2024 Golden Ear: Wilson-Benesch GMT One Turntable System

$370,000

There’s a reason 122,000 YouTube viewers have so far watched and listened on the Tracking Angle channel to the Wilson-Benesch GMT One direct-drive turntable system playing back the UHQR 45rpm version of Steely Dan’s “Babylon Sisters.” Despite YouTube’s 256kbps bit-rate, listeners can easily hear this system’s spectacular “musicality,” detail resolution, and absence of additive resonant characteristics on a track familiar to most everyone listening. A transcription of “Walk on the Wild Side” gets the same response. The usual troll comments are MIA, as people are disarmed and floored by what they hear, aided by the CH Precision P10 used to amplify the signal. They should only hear it “live!” The cost is extreme, but at least it includes the carefully designed stand, active pneumatic suspension, tonearm, and cartridge. Somehow this system brings out the best from every musical genre. It rocks with the greatest grit and authority, swings mightily, and delivers the concert hall’s acoustic space and the orchestra’s timbral and textural verisimilitude better than any turntable I’ve so far heard. The years of R&D that went into this project have surely paid off. There’s nothing mysterious about this system’s performance, once you work your way through the accompanying academic documentation that at some point I hope W-B makes available to the public. Less costly versions will “trickle down,” including one introduced at Munich High End 2024 that knocks off $100k but delivers essentially identical performance—if you have a solid floor. (350)