearm and adds an adjustable 78rpm speed.