AVID

Altus Tonearm

The AVID Altus Tonearm is a meticulously hand-built tonearm that is designed to reveal the finest nuances in your vinyl playback with stunning clarity and focus. Featuring a thick-walled aluminium arm tube and micron tolerance bearings, it ensures exceptional stability and precise vibration control. The adjustable progressive bias mechanism counters tracking distortion, maintaining sonic integrity across the entire record. With its purpose-designed low capacitance cable and high-quality RCA or optional XLR connectors, the AVID Altus Tonearm offers audiophiles a captivating, transparent sound experience with realistic, three-dimensional soundscapes.

Altus Tonearm Delivers Unparalleled Vinyl Playback Precision

The Altus Tonearm transforms vinyl playback with exceptional clarity and immersive detail, allowing each note and nuance to emerge with precision. Built to capture every frequency with unwavering accuracy, it integrates the finest engineering from AVID’s flagship models, including micron-level bearings and the advanced Bias system. The Altus’s performance offers an immediate and vivid listening experience, making it ideal for those seeking a captivating soundstage at a remarkable value.

Handcrafted Quality with Micron Tolerance Bearings

Each Altus tonearm is meticulously hand-built with micron tolerance bearings for precise tracking and minimal friction. With its ball race bearings tuned to near-zero play, the Altus ensures seamless, frictionless movement, reducing distortion and delivering an ultra-clear soundstage. This innovative approach upholds sound fidelity by eliminating unwanted vibrations, providing unparalleled stability, and securing every detail of playback without compromise.

Adjustable Progressive Bias for Smooth Tracking

The Altus employs an adjustable progressive Bias system that counteracts centripetal forces as the tonearm approaches the record centre. This system reduces inner groove distortion by gradually increasing bias force, preserving sonic integrity from start to finish. This compensation mechanism, inherited from the flagship Nexus, maintains balanced stylus pressure on the groove wall, delivering cleaner playback and extending the lifespan of both records and stylus.

Thick-Walled Aluminium Arm Tube for Enhanced Sound Fidelity

A key feature of the Altus is its thick-walled aluminium arm tube, a design that securely holds the cartridge and effectively channels vibrations away from the stylus. With a 2mm wall thickness, the arm tube prevents unwanted resonance that can blur sound details, allowing high frequencies to come through uncoloured. This solid construction is crucial for transparent playback, capturing vocals and instruments with remarkable spatial accuracy.

Precision-Engineered Headshell for Dynamic Sound

The solid aluminium headshell on the Altus is laser-cut to the highest standards, providing a secure foundation for the cartridge without the weight-reducing holes commonly found in other designs. This seamless headshell structure enhances sound solidity, particularly in vocal and instrumental representation, bringing each element to life with vivid dimensionality. The precise connection to the arm tube ensures an uninterrupted transmission of sonic details.

Premium Phono Cable for Superior Connectivity

To complete the Altus’s high-performance design, it includes a detachable low-capacitance phono cable featuring a right-angled DIN connector and gold-plated RCA terminations. This cable ensures a robust connection, while an optional balanced XLR termination is available for those preferring fully balanced phono playback. Each connection choice reinforces the Altus’s commitment to delivering a refined, interference-free audio signal.

The Altus Tonearm embodies AVID’s dedication to exquisite sound and craftsmanship, offering vinyl enthusiasts an immersive listening experience that combines stability, detail, and balance. Ideal for listeners who want to hear their records in a whole new way, the Altus provides an exceptional balance of performance and value.

Precision Hand-Built Craftsmanship

The ALTUS tonearm is meticulously crafted by skilled technicians, ensuring that each component meets the highest standards of quality and performance. Every unit undergoes rigorous testing to guarantee precise functionality, resulting in a product that offers exceptional reliability and enduring excellence. Micron-level tolerances in the bearing assembly eliminate unwanted play, allowing the tonearm to glide effortlessly, preserving the integrity of the music without any loss of detail.

Rigid Bearing Architecture for Exceptional Clarity

At the heart of the ALTUS is its rigid bearing architecture, inspired by the Nexus design, ensuring a seamless, frictionless motion. This precision-engineered system stabilises the tonearm, providing an exceptionally solid base for the cartridge. By anchoring the cartridge firmly, the ALTUS achieves a stunningly realistic and tactile sound image, unveiling layers of detail and enhancing the overall listening experience. The bearing shafts are machined and ground to micron tolerances, ensuring smooth, consistent movement without compromise.

Thick-Walled Aluminium Arm Tube for Sonic Purity

The ALTUS tonearm employs a thick-walled aluminium arm tube, meticulously designed to secure the cartridge while facilitating efficient vibration transmission away from it. This 2mm thick tube enhances rigidity, significantly reducing higher frequency vibrations that could otherwise distort the sound. By channelling unwanted energy away from the cartridge, the ALTUS ensures every track is reproduced with breathtaking transparency, bringing out the richness of every instrument and vocal performance.

Adjustable Progressive Bias for Consistent Playback

Inner groove distortion is a common challenge for turntables, where centripetal forces can cause tracking issues as the stylus approaches the record's centre. The ALTUS combats this with an adjustable progressive bias mechanism that gradually increases compensatory force as the tonearm moves closer to the centre of the record. This intelligent design maintains balanced pressure on the groove wall, ensuring distortion-free playback across the entire record, from the opening note to the final fade.

Precision-Engineered Headshell for Optimal Performance

Crafted from solid aluminium through a laser-cutting process, the ALTUS headshell provides an uncompromising foundation for the cartridge. Unlike other designs that feature weight-reducing holes, the ALTUS maintains structural integrity, preventing vibration distortion and preserving sound clarity. The headshell seamlessly integrates with the aluminium collar, delivering a heightened sense of dimensionality, and a more accurate spatial representation of vocals and instruments, enhancing the realism of the music.

Superior Cable Design for Enhanced Signal Fidelity

Connectivity is paramount, and the ALTUS delivers with a low capacitance external phono cable that ensures signal purity. Equipped with a superior right-angled DIN connector and high-quality gold-plated RCA plugs, the cable provides a secure, interference-free connection. For audiophiles who prefer a balanced output, the ALTUS is also available with XLR connectors, allowing for a pristine, natural sound profile that matches the tonal character of a true phono cartridge.

Micron Tolerance Bearings for Smooth, Uninterrupted Sound

The ALTUS tonearm features high-specification ball race bearings, carefully fitted to micron-level tolerances. This ensures that the only movement possible is in the precise, intended directions, with minimal friction. Both the horizontal and vertical shafts are engineered to maintain zero play, preventing any deviations that could impact sound quality. This exacting attention to detail preserves the authenticity of the audio signal, capturing every faint nuance and subtle inflection recorded in the grooves.

Progressive Anti-Skate Mechanism to Counter Inner Groove Distortion

A hallmark of the ALTUS is its progressive anti-skate mechanism, which dynamically adjusts to counteract the varying centripetal forces exerted on the tonearm as it tracks the record. Unlike traditional anti-skate systems, which apply a uniform force, the ALTUS increases resistance progressively as the tonearm moves inward. This results in more consistent tracking, reduced wear on records, and the preservation of musical detail across the entire playback experience.

Breathtaking Transparency and Sonic Integrity

The ALTUS stands out for its ability to reveal the subtlest aspects of your records, capturing everything from delicate background vocals to the deep, resonant tones of a bass guitar. This is achieved through its uncompromising focus on structural rigidity and precise engineering, creating a tonearm that lets your records shine with breathtaking transparency. Each element of the ALTUS is purposefully designed to enhance your listening experience, providing an immediacy and focus that immerses you fully in the music.

The ALTUS tonearm brings together cutting-edge technology and meticulous craftsmanship to deliver a stunningly realistic audio experience. Whether you're revisiting classic records or exploring new vinyl releases, the ALTUS ensures you hear every subtlety, every detail, as if you were in the studio with the artist.

Specification