Opera Audio Consonance Forbidden City Liu

Festive Four

There was a time when believing in a vinyl revival was as much an act of faith as expecting Santa Claus to come down your chimney on December 25th, but with brand new turntables appearing thick and fast right now, the humble vinyl record is making a comeback that no one can deny. In this month’s supertest, Adam Smith is fill full of Christmas cheer by four mid-price contenders from Consonance,Revolver, Scheu Analog and Vyger...

It's a funny thing; here we are in 2007 with 2008 looming rapidly on the horizon and it is interesting to look back at some of the predictions for the future that were made，in order to see just how much of it has come true．Admittedly we’re not all driving round in our own personal hover-cars and space exploration hasn't advanced quite as fast as Trekkies might have hoped, but some advancements bear uncanny resemblances to the ideas that flowed from the pens of science fiction writers. Surely the mobile phone is a very close relative to the old Star Trek communicator, most tasks you can think of in everyday life have some sort of powered gadget to make them easier and, when considering GPS, security cameras and the internet, we may even conclude that’Big Brother' is indeed watching us…

The advance of technology has been felt in the arena of entertainment as well. Electronic instruments can recreate an entire symphony orchestra, television and radio is increasingly reaching us by digital means and many people carry their entire music collections around with them on a pocket-sized gadget. One thing that no-one predicted, however, was that the biggest increase in sales of a’hard’ music reproduction format in 2007 would be by an ungainly piece of plastic that only makes music when a tiny lump of rock is dragged through it...

Contrary to everyone's futuristic expectations，vinyl is doing very nicely, thank you very much. Be it DJ fashion cachet, nostalgic value or superb sonics, black plastic’s recent resurgence is such that previously dormant pressing plants are having the dust blown off their stampers and being coaxed back into life, while new turntables are cropping up everywhere you look, sometimes from quite unlikely sources.

On the following pages you’ll find three brand new decks from Consonance, Revolver and Vyger enjoying their very first reviews, and one slightly older but still recent unit from Scheu Analog that has only just arrived in the UK. we were very keen to see just what sort of sound these decks offered for around ￡l, 500. All are superbly engineered, solidly built and styled with refreshing flair- but which will extract the very best from your precious record eolleetion? Read on to find out...

THE CONTENDERS
Consonance Forbidden City Liu £1,395
Revolver Replay £1,500
Scheu Analog Black Diamond £1,500
Vyger Timor £1,700

REFERENCE SYSTEM
Ortofon 2M Black cartridge
Trichord Diablo phono stage
Anatek A50R amplifier
Spendor S8e loudspeakers

CONSONANCE FORBIDDEN CITY LIU £1,395
As with many innovative Chinese corporations, the Opera Audio Company, who hail from Beijing, market a surprisingly large range of equipment.Sources including turntables, tuners and CD players, along with loud-speakers including the quaintly named Eric series and some large and hearty horn-loaded designs all roll steadily from their factory. Amplifier-wise, the company embraces both valves and transistors, their amplifiers ranging from single-ended thermionic designs using 2A3 valves to generate 3.5 watts per channel, up to a mighty 200W from the solid-state Calaf.

This latter amplifier comesfrom the new Forbidden City range, named after the Chinese Imperial Palace in Beijing. Not only did this inspire the name but also the styling of the products, as the gates themselves are red and feature rows of studs embedded in them. Hence the reason why all the Forbidden City components are available in red, and why they feature rows of distinguishing squares…

The Liu is the turntable of the Forbidden City range and is a belt drive design based on the range-topping Droplet LP5.0 deck. It features a standalone motor that sits in a circular cutout within the plinth. Drive is transferred to the periphery of the 30cm platter via a circular section belt and two grooves on the pulley allow for 33 and 45rpm operation.

The platter is a machined acrylic item with a depression for record labels and sits on an inverted ceramic
bearing, the housing of which is sandwiched between two graphite damping layers and is thus isolated from the plinth. The plinth itself is a two piece anodised aluminium construction and is impressively weighty as a result; the whole deck sits on four tower feet and is heavy and also quite large，measuring 480mm wide by 420mm deep.

The most interesting aspect of the Liu, however, is that Consonance fit it with the base model in their brand new range of tonearms, the ST100. This is a four-strong range，topping out in the ST600, which is an oil-damped unipivot design，featuring adjustable effective length from ten to twelve inches. The STl00 is a conventional pivoted type but still features a carbon fibre armtube and an unusual skeletal headshell. According to Consonance, the bearings are of a floating design and this is the reason why the arm’s vertical bearings exhibit more play than might be expected-apparently it's quite normal.

Tracking force is applied via a pair of uncalibrated rear weights that allow for a good range of cartridge mass matching, and anti-skating by the good old thread and weight method. A nifty multi-purpose alignment tool/tracking force gauge is supplied. The arm is very well finished but has a couple of rough edges, the first of which is the rather underdamped cueing device that dumps the stylus down rather unceremoniously-personally prefer a nice slow descent. My main gripe. however was in terms of the connection to the arm, which is via a standard 5 pin DIN-style tonearm plug and socket.This was a disappointingly loose fit on our sample, falling out at the slightest provocation. I ended up relying on a lump of Blu-Tac on the shelf below to hold the connector in place-not so impressive!

SOUND QUALITY
The Consonance Forbidden City Liu announce itself as an impressive performer from the moment the stylus hits the groove. Most Prominent is the startling sense of clarity that it imparts onto all music material, cutting through the recording with surgical precision to let you exactly what’s going on in the very depths. 1 strongly suspect the arm is to thank for this, as it has a quite different character to the Rega-based designs that are used by 50 many manufacturers these days. It lacks the rather grey tonality of the Rega and thus imbues the mid and treble with a Pleasing sense of dynamism.

High frequencies were srrong and clear, with a lovely sheen imparted to the treble. Spinning my twelve inch single of 808 State's 'Pacific 202', the Consonance picked up every single aspect of the backing electronic track and pushed it nicely out into the mix. With many decks, it can be a struggle to Separate everything that is going on in this particular track, but the Forbidden City Liu managed this with ease.

Equally adept were conventionl acoustic instruments which were replayed with commendable scale. The Consonance picked up on the leading edges of stringed instruments with impressive precision, ensuring that notes started instantly but faded away gently, as required. Spinning the new Antonio Forcione release from the Naim label, 'Touch Wood' the Forbidden City Liu picked up on the interplay between the acoustic guitars on the track 'Tarantella' and weaved the cello into them with considerable aplomb. The soundstage offered up by the Liu tends to hang back somewhat within the plane of the loudspeakers but everything is laid out with almost mathematical precision, making it easy to follow the action as it moves from instrument to instrument.

Moving to material of a different kind，and 'Til Tuesday's 'Everything's Different Now', Aimee Mann's vocals were sharp and well defined, cutting through the rest of the track to stand clear of the backing instruments. Rhythmically this sort of track showed the strengths of the Liu very well, as it takes the flow of the music and races along with it in a very pleasing manner. Where I did have a continual nagging doubt, however was in the bass end of the spectrum, as the Liu did not seem quite so confident here.

Further investigation was needed and so onto the platter went a recent release in the form of the seven inch single of Amy McDonald's' Mr.Rock and Roll'-definitely a contender for chart single of the year as far as I am concerned, and a superbly boppy pop tune. However, the bass line on the single is a little reticent and a good deck is needed to really coax it out from the back of the recording.

Here, however, the Consonance struggled. The flow of the track was loud and clear and it boogied along very nicely, but the low end underpinning was definitely rather lacking. Upping the ante with 'Suzie-You Are' from Maxi Priest's 'Maxi' album, the truth became clear that the Consonance is not exactly lightweight to satisfy on a reggae track like this, but it seems unsure of itself and is lacking in low end agility. All Maxi's bass notes were there but they seemed to fall out of the loudspeakers rather than being pushed out with authority.

CONCLUSION
A fine turntable, the Consonance Forbidden City Liu offers impressive build quality and performance. The arm in particular is an absolute star and well worthy of consideration in its own right, but it matches well with the turntable to offer a convincing overall package.

If Consonance could just sort out the arm connection issue and tighten up the low end a little, which I suspect is as a result of the motor's relatively poor wow and flutter performance, then they could well have something of a giant killer on their hands.