Thursday, October 21, 2021

Mørch DP-8 Tonearm

 The Mørch DP-8 is a tonearm designed with specific goals to achieve highly accurate bass reproductions from vinyl records. Its "anisotropic" property is supposed to combine high lateral inertia with low vertical inertia, aimed to provide a platform for the cartridge to stably trace bass signals which are mainly lateral groove modulations while maintaining vertical agility to handle bumps and warps on records.

In test listening, the DP-8 indeed proves to perform with superb bass control and extension, along with transient responses unsurpassed by most other tonearms I have tested so far. The image stability and depiction of spatial details in all corners of the soundstage are also utterly impressive.

The DP-8's high-frequency characteristics reflect the extensive damping in its design principles, and lean toward a slightly reserved presentation, which can be a positive or negative attribute depending on the associated equipment's sonic profile. With careful selection of cartridges and meticulous setup, the DP-8 can reward users with state-ofthe-art performance satisfying the most discerning ears.