The Gryphon Apollo

Alt andet er næstbedst

Aldrig før har der været afsat så mange intellektuelle hestekræfter til udvikling af analog afspilning. Kulminationen på et once-in-a-lifetime samarbejde mellem Søren Slebo fra Gryphon Design Team, pladespillerlegenden Helmut Brinkmann, Pickup Masteren Ortofon og Aarhus Tekniske Institut. Apollo by Gryphon er mere end en pladespiller: det er en skelsættende begivenhed i High End Audios historie.

At bygge verdens fineste analoge afspilningssystem krævede verdens mest anerkendte pladespillerdesigner: Helmut Brinkmann, Stradivarius af pladespiller design. I mere end fire årtier er Brinkmann pladespillere blevet rost for deres Heirloom byggekvalitet, æstetisk skønhed og mest af alt deres chokerende livagtige musikgengivelse.

Med Apollo har Brinkmann haft mulighed for at skabe sin "drøm". En pladespiller" uden kompromis.

The Drive

Apollo utilizes two of Brinkmann’s proprietary, hand-built Sinus™ Belt Drive Motors placed at 180-degrees from each other, straddling the massive platter. While the benefits of multiple motors—increased torque, reduced “Cogging” effect and lower stress on each motor—are well-known, overcoming the potential problems of dual motor design required a great deal of ingenuity. Not only is Apollo Helmut’s first multi-motor turntable, it is also the first ‘table for which he developed a digital speed controller.

Helmut has always considered speed control the “Secret Sauce” of turntable design and this unprecedented digital controller is his masterpiece. In addition to synchronizing the two motors, Apollo’s digital control is more accurate than analog equivalents and will never require calibration; at the same time, Brinkmann’s techniques for “Soft” motor control, painstakingly refined over more than 40 years of turntable design, further distance Apollo’s speed controller from those of all other turntables.

Based on Brinkmann’s third-generation RöNt power supply technology, Apollo’s bespoke supply employs the proprietary BZ 34 “Tube Rectifier Simulator” developed for RoNt. Semiconductors replace the RoNt’s tubes and the Apollo units also have a higher output current, enabling two motors to optimally driven. A fully discrete, mechanically 

and electrically separated power source with a dedicated transformer supplies the bearing heater and platter light.

Apollo’s Industrial Design, authored by Gryphon’s Soren Slebo, combines visual beauty with ideal rigidity and resonance control. Exploiting the strengths of constrained layer damping, Apollo’s chassis is based on a laminated “sandwich” construction of anodized aluminum, Kerrock, and “Smart Stack,” a damping compound patented by Denmark’s MENETA Group. Apollo’s considerable mass rests upon 4 solid, adjustable spikes. The motors are entirely decoupled from the structure, each mounted on its own, optimized subchassis.

Apollo Tonearm: Crowning Jewel

Brinkmann has traditionally hard-anodized their tonearm tubes due to the material’s very high transmission speed of sound (9.900 m/s), ensuring resonances are evacuated from the cartridge as quickly as possible. To achieve state-of-the-art performance, however, required a solution that was truly cutting-edge: diamond. Thanks to a joint research project with Denmark’s Aarhus Technical Institute, Apollo’s arm tubes are diamond-clad (technically, CrN-SD + DLC-TR), yielding the fastest sound transmission of any known material—18,000 m/s—almost twice as fast as the aluminum oxide used in Brinkmann’s standard tonearms; in fact, Apollo’s diamond tonearm tubes achieve the highest transmission speed possible, ensuring ideal evacuation of cartridge resonance.

Perfected through decades of refinement, Apollo’s Cardanic Bearing has been optimized for this application.

MC Diamond: Elevating The System Concept

To achieve ultimate system synergy, Gryphon worked with Ortofon, the leader in phonograph cartridge technology, to develop a unique transducer whose performance characteristics are specifically tailored to Apollo’s. Starting with the extraordinary MC Diamond cartridge, Gryphon developed a special DLC-TR Coated, SLM Titanium body to match Apollo and then tuned cartridge compliance to be a perfect partner for this tonearm. The result—The Gryphon Black Diamond DLC—is among the finest cartridges available and the ultimate transducer for the Apollo system.

The Ultimate Analog System

Remarkable on its own, each part of the Apollo system—from turntable to tonearm to cartridge—has been purpose-engineered to perform perfectly with all others. The ability to control all variables during the design phase, combined with brilliant designers and matchless manufacturing capabilities, has yielded an analog playback system unprecedented in High End Audio history. It is not hyperbole to state that, with Apollo, the whole is truly greater than the sum of its state-of-the-art parts.