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In a world of turntables where bigger is better and biggest is best, the Grand Prix Audio Monaco turntable (or more properly, as you’ll come to appreciate, motor unit) doesn’t just break the rules, it seems to take each one in turn and wantonly ignore, discard or reverse it. It is shamelessly compact, embarrassingly easy and precise to set up, it will accommodate just about any tonearm you might choose and in high-end terms at least, it is ludicrously under-priced. What sort of prop to an audiophile’s ego is this? And I haven’t even got to its greatest transgression, for yes, yes indeed, the Grand Prix Audio Monaco has communed with the devil of direct drive and sold its soul for pitch security like you’ve never heard.
Versatile, practical, stable and supremely easy to use, this diminutive turntable generates a sound of awesome authority, clarity and musical coherence. Its hightech materials and critically damped plinth and platter system deliver an intelligent solution to the mechanical problems of record replay that dovetails perfectly with the supreme accuracy of the direct drive motor. The result is a ‘table that sounds unlike any other I’ve used, virtually devoid of what we’ve come to recognise as vinyl sound. In the review I questioned whether this might be a harbinger of things to come. In performance terms that’s certainly true and now, if rumours circulating are to be believed, it’s true in technological terms too. Sometimes, breaking the mold can be a truly liberating experience.
"...this is the most accomplished, convincing and insightful turntable I’ve used at home."
Roy Gregory, Hi-Fi+ Issue 57
Full Review
"The foundation and consistency provided by such precise speed control allow solo piano a measure of depth and
expression that has to be heard to be believed"
Chris Binns, Hi-Fi+ Issue 61
Full Review
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Grand
Prix Audio. The name is suggestive. Deliberately. It points at decades of hard-earned experience in cutting-edge racecar design. Swift Engineering's high speed moving groundplane wind tunnel was the most advanced testing & research facility in the world when Alvin Lloyd worked at the firm. Alvin Lloyd is also a music lover. Hence Grand Prix Audio. On the racetrack and in one-off competition vehicle manufacture, exacting cause/effect relationships and high-tolerance engineering are a decades-old hard science. To date, millions upon millions of corporate sponsorship have been invested to further the state-of-the-art. Mistakes not only cost victories. They endanger lives. By applying stringent measurements and a systematic from-the-ground-up approach, GPA utterly transforms your music experience at home. From the noisy, adrenaline-fueled machismo of high-speed openwheel competitions into a state of transcendental purity. Where your system is finally empowered to unleash its hidden promise. Stripped of the underlying distortion of resonance intermodulation. When Silence Becomes Presence.
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