Döhmann Helix One Mk.2 turntable

Designing and building a turntable isn’t all that difficult. All that matters is in plain sight: Start with a base of wood, MDF, or acrylic; add some isolation “feet” for it to rest upon, and a spindle bearing such as any competent machine shop can fabricate, topped by a platter of acrylic or aluminum or suchlike. The motor can be an off-the-shelf AC synchronous type, fed directly by the electricity from a wall socket. Machining a correctly sized pulley and driving the platter with a belt requires minimal math skills to achieve the correct speeds. Build the motor into the base, or put it in an outboard pod—either way, you’re in business. Now, just bolt an arm to the base at the correct distance, set up a cartridge, and enjoy!

Of course, designing a good-sounding, high-performance turntable is considerably more difficult. Ditto-squared for a tonearm. Anyone who’s been lucky enough to audition dozens if not hundreds of turntables and arms, as I have, knows that despite the simplicity of the concept, they all sound different from each other for reasons not grounded in magic—though sometimes, as with loudspeakers, a just-right combination of ideas and compromises can produce magic.

There are authoritative low-mass designs, like the recently reviewed Rega Planar 10, and many great-sounding high-mass ones. Yet there are “drummy,” awful-sounding low-mass concoctions and overdamped, high-mass sludgefest ones, too. And of course there are dozens if not hundreds of fanciful designs—gleaming masses of metal-plated jewelry, acrylic towers, and the like that serve more as eye candy than ear candy and have little to do with playing records properly—which, as expressed by Rega Research, is to be a “vibration measuring machine”: one that’s properly tuned to be neither underdamped nor overdamped and that spins consistently at the correct speed (although that, too, can be a trap if overexecuted).

Designing and building an accurate vibration measuring machine is difficult, but even when that’s been accomplished, building a second one and a third one and many more after that—all capable of performing identically and reliably—is at least as difficult as building the first one. (As an aside, in terms of consistency and high build quality, SME has long set the standard.)

This is the second time I’ve covered a Döhmann Helix One turntable, the first appearing in the March 2017 Stereophile. It’s also my third time reviewing a turntable for which designer Mark Döhmann was responsible, the first being the Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn ($150,000), which I reviewed in 2006, and which has been my reference ever since. Döhmann and Continuum parted company some time ago. What’s more, the company ceased supporting the original, which I feel was a bad-faith move that put consumers in the crossfire of what should have been an internal dispute. And that goes to show that when you buy an expensive turntable, along with the quality of the product and its design efficacy, you should consider the company’s financial viability, its longevity, and its commitment to its customers—although sometimes stuff just happens anyway.

Döhmann Audio
In 2013, after two years of research, Döhmann founded Döhmann Audio in Melbourne, Australia. The original Helix One, launched in 2015, was produced and distributed under the aegis of Audio Union, an international consortium that included Sofia, Bulgaria–based Thrax, where that turntable’s parts were manufactured and assembled under the direction of Rumen Artarski, who studied electrical engineering at the Danish Technical University before moving to London and becoming a sound engineer.

I gave the original Döhmann Helix One ($40,000) a well-deserved rave because of its unique, innovative design, its high build quality, and of course its superlative sound. My conclusion: “How good is the Helix 1? Had it been installed in my system in 2005, I’d have written what I did about the Caliburn: ‘no turntable in my experience comes close to its sonic performance and you are guaranteed to hear your favorite demo LPs, indeed all of your LPs, as you’ve never before heard them—I don’t care what ‘table you use or have heard.” Please keep the quote’s context in mind because many great turntables have come through here since 2005.

In 2017, Döhmann introduced the less-costly Helix Two. A year later, the company was restructured, with two new owner/directors joining the operation: George Moraitis and Jim Angelopoulos, both of whom now handle the company’s business and finances, freeing Mr. Döhmann to do what he does best, which is not that. The new owners also bring to Döhmann Audio a sophisticated test-and-measurement business, which will help in the development of new products and the improvement of existing ones.

While Thrax still manufactures some parts, Döhmann Audio in Melbourne manufactures most of the components and does final assembly and testing. The Helix One’s Minus K “negative stiffness” isolation mechanism is sourced from the US. Döhmann now also handles worldwide distribution.

Helix One vs Helix One Mk2
According to the company, the new Helix One is a “virtually new turntable with most of its technologies having been improved or upgraded.” In part, because of its integrated, internally mounted, passive Minus K negative stiffness isolation base, which isolates down to 0.5Hz vertically and 1.5Hz horizontally (footnote 2), the Helix One looks different from and behaves differently than other turntables.

However, the Helix One is far more than a massive platter spinning atop a Minus K isolation platform. My Continuum Caliburn set the ‘table on top of a Minus K platform, producing many benefits, including in particular effective vibration isolation—but it also resulted in a bit of mass instability, an issue addressed in the Helix One design by integrating it within, not below, the turntable. This arrangement allows the ‘table’s mass to be distributed around and below the platform to produce better stability when the platter spins.

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COMPANY INFO

Döhmann Audio Pty Ltd

Distribution coordinated by Döhmann

Unit 2, 11 Friars Road, Moorabbin

Victoria 3189 Melbourne, Australia

+61 409 514 914

dohmannaudio.com

ARTICLE CONTENTS

Page 1
Page 2
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Specifications
Associated Equipment

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