Okay, so maybe the VPI Nomad wasn’t exactly a surprise. Announced late last year, the “turntable solution” is just now heading out to greedy consumers — Music Direct‘s Bes Flores sold the first one while I was in the room this afternoon!
The turntable offers a lot for the $995 price. You get a turntable, obviously, with settings for both 33 and 45 rpm. The motor is all-new, and surprising to everyone (including VPI’s Matt Weisfeld), the motor is an improvement over what was available in the Traveler. The Nomad has a gimbaled-bearing tonearm and comes with an Ortofon 2M Red cartridge pre-installed. But that’s not all! There’s also a headphone amplifier. Oh, and an integrated phono preamp too. All you need is a pair of interconnects or headphones and your haul from Record Store Day, and you’re set.
It took me three attempts to worm my way into the standing-room only space, but a carefully thrown elbow or two, and I was in. There were three demo stations lined up against the side wall, with another in the main system. All three demos had a pair of Focal headphones attached and folks were invited to spin whatever they had on hand. You want to take a giant set up from your beat up old Technics? This might be a great stop. It has “hipster” and “college dorm” written all over it. Sound quality was surprising, even with the cherry-red Spirit One headphones. Good enough that I went ahead and requested a review unit. Stay tuned.
Seems like it would not have been hard to have an output straight from the cartridge so other preamps can be used. I hope it gets more entry level people to try vinyl
Great idea and look forward to listening to the new Nomad. The red is a nice cartridge for the money. Looks cool for destop.
VPI has a great idea with this – high-end turntable that includes cartridge, built-in phonostage AND headphone stage for just under a grand? Sound like a pain-free way to get listening to LPs!
Like always, great article, I wonder how many audio enthusiasts are like me, at the point of no return to vinyl. Total respect for the Vinyl fans out there, I think the whole point is that I am too lazy to try it. Maybe some day LOL
Once you’re in, you’ll never leave….of course I’ve been collecting for 45 years so it’s easy for me to say.
Will the Nomad’s surprisingly good motor find it’s way into the Traveler?
That is the rumor, yes.
The first generation Traveller had a surprisingly good motor, which was then changed for an inferior one for the next version so they could have one with a external universal power supply to reduce production cost for the worldwide market (I.e that worked for both 110 & 220v). It is a noisier and lower torque unit than the original – and yet the Traveller price was raised as well. So any new change to the motor would probably be an improvement – and hopefully not an occasion to raise the price again.