Munich 2013

Music Hall's new top of the line MMF 11.1 turntable incorporates some familiar design features. It is built for the company by Pro-Ject so the double motor/flywheel module and microprocessor controlled electronic motor drive system and one piece carbon fiber tonearm (Pro-Ject's 9cc Evolution, the company's finest) will look familiar to Pro-Ject aficionados.

The design features a quadruple layer plinth that isolates the motor layer, the lower layer containing the opposing magnet feet and the arm board layer, all in an effort to reduce noise and motor induced vibrations.

The thick platter is of acrylic and here it is topped by a mat made of cowhide and cow hair, hence the black and whilte "palomino" look. Hall told this skeptical journalist that the stray cow hairs quickly stop shedding and that thereafter records stay perfectly clean, while the mat produces an attractively well-damped sound. Price is $4495.

Readers ask why Pro-Ject builds a turntable for another manufacturer and the answer is that Music Hall's Roy Hall had established over the years a different distribution channel that gets the 'tables designed per his specifications into an alternative universe in which Roy Hall has lived for many years.