Acoustic Signature DMC-20

QUICK PROFILE

The turn­tables of the NEO series with three and more motors are control­led by the external, fully digital DMC-20 motor elec­tronics, which is connec­ted to the motors via RJ45 cables. By means of an “Auto­matic Vibra­tion Control” (“AVC”) deve­loped by Acous­tic Signa­ture, the distor­tions caused by the motors are measured in real time and – with a time delay that is imper­cep­tible to the listener – largely elimi­nated by adjus­ting the phase shifts to the motor signals.

AWARDS

OFFERINGS

REVIEWS

Acoustic Signature AVC:
The Automatic Vibration
Control

Every rotating motor generates vibrations. This inevitable force is transmitted to the chassis and platter and consequently has a negative effect on the sonic performance of a turntable. Accordingly, it is important to effectively reduce undesired vibrations or even better prevent them from occurring in the first place – so much for the theory.

Usually, this challenge is addressed by a focus on material selection, special measures for chassis and platter dampening, turntable setup and the design of the entire drive system including the motor selection. Due to budget and/or pricing policies, many manufacturers rarely consider a consistent combination of all the above measures. Apart from that, each developer will find out sooner or later that all those well-known approaches are limited – in terms of effectiveness. The concepts for vibration minimization only work up to a certain degree.

But we wouldn’t be Acoustic Signature if we didn’t go beyond the limits. In addition to our innovative “Silencer” and CLD (Constraint Layer Damping) technologies, we invented an additional milestone to reduce vibrations even further:

The vision of an ‘Automatic Vibration Control’ was long born before the planning of our NEO series. During the development of our new turntable generation we found it was the right time to bring our ideas to life: The high-quality AC motors that drive our turntables are constructed with 2 coils and 24 poles. To make the coils rotate, they are fed with a sine wave and a 90° phase-shifted signal. Unfortunately all AC synchronous motors show production-related tolerances that prevent the poles and coils from being positioned one hundred percent correctly – a key reason for unwanted vibrations. In order to effectively minimize or even avoid these, all production tolerances must be compensated by other means.

This is where our AVC technology comes in: It is able to measure the resulting distortions in real time. Based on those measurements, AVC adjusts the phase shifts to the motor signals – also in real time and fully automatic! These digitally monitored ‘corrective measures’ ensure a drastic reduction of the vibrations – an extra effective benefit for turntables driven by a multi-motor concept.

The sonic gain is so dramatic that we decided to equip all NEO series turntables with that breakthrough technology. Depending on the drive system and the number of motors used, our Automatic Vibration Control is implemented in three configuration stages, each with different intensity: