Notice of Annual General Meeting
The Annual General Meeting of the Melbourne Section of the AES will be held on Monday August 11th 2014 at 7:30pm at The School of Audio Engineering (SAE) Lecture Theatre, 235 Normanby Rd South Melbourne (directions below)
The Agenda can be found here.
The short AGM will be followed by a presentation by Mark Doehmann – Analog System Designer on the topic:
High End Turntable Design
This presentation will cover all the major topics relating to the playback of vinyl media – the design features employed, and how they contribute to the sonic performance.
Beginning with an introduction into how LPs are made and the varying processes involved…
A historical overview of the development of turntables will be presented, and the progress in technologies employed over time.
Then come the potential problems which plagued early designs: rumble, wow and flutter, unwanted resonances, and vibration isolation. Record warps will be expanded upon.
The items and/or materials which give the turntable its sonic signature will be revealed.
The cartridge is very sensitive to vibration, hence suppressing external disturbance and how such isolation is achieved is paramount to achieving high resolution.
Mark will expand on methods employed in isolating the source from unwanted disturbances.
The phono cartridge and tone arm are a complex piece of engineering – ideally designed to track the cutter path, and deliver the best resolution. The advantages of various designs and their sonic performance will be discussed.
Mark will also reveal how to set up the cartridge to achieve the best sonic performance.
Various alignments, their benefits, and tradeoffs will be discussed.
The variable setup parameters will be identified, and their optimisation and setup explained.
Then the parameters that are critical to tone arm design will be defined, the cartridge alignment parameters discussed, and how they can affect the reproduced sound explained.
Tone arm resonance and skating force are critical factors in delivery; learn how they influence the reproduction.
This presentation will benefit all vinyl users.
Learn how to achieve the best sonic performance from a master of this field of work.
Mark also welcomes questions regarding his presentation.
Location:
The School of Audio Engineering (SAE) – Lecture Theatre
235 Normanby Road
South Melbourne
Directions: Entry to SAE is via the Students’ Entry, off the carpark. Please report to the Supervisor’s Desk at this entry, and you will be directed to the Lecture Theatre (through to the back of the building, upstairs via the steel staircase).
About Mark Doehmann:
Mark started his audio journey in 1974 with a broken mechanical windup 78RPM Gramophone with the instruction from his engineer father “son, see if you can fix this”. Barely surviving with all his fingers intact, he thought vinyl state of the art replay was a Pioneer Quadrophonic stereo and player in the home.
With a background in aeronautical engineering gained during a 12 year tenure with a major Australian airline during the 1980’s Mark ended up designing and building his own record players under the Continuum (by Doehmann & Gusew) brand from 1982 to 1993. These handmade players were able to beat the competition and are still held in high regard today by the owners. The Continuum name would be kept alive as an Australian product when in early 2000 Mark was asked to commence the design of a new no holds barred turntable and tonearm by a well known Melbourne super-audiophile and patron of the arts.
Fast forward to January 2005 and Mark’s advanced designs went global with the Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn, Cobra, and Castellon ending up on the front cover of Stereophile January 2006 Edition under the heading of “World’s Best Turntable”.
Mark gained acceptance in the international audio and reviewer communities, and the industry generally, for his innovation in design and sonic results.
Having experienced the high end audio world on a global scale, listened to hundreds of top flight systems and owners feedback, Mark is still working on newer better ways to extend the performance of an old medium.
His presentation will share the journey and the highlights of working with Australian engineering talent to break through on the international market.
Visitors and Guests are welcome