Bergmann Sindre Turntable

Paul Seydor has posted a review of the Bergmann Sindre straightline tracking arm and turntable at The Absolute Sound. His conclusions:

The few reservations I’ve expressed about the Sindre should be read in the context of the most minute and exacting comparisons made at the highest levels of performance of the finest record playing setups in my experience. These are comparisons the Sindre need not fear, and the effects I’ve described are not obtrusive and are of a low enough order they must be listened for. If I wouldn’t personally choose to replace any of my longstanding references (especially the Basis Vector 4/2200), I could nevertheless live happily with it indefinitely without feeling so much as a moment’s deprivation. By way of suggesting just how great both my esteem and my enthusiasm are for this superb product, allow me to relate a telling experience. The first recording of chamber music I ever bought was the Yale Quartet’s of Beethoven’s Opus 132 on Vanguard from the late sixties, which has managed to survive some forty years of various purges of my LP library (it’s still available on compact disc and well worth searching out). Almost as if by magic the quartet aurally materialized, the four players palpably arrayed across the front of my listening room, sounding for all the world like real musicians playing real instruments, the famous passages in the second movement where Beethoven has the strings imitate the sound of a bagpipe so delightful they brought a smile to my face, while the “Convalescent’s Holy Song of Thanksgiving” in the third movement was transcendently radiant and serene. When sound reproducing equipment can in effect disappear and replace itself with experiences like that—and this was but one of countless instances of the Sindre’s alchemy—well, let’s just say I can neither imagine nor bestow higher praise.

You can read the full review here.