Background

Talea is an innovative new arm that raises cartridge performance to new levels.

Designer Joel Durand is an audiophile and Galibier turntable owner.

He is also a composer, musician and university professor. He has used his knowledge of how instruments work and sound supported by rigorous research through academic papers about tone arm design to produce a tone arm that genuinely raises the bar for sound quality.

Over 1500 hours of research has been invested in the Talea. Prof. Durand engaged his academic colleagues from engineering and materials science in his goal of developing a state of the art design.

Durand has taken his influences from the precision screw adjustment of arms like the Triplanar and Phantom whilst also respectfully acknowledging the innovations of Frank Schröder

The design was premiered at Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, in October 2009 to the acclaim of analogue enthusiasts. First deliveries were made in March 2010.

Owners have commented on how the Talea lowers the noise floor in their systems, allowing more nuance through and how the dynamic responses are significantly improved. Find out more at the Galibier Design forum.

Demonstrations available by appointment. Arms are built to order and availability is limited.

Durand Tonearms website. (Opens in new window).

SRP On application

Specification

The Talea is designed to work with the mechanical resonances created when playing a record. Durand draws the analogy between the arm wand and a violin bow.

A unique, patent-pending feature is the magnetic azimuth on-the-fly adjustment enabling the correct orientation of stylus and record groove to be set by ear. There is a VTA tower assembly which moves the arm in the vertical axis to set the optimum stylus rake angle.

Table Caption

Effective length	263 mm
Pivot-spindle	247.4 mm
Overhang	15.6 mm
Offset angle	20.8 degrees
Mounting distance (from spindle)	208-220 mm
Assembled weight	1.04 kg

Further reading

Read an owner's review (Audiogon). Opens in new window.
University of Washington report on the design process.