Spin Doctor

May has long been one of my favorite months of the year, mostly because it means it's time for the Munich show, the annual gathering of the high-end audio tribe in the Bavarian capital. High End Munich 2023 marked my return to the biggest audio show in the Western world following three years of lockdowns and travel restrictions, so I was eager to get back to the land of Wiener schnitzel and bratwurst.

This year, as an added bonus, I was invited to visit the production facilities of turntable and tonearm manufacturer Acoustic Signature, which is based about 110 miles west of Munich, near Stuttgart.

In 1928, Swiss engineer and inventor Jean-Léon Reutter created a clock that could run for years without human interaction or any type of external power source. The Atmos Clock required no AC power, batteries, solar panels, or hand-winding. It was able to wind itself by leveraging subtle changes in atmospheric pressure and temperature.

The design was so energy efficient that a single degree of temperature change provided enough power for two days of operation; it would take an incredible 60 million Atmos clocks to equal the power demands of a single 15W light bulb. 95 years later, the Atmos Clock is still being manufactured in Switzerland by Jaeger-LeCoultre, but like most high-precision, Swiss-made instruments, it isn't cheap. Prices start around $7500.

Over the last 40 years, I have set up or serviced literally thousands of turntables, and during that time I have seen a lot of increasingly sophisticated tools become available to help in getting your turntable optimized. I've had my eye on the Shaknspin speed analyzer since it was launched a couple of years ago, and now there's a new Shaknspin2, which promises more accurate results.