Japanese innovators DS Audio launched their first optical phono cartridge onto the worldwide hi-fi stage back in 2013. Since then, designer Tetsuaki Aoyagi has continued to advance and refine the state of the art, achieving level after level of ground-breaking – and arguably peerless – sonic performance.

DS Audio’s pioneering optical cartridges dispense with the usual moving coils and magnets and instead use an optical system that converts the stylus/cantilever movement into audio signals. This completely eliminates the electromagnetic and frictional forces that are rife in traditional MM and MC designs and enables a vastly lower noise floor.

DS Audio’s flagship Grand Master is “a Grand Masterpiece”, writes The Absolute Sound in the magazine’s latest Buyers’ Guide. “Unlike every other phono cartridge and phonostage on the market, the Grand Master and its EQ units are dead quiet – without a trace of the hum, buzz, RF and self-noise that analog lovers have simply learned to live with. The elimination of the usual background racket, coupled to an optical system’s inherently deeper and fuller presentation of the bass and lower midrange, rich, supremely detailed midband, and sweet, airy, ribbon-like treble, makes for the most ‘complete’ and most realistic reproduction of the music and musicians on LPs [reviewer Jonathan Valin] has yet heard.”

And yet, it gets better still. Launched in 2023, DS Audio’s new Grand Master Extreme is an ‘upgrade’ of the original Grand Master which “is not merely an upgrade. It truly merits that overused term ‘game-changer’ because it changes the analog game in profound ways.” The Extreme sports a 0.22mm one-piece stylus and cantilever crafted from a single diamond. This ingenious design eliminates the usual the stylus/cantilever junction such that the stylus can transmit the groove modulation to the optical generator with unprecedented accuracy. “The results are immediately audible. The level of micro detail it excavates from the grooves is uncanny.” This is “one of the best, if not the, best cartridges extant” – and is already a Golden Ear Award 2023 winner.

If your budget doesn’t quite stretch as far as the ultimate state-of-the-art, fear not, for DS Audio’s DS-003 model is a “trickledown masterpiece” that sports many of the technical innovations found in the Grand Master – but at a fraction of the price. “Standard-settingly quiet, explosively dynamic and robustly rich in colour,” it is an earlier winner of The Absolute Sound’s Golden Ear Award 2022 and Product of the Year 2022.

Read more about the benefits of optical phono cartridge technology at https://ds-audio-w.biz/info_optical_cartridge/ and discover DS Audio’s complete range of cartridges and accessories at https://ds-audio-w.biz/products/.

To track down your nearest specialist retailer, contact UK distributor www.soundfowndations.co.uk.

The Absolute Sound’s Buyer’s Guide 2024 is out now, in the November issue of the magazine.