• aptX HD Bluetooth
• Onboard phono stage
• Great performance
• Fully manual
• Counterweight markings
$1,699
Despite having been in the hi-fi business since 1968, Cambridge Audio didn’t build a turntable until after the turn of the century, with the release of the TT60. It was then over a decade before its next turntable, the Alva TT, which the company claimed was the first turntable in the world to offer aptX HD Bluetooth streaming.
It wasn’t quite so slow to release its third, the Alva TT V2, which arrived in 2022, just three years after the original. The V2 model came with a pre-installed high-output moving-coil cartridge and a built-in phono preamp, plus continued with support for aptX HD Bluetooth.
However, Cambridge Audio used 2022 to release yet another turntable, the Alva ST, which is on test here. This deck also has a built-in phono cartridge — though moving-magnet, rather than moving-coil — and a built-in phono preamp (exactly the same one used in the TT V2), as well as support for aptX HD Bluetooth (again, the exact-same circuitry). It even has exactly the same tonearm as the Alva TT V2. But this turntable does have two very obvious significant differences from its Alva TT V2 sibling.
First, it is belt-drive rather than direct-drive. And second, the its retail price is approximately half that of the Alva TT — though this has been difficult to discern since the Alva TT V2 started out at $3,699 before dropping to $3,299 and is now sometimes available on special just shy of $3k, while the Alva ST started out at $1,799 before dropping down to its current $1,699.
It turns out there is another, albeit not so obvious, significant difference: whereas the Alva TT V2 has a platter made out
