You only have to look at the underside of a Voyager platter, alongside a few of the prototypes, to appreciate that this incremental approach applies not just to each and every product, but each part of each product. Obviously, accumulated experience cuts developmental corners, but accumulating that experience has itself taken decades. But it’s a path that also leads to distinctive products that have evolved away from fashionable norms, with a clear, performance orientated ethos. If there’s dogma built into the Origin Live product range, the philosophy and logic is internal, not induced. In a World where tonearms seem to increasingly feature uni-pivot bearings or fancified zero-tracing error mechanisms, the Origin Live ‘arms are refreshingly straightforward, almost prosaic examples of the art, although even here, engineering niceties abound. From Onyx to Zephyr they use classic dual gimbal bearings – but the devil is in the detail. The bearing yoke is incredibly wide for additional rigidity and holds purpose-built cartridge bearings. Both the internal and external arm-wiring is specified by Origin Live, rather than supplied off the shelf. The materials used throughout, but especially in the armtube, bearing yoke and counterweight stub, are carefully selected and evolve as you move up the range.
From the Encounter on up, the vertical bearings in the Origin Live arms switch to dual pivots, similar to those used in the Morch and Kuzma 4Point arms – or the much-maligned SME 3009/III Series. It’s a world away from the brand’s ‘flat-earth’ beginnings, but the Origin Live execution is also a world away from those current designs. The broad bearing yoke of the entry-level gimbal arms is retained, giving the dual pivots an incredibly wide and stable stance – as well as allowing incredibly precise azimuth adjustment (something deemed superfluous by the likes of Linn, Alphason and Zeta, back in the day). In the flagship Renown model, horizontal pivots depend on ceramic bearings, with exotic materials scattered throughout the ‘arm structures, complex construction (where it adds to performance), simple solutions like falling-weight bias adjustment, where they offer the best available compromise. And if you are wondering where they get those names, they’re all traditional choices for Royal Navy ships. I know, it doesn’t exactly make for a clear and logical nomenclature, but it too offers its own unassailable historical context.
In a similar fashion, the turntables start with deceptively simple structures and add layers of complex, cascaded dissipation and composite sandwich construction as you climb the range, until the top-of-the-line Voyager-S offers twin motors, a stacked, multi-layer, composite construction platter, super-rigid chassis construction and the ability to accept up to three standard tonearms.
Origin Live will tell you that it’s not just which material you use, advances in musical performance depend on the way that you combine different materials. It’s an hypothesis that we’ll be examining in detail, starting with the Enterprise Tonearm in its latest Mk.V guise to set a performance benchmark. After that, we’ll be looking at just what you gain with each step on the ladder. We live in interesting times…
