{"id":815,"date":"2009-05-27T19:24:48","date_gmt":"2009-05-27T19:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tedpublications.com\/fr\/?p=815"},"modified":"2009-05-27T19:24:48","modified_gmt":"2009-05-27T19:24:48","slug":"thorens-announce-new-product-the-td-309","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tedpublications.com\/fr\/thorens-announce-new-product-the-td-309\/","title":{"rendered":"Thorens announce new product the TD 309"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nMay 2009. Munich High-End Show<\/strong>.\u00a0 Thorens is delighted to announce that the results of over 18 months of research and development have come to fruition in the shape of the new Thorens TD 309 Tri-Balance turntable.\u00a0 The TD 309 will be available from September 2009 in a choice of Black or Red. Estimated retail price Euro 1000 \u2013 1200.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/strong>
\n\u2022 New innovative Tri-Balance suspended sub chassis turntable
\n\u2022 New suspension system to make setting up easy
\n\u2022 New Team in design and marketing
\n\u2022 Design brief: Performance, Performance, Ease of setting up, Design etc
\n\u2022 Low Noise, Low Voltage electronically speed controlled DC Motor for best performance
\n\u2022 Adjustable belt tension for best performance
\n\u2022 Aluminium sub platter with single line contact
\n\u2022 Fused silica platter for consistency and sound quality
\n\u2022 New low resonance TP92 arm with precision Japanese bearings
\n\u2022 Arm adjustable for azimuth and overhang.<\/p>\n

The Background<\/strong>
\nThe story began with Heinz Rohrer the CEO of Thorens making the decision that the time was right to move from the \u2018stabilise and grow\u2019 strategy of the past few years to the \u2018invest to re-establish position\u2019 strategy.\u00a0 Heinz had always planned Thorens as a three-term strategy.\u00a0 \u2018Recovery and survival\u2019 when he first took over Thorens, then \u2018stabilise\u2019, and now \u2018investment to re-establish pre-eminent position\u2019.<\/p>\n

Of course, the way to create the products to reposition Thorens was key.\u00a0 Advice was sought from many areas.\u00a0 Advice was considered and a radical decision was taken.\u00a0 If Thorens was to develop innovative, performance orientated products it needed a very wide combination of skills that could not come from one person. It had to be a team.\u00a0 The choice of team in some ways was easy.\u00a0 Heinz had already worked with Helmut Thiele on some industrial design projects.\u00a0 Helmut was both a colleague and an old friend of Karl-Heinz Fink. For electronic engineering, the obvious choice was the brilliant Walter Fuchs who worked with Karl-Heinz on some projects.\u00a0 That left product planning and marketing. Karl-Heinz suggested Steve Harris to get a more international team and Heinz agreed after meetings in London and Basel.\u00a0 The team formed.\u00a0 Some with turntable design experience, some not; but they came with the benefit of open minds.<\/p>\n

The Brief<\/strong>
\nThe brief was simple: remember the past if possible but do not let that stop you designing something brilliant.\u00a0 The target customer was a music lover but not necessarily a total audiophile.\u00a0 At the same time, audiophiles should also feel comfortable with the turntable.\u00a0 The primary goal was performance, the secondary goal was performance and after that came the normal constraints: great looks, ease of use, flexibility, price.<\/p>\n

The Design<\/strong>
\nEarly in the discussions about the first model, the team agreed to go with a suspended sub chassis, to design a new tonearm and to continue with belt drive.<\/p>\n

The choice of motor type was left open until a series of tests, both measurement and listening based, could be analysed.\u00a0 The decision to use a low-voltage low-noise DC motor was actually an easy decision.\u00a0 The far lower radiated field, the ease of accurate short- and long-term speed control together with the lack of cogging, delivered improved measurements and actually, more importantly, sonically a lack of thickness in the lower registers that became known to the team as woomf (or lack of woomf in the case of the DC motor). The motor mounts in an anti-vibration adjustable moulding.<\/p>\n

The belt is traditional Thorens: high-precision rubber 4mm wide 496mm long that is ground to a tolerance of 0.03.<\/p>\n

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Tri-Balance<\/strong>
\nTraditionally suspended sub chassis turntables often require skills in setting them up which are often seen as almost black magic to the music lover.\u00a0 It was important that these modern turntables were suited to a modern lifestyle, with all its time pressures, and were easy to optimise.
\nThe system therefore had to have three feet and to be in static balance.\u00a0 Thinking of the future: the design allowed alternative weights to balance alternative tonearms.
\nThe three suspensions are easy to adjust from the top with just a hex driver. The TD 309 benefits from being on a shelf or rack that is not massively heavy, as the suspension is tuned to 4Hz deliberately well below and ideal cartridge\/tonearm resonance.
\nThe suspension delivers the maximum vertical freedom with minimal totally controlled lateral wobble, which also reduces footfall related problems especially in rooms without solid floors.
\nBesides the three feet, giving cause for the name Tri-Balance the whole Turntable, Tonearm and Platter are all precision and static balanced.<\/p>\n

DC Motor Control<\/strong>
\nInitially the TD 309 will be supplied with a Switch Mode Power Supply (SMPS) delivering the necessary 12V DC.\u00a0 This was chosen from many on the basic of sonic performance.\u00a0 Later in 2009 Thorens will launch an optional upgraded linear power supply which will improve performance considerably.\u00a0 The nature of power supplies and their interaction with turntables could be the subject of a white paper in itself.\u00a0 Interestingly, linear does not necessarily beat switched mode certainly with significant price restraints.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Speed control is by an electronic Low-Q high-precision feedback control circuit.\u00a0 Speed is constant regardless of weight of record or dynamic drag from the stylus.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The belt tension is adjustable to allow for belt stretch.\u00a0 Best performance is with the belt as loose as possible before wow and flutter increases.<\/p>\n

Platter<\/strong>
\nThe sub platter is precision-machined Aluminium (ALMG1) with a single ring micro-contact area.\u00a0 The diameter of the contact point (121mm) selected by Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to be at the lowest resonant point.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Massive oversize fused-silica platter chosen for consistency and sound quality.<\/p>\n

Chassis<\/strong>
\nThe base is precision machined from MDF by Computer Numerically Controlled machines to achieve consistently tight engineering tolerances. Very stiff rubber feet on suspension system to stop slipping on shiny surfaces but not to act as a secondary suspension.<\/p>\n

TP 92 Tone Arm<\/strong>
\nThe armtube is manufactured from an Aluminium extrusion that is cold worked and rolled for strength. The armtube is surface damped with a random contact material designed to damp resonances without adding emphasis on any one frequency.\u00a0 Reduced modal resonance.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Arm resonances and bearing rattle were found to be the most obvious but not only key design parameters.\u00a0 The bearings are sourced in Japan from the leading supplier of high quality, high-precision bearings.
\nThe innovative but simple magnetic anti-skate system features zero stiction and zero friction.
\nBrass dual-decoupled counterweight.
\nThe headshell is mounted to the cartridge and arm tube separately to allow 5mm of overhang adjustment.\u00a0 Azimuth setting and an extra 6mm overhang adjustment is available at the bearing end of the tonearm.
\nThe Centre of Gravity (CoG) of the cartridge, horizontal bearing and counterweight are on a line with the tonearm giving good dynamic and static balance.
\nThe arm wiring is known as 5.1 as there is an extra ground to allow grounding of lower arm section to avoid current flowing over the bearings.\u00a0 Arm wires are terminated at two high-quality RCA sockets on the rear of the TD309.
\nArm is medium mass designed for cartridges of between10 – 20 l0-6 cm.dyne<\/p>\n

Distributeur au Canada:<\/strong>
\n VMAX Services<\/strong>
\nCP 8, 1217 Greene Ave.
\nMontreal, QC H3Z 2T1
\nTel. :<\/strong> (514) 931-1880
\nFax :<\/strong> (514) 931-8891
\nhttp:\/\/www.vmax-services.com\/index.php<\/a>
\ninfo@vmax-services.com<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/www.thorens.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 2009. Munich High-End Show.\u00a0 Thorens is delighted to announce that the results of over 18 months of research and development have come to fruition in the shape of the new Thorens TD 309 Tri-Balance turntable.\u00a0 The TD 309 will be available from September 2009 in a choice of Black or Red. Estimated retail price […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-haute-fidelite","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tedpublications.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tedpublications.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tedpublications.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tedpublications.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tedpublications.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tedpublications.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tedpublications.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tedpublications.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tedpublications.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}