Clearaudio Statement Turntable

⚡ Quick Answer: The Clearaudio Statement is a magnet-bearing turntable that eliminates mechanical friction through floating platter technology and vacuum hold-down systems. Its dual synchronized motors achieve exceptional speed stability while removing background noise, allowing listeners to hear recordings with unprecedented clarity and detail. It represents the pinnacle of analog replay engineering for serious audiophiles.

There are turntables, and then there are statements. Clearaudio has been building precision vinyl replay equipment out of Erlangen, Germany since 1978, and by the time the Statement arrived in its current form — refined and updated through the 2010s, with the 2018 iteration representing the most mature expression of the platform — they had basically run out of compromises to make. So they stopped making any.

The Statement is a magnetic bearing turntable. Let that sink in. The platter doesn't touch anything. It floats on opposing magnetic fields, which means bearing noise — the thing that quietly ruins lesser tables — is essentially zero. Clearaudio claims residual noise in the sub-four-hertz range. Your stylus will never know friction existed.

The vacuum hold-down system pulls your record flat against the platter with around 75 millibars of suction. You've heard of warped records? The Statement has not. Every groove becomes a contact sport, in the best possible sense, and the kind of subtle mistracking you've been blaming on your cartridge for years turns out to have been the record all along.

Two synchronous motors drive the platter via a flat belt, each motor isolated on its own decoupled sub-chassis. The reason for two is phase stability — one motor running is good, two running in precise synchronization is better, and Clearaudio's engineers apparently found this argument compelling enough to double the parts count. The speed accuracy is measurable in parts per million. Your ears won't measure it, but they'll feel it in the way piano sustains stop sounding nervous.

What This Thing Actually Does To Music

The Statement doesn't have a sound so much as an absence of sounds that shouldn't be there. It's a subtractive kind of greatness. You put on a record and you hear the room where it was recorded, the breath before the downbeat, the physical size of the orchestra. What you don't hear is the turntable. That's not faint praise — that's the whole game.

The arm tower system accepts multiple tonearms simultaneously. Most owners run at least two, which means you can have a mono cartridge and a stereo cartridge mounted at the same time. For serious record collections, this is transformative. For serious spouses, this is a conversation.

The caveat — and there is always a caveat — is setup. The Statement demands a proper isolation platform, a perfectly level surface, and someone who reads instructions with the patience of a watchmaker. Getting the vacuum system dialed in, setting VTA on whatever arm you've chosen, balancing the magnetic bearing gap — none of this is difficult exactly, but all of it is exacting. Rush it and you've spent twelve thousand dollars on a machine that sounds like a machine. Take your time and you've got something that sounds like music has never been recorded at all, just performed, right now, in your basement.

The $8,000–$12,000 used price puts it in reach of serious enthusiasts who've worked their way up through a decade of upgrades. If you've owned a Rega RP10, a VPI Prime, maybe a Basis 2001, and you keep thinking there must be something beyond — there is. It's this. The DP-75M you love starts to look like a sensible stepping stone the moment you hear the Statement do its thing.

The record doesn't spin on this table. It levitates.

🎵 Key Takeaways

• 🧲 Magnetic bearing eliminates platter-bearing noise entirely — the platter floats on opposing magnetic fields with sub-four-hertz residual noise, removing a fundamental source of distortion most turntables live with.
• 🔒 Vacuum hold-down system at ~75 millibars pulls records perfectly flat, solving warping and mistracking issues that users typically blame on their cartridge.
• ⚙️ Dual synchronized motors on separate sub-chassis deliver speed stability measured in parts per million — precision that ears perceive as natural sustain rather than mechanical nervousness.
• 💰 Used market pricing at $8,000–$12,000 targets experienced analog enthusiasts who've already owned competent tables like the VPI Prime or Rega RP10 and want the next tier.
• ⚠️ Setup demands watchmaker-level patience with magnetic bearing gaps, vacuum calibration, and VTA adjustment — proper execution transforms it into transparency, rushed installation leaves you with an expensive machine.

How does magnetic bearing on a turntable work and why does it matter?

The Statement's platter floats on opposing magnetic fields that repel each other, meaning it never physically contacts the bearing itself. This eliminates bearing friction noise — a constant low-level distortion on conventional tables — giving you a noise floor so low it lets you hear room reflections and subtle recorded details that were previously masked.

What's the point of having two motors on one turntable?

Dual synchronized motors maintain phase stability and speed consistency that a single motor cannot achieve; Clearaudio quotes speed accuracy in parts per million. You perceive this as piano sustains that sound composed and natural rather than slightly wavering, and overall musical timing that feels locked without sounding artificial.

Do I really need vacuum hold-down, or is it marketing?

The vacuum flattens warped records and ensures cartridge-to-groove contact is perfect and consistent across the entire platter. Many setup frustrations users blame on cartridge choice or arm geometry are actually record flatness issues; the Statement removes that variable entirely.

Can I use multiple tonearms on the Statement?

Yes — the arm tower accepts multiple arms simultaneously, allowing you to run a mono cartridge and stereo cartridge at the same time without swapping. For serious collectors with both mono and stereo pressings, this is a major convenience; for spouses, this is a budget conversation.

Is the Statement worth jumping to from a VPI or Rega at this price point?

If you've already owned and optimized several high-end tables and hit a plateau where upgrades feel incremental, the Statement represents a genuine next tier through its fundamental noise elimination via magnetic bearing and vacuum hold-down. Under that threshold, the law of diminishing returns is unforgiving.