Clearaudio is turning 45 this year, for which we proffer our hearty congratulations. The German family-owned company has become a byword for analogue precision in vinyl reproduction, reaching for the musical firmament with products such as the Statement turntable, its linear-tracking tonearms, and the spectacular bling of the ‘Goldfinger’ moving-coil cartridge, but also trickling hard-won expertise down into turntables affordable to new vinyl fans and indeed those who have, like the company, made it through the years of the format’s decline to enjoy today’s glorious resurgence of all things groovy.
Among various anniversary activities, Clearaudio has been re-examining its heritage to produce the Reference Jubilee turntable, as pictured on the first three of these pages. Clearaudio says it “marries the best of past, present and future to usher in a new era of analogue precision”.
The new Jubilee took as its starting point the company’s first-ever turntable, the 1993 Reference, and notably retains that deck’s unusual V-shaped chassis, but then loads up on the company’s latest and greatest technologies.
“The original shape is kept, but everything else is new and up to date,” Robert Suchy tells us of this turntable.
And showing how Clearaudio can do things rather differently, the Reference Jubilee includes (whisper it quietly) a digital-to-analogue converter, which is an odd thing to find
