Rega’s reference turntables, side by side. Here is the Planar 10 between the Planar 8 and the flagship Naia and their specifications, showing what your money buys at each step.

In 2010 Rega set out to build the ultimate low-mass, high-rigidity turntable with no regard for cost. Seven years later it produced the Naiad, made fifty of them, and sold them at around £38,000 each. The Naia is what happened next: the same thinking, the same materials science, put into production at under half that price. Rega calls it the culmination of decades of development, and it is the closest thing the company makes to a statement of everything it believes about how a record should be played.

Brief product overview

A two-speed belt-drive turntable built on a skeletal plinth of graphene-impregnated carbon fibre skinned over a Tancast 8 polyurethane foam core, the strongest plinth Rega has ever produced. The foam’s lightweight random structure minimises vibration transmission while the graphene-carbon skin prevents microscopic movement during playback. The structure is strengthened further by two ceramic aluminium oxide braces, the same material used for the redesigned resonance-controlled ceramic platter, which has a complex profile and an improved flywheel effect. The central bearing is zirconium-toughened alumina. The RB Titanium is the most advanced tonearm Rega has produced: designed with the minimum of mechanical joints and the stiffest materials throughout, it achieves near-frictionless movement in both planes with no measurable free play, using a one-piece titanium vertical bearing housing and titanium vertical spindle assembly, a hand-polished single-piece aluminium arm tube to keep mass low, and a tungsten balance weight and shaft. Triple reference drive belts improve stability and drive characteristics, turned by a 24V low-noise motor hand-tuned to its own reference power supply. Custom low-mass skeletal aluminium feet, inspired by the Naiad, couple the deck to its support. The Aphelion 2 moving-coil cartridge is fitted as standard. It measures roughly 420 x 350 x 115mm and weighs around 7.7kg.

How it sounds

The Naia’s defining quality is silence, and what that silence allows. Backgrounds are genuinely black, and against them the soundstage becomes three-dimensional in a way that makes instruments and voices seem to occupy space in the room rather than sit between the speakers. Dynamics are startling because nothing is being lost to resonance or absorbed by mass. Bass is deep and controlled, the midrange natural and unforced, the treble extended without hardness. What it does, more than any Rega before it, is disappear entirely, leaving the record and nothing else.

What we’d partner it with

The Naia arrives with the Aphelion 2 fitted, a moving-coil cartridge, so a dedicated moving-coil phono stage is essential. The Rega Aura is the natural choice and the one Rega itself points to: a reference design with adjustable gain and loading built specifically for moving-coil cartridges, and the stage the Aphelion 2 was developed alongside.

For amplification, Rega’s own reference separates are the coherent answer. The Mercury preamplifier is the most electronically complex product the company has built, engineered around an ultra-low noise floor with a discrete, fully symmetrical circuit, and it includes a DAC derived from the Saturn Mk3 and Isis CD players. The Solis power amplifier delivers 168 watts into 8 ohms and 305 into 4 from a fully discrete, fully symmetrical signal path with differential drive. The two were designed together.

For speakers, the Elac Concentro S 509.2 suits a system of this standing: a floorstander from Elac’s Concentro range, with the resolution to show what a front end of this quality is doing. Flagship floorstanders from Sonus faber, Focal, Fyne Audio and Monitor Audio work equally well.

As a Rega turntable, the Naia earths through its phono lead, so there is no separate ground wire to attach.

On cabling, run the preamplifier to the power amplifier on balanced cables, and use a well-made speaker cable of appropriate gauge for the run; AudioQuest and Chord are the cable brands we stock.

Who shouldn’t buy it

If you want most of what the Naia does for a fraction of the outlay, the Planar 10 shares the skeletal plinth and ceramic platter philosophy and is the sensible stopping point for the great majority of systems. If your amplification and speakers are not at a comparable level, the Naia will still sound superb but you will not hear what you have paid for, and the money is better spent elsewhere in the chain first. And it is worth being clear that a phono stage of appropriate quality is part of the purchase, not an afterthought.

The Naia arrives with the Aphelion 2 fitted and aligned. Setup means fitting the sub-platter, the three drive belts and the ceramic platter, balancing the arm and setting tracking force and bias, and it is worth having the dealer do it given what is at stake. The plinth is exceptionally light, so the support beneath it matters a great deal: solid, level and isolated, well away from the speakers. The power supply is hand-tuned to this particular motor, so the two should stay together. Set the Aura’s gain and loading for the Aphelion 2. Handle the ceramic platter carefully; it is the heaviest single part of the deck.