Audio Origami PU8 tonearm
In recent years, turntables have become more homogenous. The majority of designs I test now combine at least the deck and arm from the same manufacturer and many companies are adding cartridges and phono stages to their repertoire as well. The arguments for compatibility and convenience are solid ones and someone who argues vociferously that there is no intrinsic merit to something being fiddly and intimidating, I can’t argue with those benefits.
At the same time, I can mourn the passing of combining deck, arm and cartridge from different sources to create a record player that suited your needs like a Jedi building a lightsabre. It was a throwback to the formative days of hi-fi and it can be both fun and enormously rewarding. Happily, some companies continue to fly the flag for this approach and Audio Origami is one of the leading lights. The PU7 tonearm has been something of a star for many years now and it is now joined by the range topping PU8 which seeks to build on what the PU7 offers.
Both arms share a common ancestor in the form of the Syrinx PU2 tonearm from the late seventies but, in much the same way that you and I are descended from upright apes with a developing interest in flint tooling, quite a lot of evolution has taken place since then. It might be better to see the PU8 as ‘inspired by’ rather than ‘based on.’ It’s a gimbal tonearm that is available in effective lengths between nine and fourteen inches (although the company notes that most tend to top out at twelve), with the rest of the arm assembly being the same throughout.
The first area that the PU8 seeks to improve on is the metal bearing surround. High-grade stainless steel is used in the gimbal, pillars and mount, increasing mass in an area that doesn’t alter effective arm mass but serves to considerably improve resonance damping. The bearing housing that sits between the arm-tube and the metal structure is made of Delrin for improved resonance control. Lurking almost invisibly at this point are two tiny indents that allow for azimuth adjustment of the entire tube.
The arm tube comprises an aluminium tube surrounded by a carbon fibre outer layer. The resulting combination avoids the resonance issues of each individual material while being extremely stiff and light. Inside the tube itself Audio Origami has used the latest generation of their M.M.A.D.S (Meta Material Armtube Damping System) which isolates internal vibrations by floating the internal wiring and blocking any remaining resonance.
Painless
At the end of the PU8’s armtube is an aluminium headshell which features an integrated Cartridge Enhancer which the company also sells separately. As befits an arm being sold with a view to free choice in cartridges, there is plenty of mounting room and all but the most enormous and waywardly shaped designs should mount without issue. I also appreciate the inclusion of a pair of thumb bolts in the box which I have become an absolute convert to since the Vertere arrived (holdouts can continue to use Allen bolts if they need a bit of suffering in their setup). The internal wiring is Cardas Clear cabling and this terminates in a five pin mini DIN connector which allows for use with balanced cables should you wish to go that way.
Another refinement for the PU8 is a revised anti skate system. A post on the left hand side of the bearing housing acts against a pivoting bar and weight assembly. The weight can be moved relative to the rotating point to adjust the resistance. The more time I’ve spent with this system, the more I like it. It’s an improvement over line and weight systems because there is little mechanical contact at work and the system can’t snag or do anything else untoward, instead it maintains consistent application of force. I also like that the PU8 ships with two different counterweights (one for heavier cartridges) which can be adjusted very accurately on a threaded stub.
Install
The PU8 can be supplied in either an ‘old Rega’ single hole or Linn fit. The review sample was supplied to work with a Gyrodec armboard and mated perfectly with it. You also get some useful tools in the box together with documentation written by a human with some appreciation that not everyone will do this as a side effect of their job. No tonearm is ever going to a complete joy to fit but Audio Origami gets closer than most. The care and attention to detail that is apparent in all aspects of its design are plain to see.
This care results in a genuinely beautiful piece of engineering. The PU8 is elegant and aesthetically pleasing, largely because the absence of any fussy protrusions or anything that feels like a bodge job. I have tested arms that cost more and originate from rather larger concerns than Audio Origami that cannot match the finish and attention to detail on offer here. It sits on the Gyro like a designed extension of it.
I fitted the Van den Hul DDTII cartridge from the SME309 that was on the Gyrodec before the Audio Origami arrived. The relatively light tracking force and high compliance design of the Van den Hul models (this particular example tracks at 1.6 grams) can be an issue for some arms and Audio Origami themselves describe the PU8 as being designed for medium and low compliance designs so there was a degree of uncertainty to how the two products would combine (always one of the more fraught parts of assembling a turntable from different manufacturers’ parts).
Sound quality
My concerns were baseless. The single most important thing that the PU8 does from the first rotation is let the Van den Hul do the things it excels at. The opening Come Talk to Me on Peter Gabriel’s Secret World Live is delivered with a tonal richness and sheer vibrance that ensures Gabriel is a vibrant and believable presence at the centre of the recording. It is not and never has been the most ‘studio accurate’ cartridge for sale at the price but I’ve long found this presentation addictive.
What the PU8 does is imbue the performance with a space and three dimensionality that truly does justice to this live recording. While I have thoroughly enjoyed the combination of Gyrodec and SME for the last few years, it is not hard to argue that switching to the PU8 is akin to your speakers growing an upward firing tweeter. The Gyro has a vast soundstage and there is no call for the PU8 to make it any wider. Instead, this width is populated with an airiness and immersion that can handle any size of recording you throw at it.
When you move away from the gloriously overproduced musings of Gabriel and give the Audio Origami the less glossy but infinitely funkier musings of St Germain’s Tourist, it responds with a level of articulation and sheer fluency that had me abandoning any attempt at making notes and simply revelling in six minutes and 56 seconds of Rose Rouge sounding as good as I’ve had the chance to hear it. What the PU8 does is a one/two punch of both resolving more detail, delaying the onset of your music ever sounding congested or confused while also; and I’m going to be less than technical here, going like the clappers. There isn’t a tempo or time signature I’ve played on it that hasn’t been utterly and perfectly reproduced.
Picking weaknesses out of the PU8 is hard but, such as there is one, it would be possible to argue that the bass depth on offer here doesn’t quite plumb the depths that the SME could manage. There is plenty of low end on offer and it shares the same detail and definition as every other part of the frequency response but the SME could take the monstrous electronic noises in the live version of Kraftwerk’s Radio Activity on Minimum Maximum and hint at the subsonic where the PU8 has to be content with simply going very deep. The counter to this is that the SME has no answer to the PU8’s ability to capture the vastness of the Warsaw arena it was recorded in.
Something else that the PU8 has done extremely effectively is convey the character of different cartridges without imparting very much of its own. Some running with two other cartridges; a Vertere Mystic (a device with a decidedly mixed record outside of Vertere arms) and an Analogue Relax EX300 has seen it capture the unforced rightness of the Mystic and the more luscious presentation of the Analogue Relax, all the while keeping that astonishing airiness and agility. I’m sure there is a cartridge it won’t get on with but equally, I am sure you’ll have to go some to find it.
Conclusion
You can reasonably argue that, at a whisker under six grand for the nine inch version, this is the very least you should be expecting but, even with no illusions about the cost of the Audio Origami, I have been blown away by how it performs. Where the PU8 has won me over is that as well as sounding extraordinary, the sheer simplicity of its operation and the feeling of quality that comes from interacting with it has made it entirely vice free to live with. If you have a turntable that still allows for free arm choice, there are very few arms on the market at any price that can hold a candle to this one.