Vertere XtraX

Vertere Acoustics Reducing engineering to its fundamentals, to get you even closer to the original recording

When aiming to reproduce the complexities of music, it’s all too easy to introduce even greater complication in the engineering of audio equipment, putting in place one element to solve the problems of another until the whole design escalates into something fiendishly intricate – and expensive!

That’s not the Vertere way: coming at the whole problem with decades of audio and mechanical engineering experience, plus close collaboration with the recording and mastering industry, they step back, take a long hard look at the fundamentals, and look for simple, elegant solutions.

That may sound like a simple ‘less is more’ philosophy, but they prefer to look at it this way: the best audio equipment shouldn’t add anything to the original recording. Rather it should affect it as little as possible; bringing the listener ever closer to what the artist, producer and mastering engineer wanted you to hear.

Working with music industry professionals, they have access to master tapes and the acetates made in the production of records, and can compare the way the engineers heard them with the way they sound on their record players and via their cables. Vermeer Acoustics are constantly learning about how records are mixed, mastered, cut and pressed, and applying that knowledge to the way we design and build Vertere products.

The fundamentals of a record player are pretty much set in stone, in that a record needs to turn at a certain speed, and the stylus needs to follow the groove and allow the cartridge to convert its undulations into electrical signals with what is literally microscopic accuracy. However, just because those are the basics, that doesn’t mean there’s only one way to achieve them – which is why we take a long hard look, apply our ‘do no evil’ way of thinking, and endeavour to develop simpler, innovative solutions.

That’s why you’ll find their record players look different, both outwardly and in some of the engineering solutions you’ll probably never see. It’s all a matter of stripping down the engineering to those fundamentals by considering the absolute essence of how a record player works – from re-examining the way a cartridge gets its energy to ensuring it extracts maximum information from a groove that’s trying to throw it off track over a thousand times a centimetre.

So yes, the way they design and build their products is unique, but it’s not all about being eye-catching (even if we have to admit we think they look rather good): we hope you’ll find they sound just as unique, too, simply by bringing you even more of the music