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Roksan Xerxes
The Roksan Xerxes transcription turntable (often shortened to Xerxes) is a record player named after the Persian king Xerxes I and produced by London-based Roksan Audio. Designed by Roksan co-founder, Touraj Moghaddam, the Xerxes is a belt-driven turntable with a solid plinth. Launched in 1985, the sound quality of the product positioned it as a strong competitor against the established industry leader, the Linn Sondek LP12. Many reviewers use the Xerxes as a reference turntable.
The production version of the Xerxes is called "Xerxes.20plus", a reference to the 20th anniversary of the launch, in 2005.
Before Touraj Moghaddam founded Roksan, he had become dissatisfied with the state of the audio arts when he heard his little television set reproduce Thelonious Monk in a more musically satisfying way than his high-end Linn/Naim tri-amped audio system. Through experimentation, he deduced that the existing turntable design failed because the cartridge was not being held still wherever the groove went. He believed that the mean line traced by the groove relative to the body of the cartridge needed to be constant. His ideas led him away from using the sprung sub-chassis as part of the speed-controlling system. Needing a top plinth roughly an inch (25 mm) thick made from wood with a density of about 700 to 800 kg/m3, Moghaddam found suitable material in a fire door with which he built a prototype. His friend Tufan Hashemi – then an investment analyst – heard the new prototype turntable and wanted one. They agreed to team up to start production; Roksan Audio was formed. The Xerxes, introduced in 1985, secured the advocacy of Roger Macer, a successful independent hi-fi retailer in London who sold the then market leader, the Linn Sondek. Hashemi credits Macer with urging him to start satisfying the demand of "dozens or more a week" from his customers. The product, named after the Persian king Xerxes I, was launched at a hi-fi show in 1985 where the Roksan Darius loudspeaker concept was also unveiled.
Tufan Hashemi said Roksan sought to create equipment that would excel in high-quality musical reproduction and capable of involving the listener on an emotional level. Product characteristics were to include precision and transparency of the sound. Moghaddam, acting as chief designer, set out to find solutions to engineering problems he saw as inherent in the belt-driven suspended sub-chassis turntable design of Edgar Villchur, where the sub-chassis and tonearm are free to rotate. Moghaddam believed that the design generated undesirable torsional modes. One such torsional mode is said to be caused by "groove drag" – dynamic forces exerted by the stylus on the record as it tracked it. Moghaddam chose to attenuate the torsion by mounting the turntable-drive motor casing on its own bearing. The motor, mounted separately and tethered to a spring, is allowed limited rotation about its own axis; because the load varied with groove modulations, the increases in drag would thus be dampened by the spring-loaded motor, and the platter acceleration mitigated. In the words of Tufan Hashemi, Roksan Audio's managing director:
"We argued that using a suspended or floating surface to support a record could not allow it to be accurately read, as the record itself would be floating. We said that the record surface should remain stationary and solid but in complete isolation from the rest of the deck, and our design provided a very stable base for isolating a record without suspending it."
Like the LP12, the Xerxes has a two-piece platter–sub-platter configuration on which sits a thin felt mat. And while the LP12's platters are made of mazak, the Xerxes' platters are of aluminium. The outer platter is rigid and peripherally weighted. However, the Roksan's outer platter weighs less than half of that of the LP12, to reduce load on the main bearing, yet is able to achieve a greater inertia because of its weight distribution.
A second challenge was how to overcome the rotation of the suspended parts – the sub-chassis, platter, arm and cartridge – relative to the motor. This was done by re-imagining a suspension that had less freedom of lateral movement relative to the drive motor. The Xerxes uses a relatively light medium-density fibreboard (MDF) top board on which the bearing and tonearm assemblies are mounted. Firm rubber "Blobs" mounted on the bottom board (along with the motor assembly) support yet decouple from the top board. Aesthetically, the two boards are encased by a wooden surround fixed to the base board with screws. These design principles can be seen throughout the evolution of the Xerxes, right through to the Xerxes 20plus.
The original Xerxes design is deliberately a radical departure from the traditional suspended sub-chassis design. Instead of having a three-point sprung suspension separating the plinth from the sub-chassis, the Xerxes is made up of two boards separated from each other by stiff rubber "Blobs". The top plinth sees mountings for the main bearing and tonearm. A hole is cut out from the top board for the motor assembly to emerge from its fixture on the board below. On the lower board, to which an outer surround is attached, three compliant rubber feet give additional isolation to the turntable's chosen placement. One notable characteristic of the deck is the large C-shaped groove cut into the top plinth to control how vibrations would be transmitted from platter to the tonearm area. However, the cut-out is prone to a commonly observed "plinth sag", where the part of it would bend out of true with the rest of the board.
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Roksan Xerxes
The Roksan Xerxes transcription turntable (often shortened to Xerxes) is a record player named after the Persian king Xerxes I and produced by London-based Roksan Audio. Designed by Roksan co-founder, Touraj Moghaddam, the Xerxes is a belt-driven turntable with a solid plinth. Launched in 1985, the sound quality of the product positioned it as a strong competitor against the established industry leader, the Linn Sondek LP12. Many reviewers use the Xerxes as a reference turntable.
The production version of the Xerxes is called "Xerxes.20plus", a reference to the 20th anniversary of the launch, in 2005.
Before Touraj Moghaddam founded Roksan, he had become dissatisfied with the state of the audio arts when he heard his little television set reproduce Thelonious Monk in a more musically satisfying way than his high-end Linn/Naim tri-amped audio system. Through experimentation, he deduced that the existing turntable design failed because the cartridge was not being held still wherever the groove went. He believed that the mean line traced by the groove relative to the body of the cartridge needed to be constant. His ideas led him away from using the sprung sub-chassis as part of the speed-controlling system. Needing a top plinth roughly an inch (25 mm) thick made from wood with a density of about 700 to 800 kg/m3, Moghaddam found suitable material in a fire door with which he built a prototype. His friend Tufan Hashemi – then an investment analyst – heard the new prototype turntable and wanted one. They agreed to team up to start production; Roksan Audio was formed. The Xerxes, introduced in 1985, secured the advocacy of Roger Macer, a successful independent hi-fi retailer in London who sold the then market leader, the Linn Sondek. Hashemi credits Macer with urging him to start satisfying the demand of "dozens or more a week" from his customers. The product, named after the Persian king Xerxes I, was launched at a hi-fi show in 1985 where the Roksan Darius loudspeaker concept was also unveiled.
Tufan Hashemi said Roksan sought to create equipment that would excel in high-quality musical reproduction and capable of involving the listener on an emotional level. Product characteristics were to include precision and transparency of the sound. Moghaddam, acting as chief designer, set out to find solutions to engineering problems he saw as inherent in the belt-driven suspended sub-chassis turntable design of Edgar Villchur, where the sub-chassis and tonearm are free to rotate. Moghaddam believed that the design generated undesirable torsional modes. One such torsional mode is said to be caused by "groove drag" – dynamic forces exerted by the stylus on the record as it tracked it. Moghaddam chose to attenuate the torsion by mounting the turntable-drive motor casing on its own bearing. The motor, mounted separately and tethered to a spring, is allowed limited rotation about its own axis; because the load varied with groove modulations, the increases in drag would thus be dampened by the spring-loaded motor, and the platter acceleration mitigated. In the words of Tufan Hashemi, Roksan Audio's managing director:
"We argued that using a suspended or floating surface to support a record could not allow it to be accurately read, as the record itself would be floating. We said that the record surface should remain stationary and solid but in complete isolation from the rest of the deck, and our design provided a very stable base for isolating a record without suspending it."
Like the LP12, the Xerxes has a two-piece platter–sub-platter configuration on which sits a thin felt mat. And while the LP12's platters are made of mazak, the Xerxes' platters are of aluminium. The outer platter is rigid and peripherally weighted. However, the Roksan's outer platter weighs less than half of that of the LP12, to reduce load on the main bearing, yet is able to achieve a greater inertia because of its weight distribution.
A second challenge was how to overcome the rotation of the suspended parts – the sub-chassis, platter, arm and cartridge – relative to the motor. This was done by re-imagining a suspension that had less freedom of lateral movement relative to the drive motor. The Xerxes uses a relatively light medium-density fibreboard (MDF) top board on which the bearing and tonearm assemblies are mounted. Firm rubber "Blobs" mounted on the bottom board (along with the motor assembly) support yet decouple from the top board. Aesthetically, the two boards are encased by a wooden surround fixed to the base board with screws. These design principles can be seen throughout the evolution of the Xerxes, right through to the Xerxes 20plus.
The original Xerxes design is deliberately a radical departure from the traditional suspended sub-chassis design. Instead of having a three-point sprung suspension separating the plinth from the sub-chassis, the Xerxes is made up of two boards separated from each other by stiff rubber "Blobs". The top plinth sees mountings for the main bearing and tonearm. A hole is cut out from the top board for the motor assembly to emerge from its fixture on the board below. On the lower board, to which an outer surround is attached, three compliant rubber feet give additional isolation to the turntable's chosen placement. One notable characteristic of the deck is the large C-shaped groove cut into the top plinth to control how vibrations would be transmitted from platter to the tonearm area. However, the cut-out is prone to a commonly observed "plinth sag", where the part of it would bend out of true with the rest of the board.