Touraj Moghaddam Vertere’s founder and chief designer announced that the new Tempo motor drive had commenced shipping.Tempo is a new generation’ digital’ motor drive, unlike its sibling, the analogue SG motor drive. Sitting a little above the well-established SG at £2850, $3995 and €3598, Vertere expects that sales will quite quickly overtake the SG after customers enjoy a comparative demonstration.Initially, Vertere expects Tempo to sell with Vertere’s SG-1 and RG-1 Turntables with SG-1 tonearms. MG-1 customers will also migrate to Tempo over time. Given the performance improvement it is unlikely to be too long. The need for TempoThe music we hear when playing vinyl records, in reality, comes from the motor.
The motor is the only source of energy in the system. It is this energy that drives the record past the stylus, thus making the music we hear.Any amount of noise or fluctuation in the drive system will adversely impact the music. Detail, dynamics, timbre, timing and musicality are just some of the qualities that will suffer as a result. The Technical BitTempo Precision Motor Drive derives from Vertere’s reference motor drive. It uses some of the reference drive’s most advanced control circuit design.Tempo controls the record player motor and provides a smoother drive with lower noise and lower distortion. As with the reference motor drive, its internal circuit is uniquely microprocessor-based. It provides a pure sine wave in the digital domain, converted to analogue via an onboard DAC. Two waveforms are derived, a cosine and a sine, amplified using two bridged amplifiers to power the motor.Exceptional attention to detail, including a gold-plated PCB, four fully regulated voltage rails powering different circuit sections, and carefully selected components ensure in-control and ‘clean’ final delivery of power to the motor. The entire digital, microprocessor and DAC, circuitry is first shielded by copper foil, and then the whole PCB is secondary shielded using a stainless steel shield plate. |
