GOLDILOCKS VINYL: Yatrus vs. Taurus

Its taken over 40 years for digital to match or indeed exceed the best vinyl setups. Now at last with the WADAX Atlantis Reference we have CD, file and streaming playback which can be as vivid, as dynamic and as alive as the best pressings played on the worlds best turntables using the finest phono preamps. But it comes at great cost, around £240,000 of Streamer/DAC and optical interface as a starting point, in excess for £500,000 for the whole hog.

This elucidates an important point. At the upper end digital costs an awful lot compared to vinyl sources. At the bottom end though the opposite is true; a cheap Dac like a Chord Hugo from ebay for just £500 will produce a great sound for the money whilst a £500 turntable/cart/phono is going to be fairly limited. Once you start increasing the budget from there though, turntables quickly become very very good whilst the improvements to digital are harder fought and require more and more funds.

The two decks you see here then are not the most expensive by any means but they represent a goldilocks sweet spot and with a good £10,000-£20,000 phonostage along the lines of the Brinkmann Edison, Allnic H7000 or Thrax Orpheus they will parry with the best DACs that money can buy ….. until of course, you get to the Wadax. This is why I have many customers with hugely expensive digital systems but for vinyl they have stopped short right here, not really needing to spend any more to have a source that is every bit as playable as their top flight Tidal , Thrax or Vitus digital front end. The Thrax Yatrus and the Brinkmann Taurus then. The sweet spot of Vinyl and therefore well worth writing about. Let’s look at each in turn and then discuss this most fascinating and closely run of sonic comparisons.

Before we dive in let’s not leave behind the more modest direct drive Brinkmann Bardo. This venerable entry model of ours has had a fairly recent price increase but still at around £12,500 with tonearm, it’s our value packed giant killer and the pick for anyone with a more limited budget. We would champion it over many of the typical suspects commonly seen on British high streets like the full specification Linn LP12SE, the offerings from SME and the middleweight units from Vertere all of which are more expensive that the Bardo. Come for a listen and find out why.

For many or even most, this little skeletal direct drive power house has all the performance you could ever want. I have one customer using one in a £200,000+ Tidal/Rockport system with fancy support systems and one of the best cartridges money can buy. It is genuinely that good. Moving from the Bardo to either the Taurus or the Thrax Yatrus though is a remarkable step that is well worth the outlay. More life and dynamics, more realism and just a bigger more captivating performance on any of your favourite tunes.

The Taurus is easy to understand if you are familiar with the Bardo. It is essentially the same deck but with a more substantial 40mm ‘Duraluminium’ chassis of the like seen in Brinkmann’s belt drive Balance deck. The speed controller is unique – wireless in fact – and the deck’s motor and chassis have been tuned specifically for the Taurus. Whether installed on to the basic granite plinth that often gets bundled with the Bardo (as pictured) or the beautiful (but also beautifully expensive) dedicated Brinkmann  isolation platform manufactured by HRS, the Taurus is truly a wonderful device to keep in your home. The quality of finish and feeling of fine exact engineering is all there, it screams “precision instrument” and of the Teutonic kind.

The Taurus can be configured and/or upgraded in various ways. Firstly there are three power supplies, the basic unit (included), the new TraNt (+£1395 when also purchasing the deck) or the flagship RonT iii (+£4395 when also purchasing the deck). Then there are two tonearms, the standard Brinkmann 10.1 (£4695) or the longer 12.1 (£4895) and finally you can purchase the dedicated Birnkmann MX3 isolation platform as previously mentioned. My feeling is that MX3 and the RonT iii are quite expensive. If you really want the best and best looking Taurus then you should purchase both for sure but I feel that the TraNt is really good value and the deck can be upgraded with third party footers from the likes of Tungsten Grooves and Stillpoints at a cost some margin less than the HRS granite platform. Again though, the Taurus on the MX3 does look pretty amazing; if optical drama is important you won’t do better than this.

The tonearm choice is a little more ambiguous. Firstly the 12.1 tonearm is NOT better than the 10.1. It does not perform higher with greater resolving power or anything like that. It simply gives a more relaxed, slightly slower and more unhurried flowing delivery to the music. I personally prefer the 10.5 (on all the Brinkman decks I might add) but the last customer who purchased a Taurus liked the 12.1 so there you go. It is certainly a great option for more laid back music, jazz and vocals rather than faster, more percussive and rhythmical tastes. That being said, this article will focus on the Taurus with the 12.1, the TraNt power supply and the regular £319 granite plinth as seen in the bulk of the pictures.

Operation is very straightforward. Simply select your speed and the Taurus will spin up in under 10 seconds (for 33rpm) then move the tonearm across and cue it down. The Brinkmann arms have no finger lift but they feel very secure and superbly machined so there is a confidence when moving them across the platter and operating the lower lift device. For the listening comparison here we used the Lyra Kleos SL cartridge on both decks. It is a fine choice, very good detail and dynamics but not analytical. Lyra also share the same UK importer as Brinkmann, Symmetry Systems, which is helpful. The Kleos would be my minimum recommendation at this level of turntable and if one has a bigger budget I would most definitely advise something with even more performance, the My Sonic Hyper Eminent at £5450 or even beyond that to the Lyra Etna SL or MSL Platinum.

The final accessory to mention is the Brinkmann record clamp. This can be upgraded very simply and cost effectively with either the Stillpoints LPI or HifiStay Dharma record weight. Both bring about a substantial improvement and are also less time consuming to use than the screw on Brinkmann clamp. Eitger of these can be purchased for the Yatrus as well for a further upgrade. We have not included these in the pictures though or the pricings at the end.

Across a handful of customer Taurus vs. Yatrus shootouts this year the scoreline remains at exactly 50 50, but the truth is that we have been really focusing on the Thrax direct drive deck for a good 4 years now so it is our biggest seller overall. As well as its remarkable performance, it’s very small compact size, simple setup and operation and handsome looks have meant it has proved extremely popular in UK homes. Many of us have smaller sized houses and rooms so therefore less space for racks and larger equipment. The Yatrus with its low height, symmetrical 3 foot shape and offset tonearm is the perfect tonic.

It comes with a bundled power supply but it is a very rudimentary AC adapter type. Whilst it is perfectly good at its job, I had the guys at Plixir make me a high quality linear power supply for the deck and the optional £850 high quality 24V PSU they came up with is a complete no brainer once sampled. Nobody ever didn’t include one in their order since its inception.

The Yatrus chassis is a very solid and beautifully milled one piece affair with an integrated 3 point, height adjustable footing arrangement with built in resonance control. The motor is a vibration-free brushless DC unit and the slimline platter sits atop and sports a multilayered composite surface reminiscent of that seen on the Dohmann Helix. I am a big fan of the control system. It is a large rotary aluminium drum which synchs in with the design seamlessly. Simply rotate the top ring and the speed selected is illuminated in red through a neat round window. 78rpm is also on offer here too if you keep turning.

To fully understand the genesis of the Yatrus one must go back to the history of the Dohmann Helix. Now this is a deck we brought to the UK some 7 years ago and when we did, it was the fruits of a combined project spearheaded by none other than Rumen Artarksi from Thrax Audio. He assembled a conglomerate of great minds such as Mark Doehmann and Alan Perkins to bring a new super deck to market, under the banner of the Audio Union company. Frank Schröder was also enlisted to make the tonearm for the deck and the result was the cost effective but quite wonderful Captive Bearing tonearm and that is how the Helix was always supplied. The Helix deck was of course later bought out by Mark Dohmann and the company and manufacturing moved to Australia but when that happened, the Yatrus was then born and it was an obvious choice to retain Frank’s CB tonearm. To this day, Thrax audio still manufacture the CB tonearm in their factory in Sofia, Bulgaria.

And what a cracking little 9” design it is, typical of Frank Schröder showing all sorts of unique brilliance in the way it does things. It is a little spartan and certainly not as precise feeling or as robust and instrument like as the Brinkmann arm – there is a slight looseness to the bearing tower that sits on the arm pillar – but once one has become accustomed to its slightly more boutique optics and mode of operation, its really just as easy and as confidence inspiring to use. It does not offer any sophisticated mode adjustment such as on the fly VTA, but then sonically it is a unit that punches far above its retail price.

Fire up the Yatrus during a demo and most people are usually taken by surprise, especially if they are accustomed to any of the popular record deck choices that populate the sub £20,000 price sector. The Thrax deck has a life, a directness and immediacy to it that customers generally do not expect. It sounds eager and fully awake, fearlessley releasing the music into the room and away from the system. The direct drive format is obviously part of this outgoing nature, as well as the shorter 9” tonearm but most important is that this a Thrax and all their equipment has an immediate, realistic and bold way with music.

The Yatrus is also extremely fast and stops and starts so quickly with no overhang or smearing. Precision with rhythmical music and more congested complex passages is standout as is the deck’s ability to sound utterly stable and “locked in” with respect to time coherency. People accustomed to traditional belt drive decks like Linn’s LP12 are in for a surprise; because of its exemplary speed control and lack of bottom end bloat or upper end tizz, the Yatrus does not possess any of the timing, tonal or energy colourations that many of us have normalised and believe is “the vinyl sound”. The Yatrus sounds less like a record player and a piece of plastic rotating round and around, and more like the best digital you have ever heard but without that medium’s particular nasties (glare, hardness, sterility lack of dynamic range). This is categorically not a criticism though. When customers come for demos it normally takes only a few tracks for them to relinquish any attachment to those classic belt-drive proclivities and fall head over heels. That it does not sound like something is being read as it spins around is a welcome pleasure and the Yatrus is incredibly powerful in demos – shop or home – and has won us many many sales over the years. It’s also hands down beaten the Brinkmann Balance a few times before too, something that you might not expect looking just at reviews and retail prices.

If the Yatrus’s energy and vitality, it’s exuberant rest pose, is immediately impressive and captivating, does this wear thin as you roll out more and more albums ? Absolutely not. Unlike some direct drives the Thrax deck isn’t actually forward or aggressive sounding, it is just not laid back, smeary or weak in microdynamics. The apportioning of energy between successive and neighbouring sounds and notes is considerable, more than other decks, so the musical landscape has so much shape, definition and dimensionality between all the strands of its musical structure. It’s almost as if every sound and note is slightly emobssed or back lit and there is a physical pressure to the sound in te direction of the listener. This feeling of pressure, of persistent outward force, is something I refer to a lot on this website. It’s something very important and a system that does not posess it is usually a system that is failing or needs attention.

So it’s this microdyanmic pressure which is giving the Yatrus its sense of life and immediacy rather than a response colouration of any kind. The LP12 for example projects out a lot of sounds in the midband and upper end so that a ton of music is dancing on your nose at 100% volume; some of the cartridges like the Akiva do this as well, a large dollop of added articulation and aggresion in the treble. In doing this, the real position of all of those sounds and the real volume levels are all lost forever. That stuff, that information, cues about position and loudness, is inherent part of the music and therefore “musical” and that’s why when people champion the LP12 as “the most musical deck” I usually kind of wince inside because I know how much of the music has actually been tampered with and lost for good. So the Yatrus’s sparkle and buoyancy is not a result of any manipulation of the sound but rather because of a certain rest pose of energy apportioning and a sympathetic high ability with speed and accuracy.

What about harmonics and textural ability ? Most people know that a good direct drive deck has an advantage in pitch stability over a similarly priced belt drive or idler, better structural precision, much better stability of longer notes and a more accurate 3d image with more accurate focusing and better positional stability – when the speed of the platter wavers by microscopic amounts all of these sonic abilities are eroded. But then anyone who has handled a Technics 1210 before will know that a direct drive deck has an inherent weakness in the noise emanating from its motor which can so very easily transmit up to the platter and disturb the diamond/groove interface, thereby very seriously hampering the decks ability to cleanly resolve fine information in the middle of the note and that will be harmonics, texture, timbre and basically the beauty of the music. Nobody needs to worry here though because the Thrax deck, like the Brinkmann Bardo, suffers from none of those things.  Suffice to say that no one will ever sit in front of a Yatrus/Shroeder CB and complain that it sounds sterile, bleached or tonally bereft. You don’t even need a coloured or warmer cartridge to engineer in any extra hollandaise sauce. In fact we usually pair the Yatrus with a MySonic labs which are even more neutral and true than the Lyras.

So the little Thrax has vividty, speed, precision and a very bold definite way of getting hold of the music. Harmonics are exemplary and it gives up zero beauty or midrange sweetness to a belt drive. What of the overall performance level of the deck ? How much resolving power does it possess and how much detail can it unleash from those grooves. Well detail, or information, isn’t just the breath of the singers voice or the fine faint vibrations on the fret board but also all the things we have already spoken of – where the twang of the drum skin is in the room, how sharp its position is and how stable or anchored in space that position seems to be throughout the duration of the sound. The correct relative loudness and softness of notes. The correct leading edge and its transition to not being there. The detectability, stability and sustain length of decaying harmonics. The Yatrus’s ability of all of these things is very high and alarmingly close to the mega decks like the Dohmann Helix we used to sell so probably of a higher level that you will be expecting for a sub £20,000 turntable. And just to return to the beginning question, on the generalist resolving of sounds or “detail retrieval”, yes the Yatrus and the Schroeder tonearm are also standout. So much so that you can literally put whatever cartridge you want on the deck and it will respond. With a Kleos it sounds fabulous but we usually supply them with the MySonic Lab Signature Platinum or an Etna SL. MySonic have just released a new £14,000 Signature Diamond flagship and we will be now supplying them with them too. The Yatrus/CB combination is so high performing that you can furnish it with the best cart in the world and the best phonostages too. We have customers using them with Phono preamps that cost more than the Deck, such as the Thrax Orpheus which makes for a particularly synergistic and magical combo.

Whilst it might not be as immediately as impressive and enticing to some, the Taurus with the 12.1 is without doubt equally as “good” as a product in terms of how it performs sonically. Depending on your system, ears and musical tastes it might easily be the preferred product too. If you demo it first, then the Yatrus afterwards almost makes it sound a little lethargic and rounded but performing the AB this way round means you have more time to allow the Brinkmann’s strengths to come to the fore.

What you notice straight away is the Taurus’s even wider soundstaging and slightly greater 3d. This might be something that can be adjusted again with footers but with the same support system on both, the German deck feels a little more cavernous in its rendition of space and depth and the transitions of images are perhaps a degree smoother so its portrayal of the music feels more sinuous, more shapely and more rounded. If the Yatrus was an ice cold Gin and Tonic with a sharp slice of lime, the Taurus is a Brandy Alexander with a naughty dose of velvety cream.

As you listen, you probably soon start to realise that whilst the Yatrus sounded like the world’s best CD player, the Taurus, although still a direct drive design, is a notch back toward the more familiar sound of Vinyl – a degree warmer, slightly more lyrical, buttery and less biting. I will stress though that we are still nowhere near the belt drive delivery of something like an LP12 or even the languid, laid back presentation of the Brinkmann Balance (a deck I personally put below both Taurus and Bardo), its just that the Yatrus is so fast, so direct and so quickly manages and resolves sonic transitions that the Taurus with its weightier chassis, longer tonearm, and heftier platter, turns the excitement, the speed and sharpness down a notch. That said, if you ran the Taurus with the 10.1 toneram that would almost certainly claw back a little bit of speed.

As for coherency – the ability to unravel, simplify and lay your artists out in a comprehensible musical form no matter what the complexity – the decks score equally highly. They are both remarkably adept in this way exuding surefootedness and the simplification of all your albums.  On overall information retrieval they are probably dead level too. Gregory Hine’s tap shoes on the Stanley Clarke “If only this bass could talk” album sound just as realistic and tonally correct on both decks; neither turntable can garner more fidelity than the other although fire up the lower cost Brinkmann Bardo with the same cartridge and those taps sound like a slight estimation or facsimilie of what you hear on these two turntables, some of the every fine information important for high realism and believability is missing.

So whilst the Tarus and Yatrus are equals in many principal ways, one could definitely say that the Taurus is marginally superior in soundstaging, the Yatrus better for speed and precision. Energy character is more subjective rather than something you can score so that will depend more on personal taste and the target system but there is also no denying that if the Taurus is an effortless and comfortable V12 Aston Martin, the Yatrus is a more energetic Porsche GT3 with its higher state of alert. Tonality is also more subjective and here the German deck is a little denser and warmer to the Thrax’s leaner and more neutral rendition.

To be brutally honest, I often prefer the Yatrus when I hear it in my own demonstration space partly because I do not want to be without its eager enthusiastic personality which I find so enthralling. But then that is as much a comment on the sort of accompanying demo system I normally employ and the type of sound I usually prefer, and I have performed home demos with both decks and in those customers homes, I preferred the Brinkmann. In fact in one demo, I found the Tarus a noticeably superior fit whereas the Yatrus on that day was made to sound a little lean and flat in that customers system.

All systems exist on various sonic scales. Some of those which are important here are the smooth to sharp scale, the laid back to aggressive scale, the fast to slow parameter. These will be important facets when deciding between these two turntables, as well as music choice. I can well imagine that lovers of Jazz, acoustic and more restful thought provoking music will perhaps lean slightly towards the more romantic silken personality of the Taurus whilst electronica, pop and rock pundits will not want to give up on the Thrax’s speed, turn of foot and overall accuracy when it comes with rhythmical patterns and bite.

I want to write a very important footnote though, and that is you have the privilege of these very fine comparisons purely because I have both decks and can demonstrate them with identical ancillaries in a very neutral and open system, or you can simply read this article where I try to be as honest and as lucid as I know how. But the big picture view is that if you were looking to buy a fantastic deck, a “last” deck even, then you would honestly be happy with either of these ! Neither of them have weaknesses or a notable bias to a certain type of music or system. Neither of them come with caveats or a “take notice”. Put another way, the soundstaging of the Yatrus is not a weakness by any stretch and the Taurus will never sound imprecise or lacking in focus in a month of Sundays. It’s just that with a very controlled and accurate Lotus AB these small differences are elucidated. What I can tell you is this AB has happened a number of times now for actual buying customers and all customers would have been overjoyed to own either deck and in one instance, one person borrowed both units for over 4 weeks – that’s how close the decision was. It will quite possibly be decided by looks as such as anything else …. You really can’t go wrong and it’s a wonderful choice to have to make.

The final point to mention is that every deck purchased from Lotus is  expertly setup by us in your own home. We take around 3-5 hours generally leaving no stone unturned. We use Wallytools for the most accurate and true setup and alignment and begin by baselining a perfect starting VTA angle and perfect azimuth wit respect to the headshell. The Walltools WallySkate is the only true way to measure static bias and add final antiskate that is correct for the tonearm Length. We also adjust overhang to suit your particular record collection. If a new cartridge is installed we will invariably make a second visit once the MC is fully broken in, in order to fine adjust tracking force and VTA again by ear.

Brinkmann Taurus/TraNt/12.1/Kleos SL
12795 + 1395 + 4895 + 3095
= £22,180

Thrax Yatrus/Schroeder CB/Plixir/Kleos SL
£18,950 + £850 + £3095
= £22,895