In Depth Planar 10 Review from Part-Time Audiophile
Posted by The Sound Organisation on Mar 30th 2020
Rega's new Planar 10 turntable continues to impress every reviewer who listens to the state-of-the-art deck. As Rega's finest consumer-grade turntable, the Planar 10 captures the performance of Rega's Naiad, but distilled into a more attainable price. The result is a turntable that will scoop out every little bit of information hiding within the grooves of your vinyl, while not coloring the signal or adding any noise to music. All the reviewers say the same thing about the Planar 10: it offers the most transparent reproduction of any turntable on the market.
Photo courtesy of Eric Franklin Shook, via Part-TimeAudio.
Dave McNair recently wrote about his experience with the Rega Planar 10 on the Part-Time Audiophile website. In a fantastic in-depth review, McNair describes his listening journey from upgrading his Rega Planar 3 to the Planar 10. As a mastering engineer, McNair works with digital sources all day, so when he heads home he loves to hear that special magic that can only be found in analog recordings. Also, with a background in mixing and mastering, he is more inclined to notice the subtleties of the recording from the number of tape echo repeats to phase shifts. There's no better fit for the Planar 10's amazing ability to pull out every detail of a recording.
The Rega P10 is an information retrieval monster! It wasn’t brighter than the P3 (it wasn’t, even though at first I thought it might be), but the increased detail, in the sense of a subtle smear being removed, revealed a clearer, cleaner top end. Record after record, whether audiophile or garden variety releases, the sound had a sense of rightness and even a sense of ease to the listening experience, a purer conduit into the music.
Like many other reviewers, McNair found that the Planar 10 doesn't hide a bad recording, for better or worse. But, unlike other reviewers, the music technician's ears were pleased by how much interesting detail was pulled out, even from poorer-quality recordings.
To dive in to the technology behind the Planar 10, Dave takes a minute to review Rega's philosophy, touching on some topics in A Vibration Measuring Machine. After some more deep listening, McNair also experiments with other equipment in the system, finding some surprising combinations to get the sound he needed.
McNair closes with an outstanding statement about the Planar 10's value:
For any serious, vinyl oriented audiophile searching for the kind of performance usually found at the BMW i8 level, but at an i3 price (approximately $5,495 without cartridge and $6,695 supplied with Rega’s Alpheta 3 MC cart), the P10 offers more than just great value. For a lot of folks, this might be as good as it gets.