Eurolab Premier MKII Turntable Review
* The Scheu Premier was known in the USA as the Eurolab Premier

In the surprisingly long-lingering twilight of vinyl, LP playback is reaching an excellence that explores the boundaries of the theoretically possible. The errors of the equipment are being reduced to below those intrinsic to the vinyl medium itself.

The Eurolab turntable / Mørch arm combination is a conspicuous instance, all the more so for being reasonable in price. The turntable comes as a kit, but the assembly required is of minimal difficulty.

What after all should and can a turntable/arm do? The record must be turned at a constant speed, unaffected by the variations of stylus drag as groove modulation varies. No vibration must be transmitted to the record, and the vibrations within the record arising from the stylus’ tracing of the groove must be removed.

This energy is substantial: If you listen to a “silent” groove of an undamped record with one stylus while playing music grooves with another, you will hear the music in the silent groove through the transmitted vibrations. (You can hear the music without speakers simply by putting your ear close to the record as it plays.)

The pick-up arm must provide a nonresonant support for the cartridge and the energy the stylus puts into the cartridge must be completely removed – or as much as possible. Finally, the arm/cartridge combination must have the correct effective mass for the compliance of the cartridge, so that its resonant frequency has the correct value.

Historically, people worried also about isolation of the turntable from the airborne vibrations of the sound itself, to reduce the possibility of “acoustic feedback,” and about the isolation of the turntable from structure - borne vibration. But the appearance of external vibration isolation devices like the Townshend Seismic Sink has solved the latter problem independently. And the former is best approached by getting the turntable away from the speakers. Thus the intrinsic behavior of the turntable / arm combination described in the previous paragraph comes to the fore.

What then is the “sound” of such an ideal playback system, ideally sited away from the speakers? To read most reviews, one would think that the job of playback was creation – of dynamics, of truth to timbre, of space, of excitement, the list is endless. It is also nonsense. A perfect system makes records sound like master tapes, to the extent that the records are cut correctly. And master tapes sound rock-solid stable and dead – no spurious ringing, resonance, or “liveliness” beyond that of the music and ambience itself.

Vinyl playback tends to add to the music, and the less added the better. The correct sound is actually quite easily recognized, once it is heard and understood. But not everyone recognizes it; perhaps many don’t even want it. In the long run, however, hearing the music and only the music is far more satisfying than the fake “life” of resonant playback (and nonflat, tweaky cartridges). This truthful sound is what you can extract from the Eurolab / Mørch combination, with a suitable cartridge.

The Eurolab turntable deals with the speed stability and motor vibration issues by using a massive platter driven by an external motor in a separate unit, with a delicate fiber belt as the drive connection – a cotton thread. It takes a while for the platter to get up to speed in this set-up. You may want to get a visual fix on what 33 1/3 rpm looks like and spin the platter initially at as close to that as you can, to quicken the process.

The tension on the thread is important to get the speed stability the system is capable of. This tension must be adjusted by moving the motor housing gently. It does not require attention often, and while the set-up process may sound complicated, you will know right away, in listening terms, when things are right.

The turntable has a speed adjustment knob useful for dealing with the numerous out-of-pitch records. But small motions of the knob make big pitch changes, so use this carefully (a strobe disc is supplied to check for canonical speed).

The mass of the platter is so great that the little variations in drag from the stylus are unable to make substantial changes in platter speed. The result – great speed stability. Since warps and off - centeredness of records are, in the majority of cases, far greater sources of audible speed variations than platter behavior, speed stability can be verified directly only by having a well-centered, warp-free record.

The centeredness can be verified only with something like the Nakamichi TX1000 turntable, which measures and corrects off - centeredness. On records that are correctly center punched, the Eurolab sounds speed-stable, indeed. Meanwhile, beware of reviews that address this topic in listening as opposed to measurement terms, and remember that few records are center punched correctly.

With the Eurolab, instantaneous speed stability, the absence of flutter effects, was complete. This counts even when the record itself is off-center. The recording of music from Wagner’s Tannhäuser on Turnabout [QTV-S-34642], one of the many Aubort/Nickrenz masterpieces from that label, had the beautiful purity of real musical sound. (These Aubort/Nickrenz recordings are real treasures, far more beautiful and natural than the RCA and Mercury series, to my ears.)

The difficulty with using a massive platter is that it requires a large bearing to support it, and large bearings tend to be noisy. Eurolab has solved this problem. The inverted bearing with oil drawn up into it by capillary action is virtually frictionless: Spin the platter without the belt and it will keep spinning for minutes, not seconds. And the bearing is essentially silent. Vinyl is intrinsically a noisy medium, although the noise tends to be masked by the music. No playback set-up can remove the pre- and post-echo from the grooves or the vinyl scrape on the stylus. But the Eurolab is contributing so little noise that it is effectively not there.

No perceptible noise is added in the frequencies above the deep bass, and the inevitable residual rumble is at a low level and never intrudes into the music. In fact, the recorded rumble will be greater in the vast majority of cases.

A good deal of fuzzy thinking on noise has been published over the years. If the noise of the record itself is, say, 40 dB down from signal – very good for an LP – then whether the playback-added noise is 70 or 80 dB down will not matter, provided the playback noise is not concentrated in narrow bands of maximum hearing sensitivity. (Early digital artifacts were often concentrated in this way, and could be heard at extremely low levels as a consequence.)

In this sense, the Eurolab is not only quiet, it is as quiet as it needs to be. Whatever noise I could hear was always identifiable as part of the record itself. Whatever noise the Eurolab was contributing – and theoretically it must contribute some – was much lower than the noise of the record and thus insignificant in musical terms. (You can tell the difference between record noise in “silent” grooves and turntable noise by trying the lock grooves of different records. Periodic noise is from the record, as is the noise that is different on different records. Turntable noise must be embedded in what is left.)

The Eurolab is a nonsuspended design; one needs to exercise some care about acoustic feedback and structure-borne vibration. On the subject of acoustic feedback, I hold an intransigent view: Anyone serious about vinyl playback should have the turntable in a different room from the speakers. Long interconnect cables from the preamp to the amplifier will have far less degrading effect on the sound than will the interaction between sound and vinyl playback. One of the classic experiments in the past was to make a recording of the output of a record player with no speakers attached and a recording with speakers playing the material in the vicinity. The difference was large, even with suspended designs.

Like all nonsuspended designs – and most suspended ones, too – the Eurolab benefits from isolation from structure-borne vibration. I had good results with the Townshend Seismic Sink, as I have had with every turntable that does not have such vibration isolation devices strongly built in.

The use of acrylic as a platter material has become common, apparently on the grounds that acrylic and vinyl have nearly the same mechanical impedance. Thus, the reasoning goes, pressing a vinyl record onto an acrylic platter should produce maximum energy transfer from the record into the platter, minimizing contamination of the sound by vinyl vibrations.

But I got by far the best results from the Eurolab using a Torumat combined with the supplied weighting system. The turntable sounded more than presentable au natural, but the Torumat removed a subtle upper-midrange ringing, much to the improvement of the sound. This has been a universal phenomenon with hard platters, in my experience, acrylic or otherwise .

You can check the effectiveness of the Torumat damping of vinyl by listening to the sound produced through the speakers by tapping on the record while it is playing (or while the stylus is resting on a static record). With no mat, there is a substantial c l u n k plus c l i c k. With the mat, the total volume of the sound through the speakers is much reduced, and it becomes c l u n k with almost no c l i c k. The higher frequency components have been removed, and little or no energy is left in the region of maximum hearing sensitivity.

Some people say that, with the Torumat, the sound from records is too dark and not neutral. But to my ears, it is correct, with cleanliness and resolution. The vinyl resonance is most important in the region of maximum hearing sensitivity, and the mat removes it. The energy at lower frequencies , where the ear is less sensitive, is less important, and is comparatively harmless in terms of sound smear and so on.

The role of the Mørch DP-6 arm should not be minimized in the overall sonic excellence of this setup. While the Mørch has been reviewed (Issues 49, 109, 124), I want to remind you of its virtues. First off, the DP-6 is nonresonant. The result: no energy storage and no coloration. Moreover, the Mørch’s system of interchangeable arm tubes of different effective masses makes possible the ideal choice of arm/cartridge resonance. This means that you can get the bass right. And if you do not have a variable mass system, you cannot, at least with any variety of cartridges. The arm/cartridge resonant frequency must be right for things to work right in the bass.

The Mørch also allows adjustment of vertical damping. With the right choices of mass and damping, you can get the best from your cartridge in a way that few pick-up arms allow.

The nonresonant character of the arm and the excellence of the energy termination can be checked by tapping the arm with the volume up. Almost nothing comes out of the speakers, so low is the energy storage. This kind of test is only suggestive, but listening bears out the suggestion. Ultra-clean, non-resonant, neutral, uncolored sound is what you get, with superb resolution and excellent reproduction of space. Reproduction of space is not an independent thing, technically, however much we hear it as a separate item. It arises from full resolution of the subtle ambient cues that enables us to hear space in reality. In vinyl playback, it is directly associated with low storage of (time-delayed) energy. And here it is low, indeed.

All this no doubt seems oriented toward technical questions and test procedures – as it should. Direct evaluation of vinyl playback by informal listening alone is all too likely to confuse the messenger of playback with the message of intrinsically flawed vinyl.

Still, the ultimate test of superb playback is superb sound from records – otherwise why bother? And here, too, the Eurolab/Mørch was in the upper echelons. Doris Day on Hooray for Hollywood sounded almost unprecedentedly well resolved. Julie London in “My Coloring Book”(one of my candidates for alltime great popular song performances) sounded pure and luscious, and as pitch-pure as she did, in life, sound. Starker on Denon (The Most Beautiful Melodiesfor Cello) sounded as perfect as Starker does sound (it is a digital recording, but so what?).

And as I was writing this review, I put on Paul Desmond Live, one of my favorites (music like this, unavailable in digital form, is the real argument for keeping on with vinyl). This is not an audiophile recording in any sense. It was made by one of the musicians just setting up some mikes and rolling the tape. But on the Eurolab/Mørch combination, and played at a realistic volume – even when Desmond played it, the saxophone is loud – something like the impression of being in the presence of Desmond emerged. At some point, the music stops and there is some audience conversation in the distance. I looked up for a moment to see if some people had come to the door. Realism, indeed.

As it happened, I reviewed the Eurolab “blind” – to the price. I had no idea how much it cost until I had finished my listening and written most of the review. I estimated around $5,500 (without arm), and was prepared to say that it represented excellent value for money and compared favorably to much more expensive tables.

Imagine then how much more strongly it re commends itself at its actual price of $2,100! I think real listeners will find this redefines vinyl playback in the less-than-stratospheric range. I suggest you hear this set-up no matter how much money you are able to spend (short of the Rockport, anyway). The system is for sale by e-commerce with a money-back satisfaction-guarantee from an established and ultrareliable distributor. You have nothing to lose – and I doubt you’ll send it back.

Outside of the vacuum hold-down issue, which has arguments on both sides, and the autocentering of the Nakamichi, now no longer available, the Eurolab / Mørch combination seems to me to get quite close to the best possible vinyl playback. Nothing here elicits the reaction “that could be fixed for more money.” Of course, everything can be pushed further, in principle, but this relatively inexpensive combination – under $5,000 even with a Seismic Sink thrown in – gets so close to all there is to get out of records, one might think of the words from Porgy and Bess: “Who could ask for anything more?”

Paul Seydor Comments
Less than five minutes of auditioning the Eurolab (outfitted with a Mørch arm and Shure V15 Type V/MR cartridge) in my music room, was enough to convince me that this was some extraordinary turntable.

Why? Because mass counts. It is the only means by which resonances intrinsic to vinyl reproduction , plus vibrations from speakers and other external sources, stand a chance of being absorbed, deflected, drained away, or prevented from reaching the stylus / groove interface. The quietest vinyl reproduction I have personally achieved has been from several Sota models, all designed by David Fletcher, that have large, heavy platters with vacuum hold-down and stable, tuned suspensions. 1

The Eurolab Premier is the first turntable I’ve had in my home that manages to equal all the things I loved about the Sotas. Is this thing ever quiet, and solid, and stable! As with the Sota vacuums, you feel that spurious resonances and other nuisance energies have been siphoned off into a black hole. Images emerge with palpable dimensionality in a soundstage that seems limited only by the rest of the recording / reproduction chain.

The massiveness of the Premier’s platter and its ability to remain unperturbed under dynamic conditions are such that you can tap the record surface during play and not hear anything – anything – through the speakers. I’ve not witnessed a more impressive demonstration of isolation-cum-damping since my Sota Star/SME IV / Virtuoso Boron ensemble kept playing without skipping a groove during the 1987 earthquake that hit Los Angeles.

I don’t have much say about the sonic characteristics of the Eurolab / Mørch / Shure ensemble because it is so clean, neutral – maybe “pure” isn’t too strong a word. Thanks to the low noise-floor, this set-up has a resolution that retrieves a wealth of true detail without sounding “analytical.” The top-to-bottom coherence, the wide dynamic range that does not sacrifice smoothness, the control that still allows for that elusive sense of “liveness” without the typical vinyl artifacts – all this and more made me enact an audiophile cliché: I listened well into the wee hours two nights in a row, blissfully going through record after old record for the sheer pleasure of hearing them again, so beautifully reproduced.

The Bernstein / Carmen (DG, NLA on vinyl), my all-purpose orchestral/choral recording, alive with color and excitement, packed a tremendous dynamic wallop. Jacintha singing “Autumn Leaves” was honey smooth yet vividly there [Groove Note GRV 1006-1]. Ben Webster’s golden saxophone on Classic Records’ remastering (alas, NLA) of Ben and Sweets was so burnished I wanted to reach out and stroke the tone. And Sinatra singing, “ ’Scuse me, while I disappear,” at the end of “Angel Eyes,” in the Mobile Fidelity remastering [NLA] of Only the Lonely, brought one evening to an appropriately meditative close. Exquisite.

A few nuts-and-bolts matters REG didn’t cover.

First, while he may be right that ideally a turntable is best placed in another room, said arrangement is so inconvenient and impractical I doubt most users could tolerate it. In fact, the Eurolab fares far better than most tables in-room or under adverse conditions. I placed it on a small platform near one of the speakers, where it performed as previously.

Second, I can’t for the life of me understand the thinking behind the two-part weight, which consists of a tall narrow inner- ring that goes over (the very short) spindle and a larger, squatter ring that fits around that.

Third, its appearance: An open-chassis configuration with the oversize platter (12.5 inches diameter x 2.25 inches thick) of frosted white acrylic against the high-gloss black of the smaller base and round armboard (attached to a platform that juts out toward the rear), it suggests the Mother Ship resting on its landing pod. The outboard motor is housed in a cylindrical case, also high-gloss black, with a three-position toggle switch that chooses 33, 45, or off (but whose numbskull idea was it to leave all three positions unmarked?). There is no dust cover. I find its looks quite striking in a massive, industrial sort of way.

Impressive to look at, glorious to listen to, the Eurolab Premier belongs among the handful of the best turntables ever made, regardless of price. That it is priced not all that far above several manufacturers’ entry-level models is almost too good to be true. If you’re in the market for a new turntable and fail to investigate this one, you run the risk of enacting another audiophile cliché: the fool who is soon parted from his money.

*** Footnote 1:
So that this statement has a context: I’ve heard all the usual suspects, including the better Basis, VPI, and Immedia models, in set-ups I know to be reliable, and found them on a similar plane of excellence. (The Rockport and Walker, superlative achievements, I place in a separate category of not-quite-real-world products.) I’ve not heard any Clearaudio unit, nor the SME Models 30 and 20; but the Model 10, which I’ve reviewed (Issue 129), is about as good, though even it doesn’t have quite the background quietness of the Sotas and the Eurolab Premier. (The long overrated Linn tables, which I’ve owned, don’t come close.)