UK Audio Show Deluxe 2025 - Highly Commended and Turntable of the Show Awards for Wilson Benesch

 A big show for WB at Whittlebury this year - they made the World debut of their GMT-1 turntable system. "From" 250,000 GBP, this is a significant product launch - a product already declared by Michael Fremer as "the best turntable for any music, at any price".

Here, Ypison electronics and Wilson Benesch's own new top of the range Eminence loudspeakers and a pair of their infrasonic generators (remember, they're not subwoofers, right?) played the supporting roles to the new vinyl spinner.  The room was moodily lit in a fetching shade of mauve.

I made 3 visits to this room - one of the benefits of there being a relatively small number of rooms, more time can be spent evaluating what's on offer.  The first time, what struck me was the sheer stability of this new turntable.  Perhaps if you're familiar with George Michael's Older you'll know it has some slow paced tracks with long sustained notes.  I think this turntable has brought to the fore one of the reasons I tend to prefer digital sources over vinyl, but perhaps I haven't been concious of it until now. Essentially, on tracks like this, even the best turntables I find less than satisfying.  Today I might've understood why - on those sustained notes this turntable was more convincing than any I've heard before.  Stable in a digital kind of way, if you want to understand how they've achieved this with the direct drive design, take a look at WB's site. More stand out features were the lack of surface noise, clarity and something I'd described as easy dynamics - ie dynamically accomplished but not in a forced over-emphasised kind of way.

Second visit confirmed all of the above, but a chance to stop listening to what the table was doing, and enjoying what the music was delivering.  Third visit included a presentation about the collaborative project that is GMT - including other companies and university input.

On this showing, if you have that kind of money to invest in listening to music at home and you have a significant vinyl collection, make sure you give this table a listen.

See the end of this report for a short video of the turntable in action.