Denon®, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-quality home entertainment products, is adding two stylish new turntables to its Design Series, combining over a century of experience in design and engineering for analogue playback with the very latest technological advances. The DP-400 and DP-450USB are built for high performance and ease of set-up and use while matching the sleek lines of the company’s Design Series range and renowned CEOL Series, as well as their classic 43cm Hi-Fi components. Both turntables feature a built-in pre-amp making them suitable for use with a wide range of systems, while the DP-450USB adds to its specification analogue-to-digital conversion, making it simple to record favourite LPs and singles straight to USB storage devices.
Denon made its first record player in 1910; the latest turntables bring together all that experience and are built for the needs of modern vinyl enthusiasts. Both models are designed to be simple to install and use, with a clear set-up guide and a high-quality moving magnet cartridge pre-installed in a universal headshell that connects easily to the tonearm. That means they can be up and playing within minutes, while the switchable phono stage means they’ll even work with amplifiers and systems without built-in phono inputs – any line or auxiliary input will be fine.
The Denon DP-400 is built on a heavy, well-damped plinth to damp down resonances, and is just 41cm wide, to save space and match with the Denon Design Series. The weighted platter is belt-driven, with to playback is available at 331/3 rpm, 45 rpm and 78 rpm, an integrated sensor controlling the speed to avoid fluctuations and ensure pitch accuracy, and auto-lift and playback stop at the end of a side.
The newly engineered precision S-shaped tonearm has been designed to reduce distortion and is fitted with a moving magnet cartridge selected to match the turntable: it’s easy to swap this for an upgraded moving coil model if required. The built-in phono stage can be bypassed, allowing the turntable to be used with amps with their own phono section, or offboard phono amps.
The DP-400 comes complete with an exclusively designed dustcover, doubling as a display stand for an album sleeve: simply mount the dustcover vertically on the included base, and you can show off your favourite album artwork during music playback.
With the Denon DP-450USB, copying favourite LPs and singles to a computer are made simpler than ever: it builds on the specification of the DP-400 with the addition of a built-in digital-to-analogue converter, able to transfer music directly to USB storage connected to the front-panel USB Type A port. There’s no need to connect the turntable to a computer: simply plug in the storage device, select compressed MP3 or uncompressed CD-quality WAV recording, and play the record. It couldn’t be any simpler.
Recorded files can then be played from the USB storage device on a computer, on your car stereo system, a range of USB-equipped Denon products, and HEOS wireless speakers. To edit recordings on a PC, Denon offers MusiCut software for Windows 10, allowing MP3 files to be manipulated, organised, and tagged with metadata to build your library. The MusiCut software can be downloaded from the Denon website free of charge.
Features at a glance
- Plug and play design with pre-installed moving magnet cartridge
- Heavy, damped platter and plinth to suppress resonances
- Newly designed S-shaped tonearm with end-of-side auto-lift and stop
- 331/3 rpm, 45 rpm and 78 rpm speeds with sensor-controlled stability
- Integrated phono stage with on/off switch allows connection to an amplifier or system
- Exclusive dustcover design can be used to display album artwork
- Just 41cm wide, to complement Denon Design Series components and save space
- DP-450USB adds an analogue-to-digital converter and USB port for direct MP3/WAV recording to
- USB storage devices
The DP-400 (¬ 499 / £ 449) and DP-450USB (¬ 599 / £ 529) is available through authorised Denon retailers.
For more information, please visit www.denon.co.uk
