Show Reports

Bi-coastal Alma Music & Audio presented no fewer than five demo rooms at Capital Audiofest this year, with one of them including the new Luphonic R3 turntable, which made its debut in Room 844.

The R3 is German maker Luphonic’s entry-level turntable. It has a couple of similarities to the Luphonic H2 table, the H-shaped model that’s a step above the Luphonic R3 that I’d seen at T.H.E. Show in Costa Mesa earlier this year (and covered back in June over on our sister site, Stereophile). First, the R3’s plinth — a traditional rectangular form-factor — is made of Corian (the brand name for a type of solid surfacing material available in many colors) and neoprene sandwiched layers for added damping.

Second, the R3 table’s speed selection also shares the same novel design from Luphonic that’s also seen in the H2 (shown above). Users place a small disk that resembles a slightly larger, heavier poker chip with its black side up in a lower-left area on the plinth for 33⅓rpm playback, and then they can flip it over to having its white side up for 45rpm. A series of LED indicator lights embedded inside the white plinth assist in its functions. When you bring the piece closer to the spot, the LEDs will light up to indicate where to place the small disk to start the rotation. The “33” or “45” will flash until it gets up to speed. (You can see it in action on the R3 at the very top of this post.)

The Luphonic R3 was demo’ed with a Luphonic 12in tonearm that had an Aidas Malachite MC cartridge attached. The R3’s plinth has a tiny, barely visible seam near the arm. This enables access to the plinth’s interior — specifically, to an eccentric arm board that can be configured, or “swiveled,” to accommodate a 9in, 10in, or a 12in tonearm. In use here was the Luphonic K2 tonearm, a gimbal type with Japanese-made ball bearings, sports a carbon fiber tube, and is adjustable for height and azimuth.

A Moonriver Audio 505 phono preamp (seen below) with discrete circuits for its MM and MC paths was also in use. It’s equipped with four inputs and outputs in RCA and XLR. The 505 offers 12 user-adjustable gain settings for MC and MM (34dB to 72dB), and five capacitance settings for MM signals (100pF to 680pF), five MC impedance settings (10ohms to 1kohms), and — somewhat surprisingly — three MM impedance settings (22kohms, 47kohms, 75kohms).

Fans of 78s will be interested in the Moonriver phono-pre’s stereo or mono functionality, as well as a choice of RIAA EQ or Decca 78 EQ curves. The 505 is handmade in Sweden, and it has an SRP of $5,995.

The rest of the room’s demo setup included an Accustic Arts Power III integrated amp ($20,490) with DAC and phono preamp options driving a pair of Franco Serblin Accordo Essence loudspeakers ($21,975/pr). The system was supported by an Artesania Audio Exoteryc equipment rack, power conditioning from a Gigawatt Power Prime unit, and cabling from Kubala-Sosna.

Alma Music and Audio’s rooms also offered some decorative hanging framed panels of passive sound treatment, as well as visual interest from Nemesis Decorac. The Nemesis Decorac panels ($799 ea), described as “audiodynamic devices,” don’t remove energy from the room, but rather use specifically engineered “internal membranes composed of BASF engineering polymers” to minimize room interaction and retain specific crucial acoustic characteristics and sound cues to (passively) enhance overall sound for critical listening environments. A seemingly endless selection of images can be printed on the panels for blending into home hi-fi or professional studio spaces.

In this room, Philip O’Hanlon happened to have a copy of Arooj Aftab’s Vulture Prince (Deluxe Edition) 2LP set on Verve from 2022 — and from it, he played “Udhero Na” (LP2, Side D, Track 2), a lush, mesmerizing track featuring Anoushka Shankar on sitar. Images and details were full-bodied, emerging from silent backgrounds. The sustains of Shankar’s sitar strings and its rich harmonics against Aftab’s smooth, smoky vocals sounded gorgeous.

Though I wasn’t able to visit all of them in my limited time at CAF 2025, all but one of Alma Music & Audio’s other rooms deployed other turntables in their demo setups, including the aforementioned Luphonic H2 turntable, a Reed Muse 1C turntable fitted with their 5A tonearm (shown below), and the U.S. debut of a Thales Elegance turntable, the latter of which is available as a bundle with their Simplicity II tonearm.

Part 7 is coming soon!

If you want to check out Ken Micallef’s “Turntables of Capital Audiofest” video, go here.