Displaying items by tag: avid - StereoLife Magazine

Avid has introduced the Ingenium SE, a new turntable that succeeds the Ingenium Plug&Play and brings the company's entry-level analog platform closer to its more advanced designs. The original Ingenium Plug&Play was conceived as a relatively accessible way into Avid's world of vinyl playback, combining straightforward setup with engineering drawn from the company's higher-end turntables. The new Ingenium SE follows the same general idea, but the changes are more than cosmetic. Avid says the model has been refined in response to feedback gathered from customers and retailers throughout the life of its predecessor, with the aim of improving transparency, speed stability, mechanical precision and long-term upgrade potential while keeping the turntable approachable for users who do not want the complexity or cost of the company's flagship models.

Avid HiFi has introduced the Velsonic, a new reference-level phono preamplifier positioned as the flagship of the company's analog electronics lineup and its first completely new phono stage platform since 2012. Developed and manufactured at Avid's Cambridgeshire facility, the Velsonic replaces both the Pulsare II and Pellere models while carrying forward circuit concepts derived from the company's Reference Pre-Amplifier, signaling a broader refresh of its upper-tier analog architecture. Rather than pursuing a hybrid or digitally assisted topology, the Velsonic follows a strictly analog design philosophy built around a fully dual-mono signal path from input to output. Separate channel layouts are intended to maximize channel separation and reduce crosstalk, while the absence of digital control circuitry reflects Avid's long-standing preference for preserving signal purity in low-level phono applications. According to the manufacturer, particular attention has been paid to minimizing noise throughout the gain structure, an area especially critical in high-resolution MC cartridge systems.

Ingenium is the most basic turntable in AVID's offer. This statement could either start this introduction or end it. However, despite it's true, it may also mislead readers who haven't been interested in analogue technology so far, or to whom the name AVID says very little. Why? When we talk about the base model, it is commonly associated with devices built down to a tight budget, and have been literally stripped of everything that could raise the production costs. Speaking about turntables, there are many models costing only two hundred dollars, but this comes at an expense of both sound and the quality of materials used to build such a turntable. In AVID's case, it is different because in the brand's catalogue there are no cheap models looking like a board with a platter and a miniature electric engine. The concept of "the cheapest AVID" thus carries the same message as "the cheapest Bentley" and is quite positive in its meaning.