At Audio Advice, we are huge fans of Rega turntables. They have great sound, are easy to set up, and are made so well they run for decades. The last couple of years have been very busy for Rega as they have completed updated every model in their line up. The RP1, RP2, RP3, RP6, and RP8 all were updated to Planar models. The final model to upgrade was the RP10. We had one of the very first ones in the country at our 2019 Music Matters event and loved the way it sounded. It is truly a technological marvel!

We have done a comparison of the new Planar 6 to the new Planar 8 and felt it would be fun to compare and contrast the Planar 8 to the new Planar 10. They do share some similar technology, but there are also some big reasons to jump up to the Planar 10. Make no mistake, the Planar 8 is one amazing turntable. When we heard it for the first time, we were blown away. The same thing happened when we heard the new Planar 10 but even more so!

We’ll go over all of the different components and help you understand how they might impact the sound in your system. As always, when we compare turntables, we start from the bottom up, so let’s dive right in!

Isolation Feet

The Planar 8 and Planar 10 share the same technology for their isolation feet. On both tables, you have three feet made from Santoprene with aluminum reinforced trim rings. Santoprene is a great material for preventing transmission of resonances which prevents external vibrations from making their way into the table. We’ve played both the Planar 8 and Planar 10 very close to speakers with tremendous deep bass and never had the slightest trace of acoustic feedback.

Plinth

A turntable plinth is normally the big, flat part of the turntable all of the components are mounted to. When the Planar 6 was introduced, it was the first Rega to use a new material called Tancast 8. This is a super light and stiff material, which makes it ideal for a great turntable. On the Planar 6, the Tancast is completely covered with a high-pressure laminate material.

In the new Planar 8, Rega reduced the mass of the plinth even more by making it just big enough to hold the components. They only put the Tancast 8 on the top and bottom, leaving the edges of the Tancast 8 exposed. You can barely even see the plinth with the platter on. This type of design reduces mass a lot. We felt this contributed to the Planar 8 really outclassing the Planar 6 in bringing the music even more to life.

There was not really anything Rega could improve on with the design of the Planar 8 plinth, so the Planar 10 has the same plinth.

You might be thinking by now, well, what are the big differences? Just wait my friends, they are coming up and coming up big time!

Bearing Hub Assembly & Sub Platter

With the release of the Planar 6, Rega introduced a new, low mass, central bearing assembly. The sub-platter (the part the main platter sits on top of) is a single, machined piece of aluminum with a hardened steel spindle. The spindle is inside a custom brass housing. This is also used on the Planar 8. On both models, the machined sub-platter has smaller, raised contact points the main platter sites on. Rega took this design and added a hardened matched plate to anchor it to the plinth. All of this is some trickle-down technology from the $45,000 Naiad turntable.

With the Planar 10, the bearing hub assembly is much more massive and anchored more rigidly to the plinth. It is deeper and has a wider mount on both the top and bottom than the Planar 8. The subplatter is also much more substantial on the Planar 10, although both use the same contact point system for the main platter.

When we tested the Planar 10 the tolerances of the bearing really impressed us, this is probably the tightest tolerance turntable bearing we have ever seen. We’d love to play with a Naiad one day after seeing this one!

Bracing

Starting with the Planar 3 and up, Rega turntables use a system called double bracing. This system couples the tonearm mount to the platter bearing. On all of the tables with double bracing, the brace resembles a structural beam in that most of the mass is cut out. This design helps the phono cartridge and tonearm combination pull out more of those tiny details from the record groove.

With the Planar 8, Rega uses a phenolic material sandwiched with aluminum for the upper brace and solid phenolic lower brace. The Planar 10 uses the same ceramic material for the upper brace as the platter, and it’s cut with the same precision. It has even less mass than the design used with the Planar 8 and is more rigid. The lower brace is the same as the Planar 8. The sonic improvement will be more of those tiny details in the record that will be revealed to our ears.

Platter

Since the beginnings of Rega, they have used float glass platters. The Planar 6 uses a double layer of Rega’s float glass. The second layer is a smaller diameter ring bonded beneath the top glass plate, which follows the circumference. The increased mass improves the natural flywheel effect. The Planar 8 steps up one more notch with a third layer. This not only weighs more but increases the flywheel effect even further.

The Planar 8 uses a triple layer float glass platter. This adds more weight to the perimeter of the platter for a great flywheel effect. We have to say, the speed stability on the Planar 8 is just outstanding.

The Planar 10 dives into some actual space-age materials for its platter. Yes, the ceramic platter on the Planar 10 is made of the same material used in missile nose cones! Its made from a ceramic oxide powder that is compressed and fired, then diamond cut for a perfectly flat and round result. Like the Planar 8, it also has more mass around the edge of the platter for an outstanding flywheel effect. This is one heck of a cool platter design that gives you less resonance and great speed consistency than the Planar 8.

Motor Mounting System

During the design of their ultimate Naiad turntable, Rega developed a new way to mount the motor that was totally different than anything they had done before. The precision motor is mounted from the bottom. This holds the motor perfectly still for better speed stability and keeps any stress from being put on the motor. A mounting system like this also reduces the amount of energy from the motor that could be transferred to the plinth.

Rega uses a version of this in the Planar 8 and made some improvements to it for even more stability in the Planar 10.

Motor

Both the Planar 8 and Planar 10 use a special 24v low noise synchronous motor. With the P10, the motor is hand-selected for the best speed consistency and gets MU-Metal shielding.

The Planar 10 motor is also hand-matched to the special Planar 10 motor power supply. All of this fine-tuning gives us, even more, rock-solid speed bringing us closer to the sound of live music.

Belt

Both the Planar 8 and Planar 10 use a dual belt system with a new belt material. While they are the same one both models, we want to go into this a little bit to show you how fanatical the engineers at Rega are.

Since the belt is a pretty important part of a belt drive turntable, Rega is always looking for ways to improve it through better materials and/or machining. Their engineers worked with a team of chemists on this project. The material they developed is called EBLT, but they were not happy there. They then came up with a whole new way to cure the material to give it an almost perfectly consistent elasticity. Well, having an incredible material for a belt will not do you any good unless you can figure out a way to cut it so it can be as round as possible. So get this, Rega teams up with a company that makes precision parts for Formula1 racing cars. They helped Rega design a machine to make this new belt as precise as possible. While some companies might buy an off the shelf belt from a belt company (and there are a lot like this), Rega works with a bunch of chemists and a Formula 1 team, now that is simply incredible at what they will do to give us better sound!

The dual belt system results in better speed and less vibrations from the motor getting to the platter. Both the Planar 8 and Planar 10 to an even higher degree have this spooky lack of background noise which we think is partly due to this unique belt design.

Motor Controller

The Planar 8 uses an external power supply called the Neo that was introduced with the Rega Planar 6. The Neo uses DSP (digital signal processing) to create what is pretty close to a perfect drive signal for the motor. The Neo is a separate box that also helps isolate any possible noise from the motor power supply. With the Planar 8 (and 6 too) the motor is fine-tuned to the Neo.

The Planar 10 goes one step further. The power supply for the Planar 10 is called the PL10 PSU. It is physically much larger than the Neo and feels like a high-end audio component. The PL10 PSU starts out getting a perfect square wave from a super high stability internal crystal. Rega than uses DSP to manipulate this signal into a perfect and never-changing power source for the motor. We love the fact that this system is going to give you a pure signal even with pretty bad power coming out of your wall. The Rega assembly team then fine-tunes each PL10 PSU to the low noise, precision motor.

Both the Neo and PL10 PSU give you one button change from 33 to 45 as well.

Once again, as you move up, you are getting technology and craftsmanship that improves speed stability. When you add up the bearing, sub-platter, spindle, motor, belts, and motor power supply, you can see it is an incredible amount of effort put into great speed control in both the Planar 8 and Planar 10. The Planar 10 just takes most of them one or more steps beyond what the Planar 8 does.

Tonearm

We are getting towards the end of our comparison but this is one of the more important differences. The tonearms on both of these turntables are outstanding, but the tech Rega put into the brand new RP3000 is just over the top!

The job of a tonearm is to hold the cartridge over the record groove so it can pick up the modulations in the record groove. Those modulations are moving in all directions, while at the same time each groove gets smaller in diameter and closer to the center of the record. So a great arm has to be able to hold the cartridge perfectly steady, while also allowing the arm to have zero friction as it moves towards the center of the record.

If your tonearm has any play, friction, or wobble, some of those tiny modulations your stylus is picking up will be canceled out or not even picked up at all. This is why tonearm bearings are one of the most if not the most important part of a tonearm.

The Planar 8 comes with the RP800 arm which is a fantastic tonearm in its own right. The amount of information we hear on the Planar 8 Aphetta 2 combo is just scary good.

However, the RP3000 takes things to a whole new level. The bearings in the RP3000 are so precise, Rega is able to assemble the arm with no adhesive at all. The bearings are machined down to 1 micron in accuracy!

Both the RP800 and RP3000 are a one-piece aluminum construction but there is less mass in the arm tube of the RP3000 and it has even less resonance than the RP800. We also thought the anti-skating adjustment on the RP3000 was pretty cool. There is a little tube you pull out of the arm assembly with less anti-skating being applied as you pull it out. With an antiskate test record, its really easy to do this on the fly for a precision adjustment.

The tonearm cables coming out of the RP800 and RP3000 are both hardwired and use very high-quality materials including locking RCA connectors.

Both of these turntables have an uncanny ability to extract information from our precious record grooves. The tech in the Planar 10 pulls out even more information than the Planar 10.

Cartridge Options

While both models come with the option of no cartridge or different factory installed Rega cartridges, the most popular models are the Planar 8 with the Apheta 2 and the Planar 10 with the brand new and improved Apheta 3. The Apheta 3 has the advantage of a higher tech stylus technology, very similar to that used in Rega’s top of the line Aphelion phono cartridge. This high tech Fine Line stylus extracts even more information from your records, giving the Planar 10 with an Apheta 3 another leg up on the Planar 8 with the Apheta 2.

Dustcover

Both turntables have the same low profile dustcover that is designed to be played with the cover removed. This reduces mass and helps the dust cover from becoming a gathering trap from speaker vibrations. We actually believe almost every turntable we have tested sounds better with the dustcover out of the picture. Both the Planar 8 and Planar 10 make this really simple.

Which Turntable is Right for You?

Obviously, neither one of these turntables is a budget turntable. Both are high-performance works of incredible craftsmanship.

If you are considering the Planar 8, we suspect you have a pretty good audio system. To our listening, the Planar 10 takes how good the Planar 8 is and just takes it many steps forward. The better your system is, the bigger the differences you will experience.

You have to remember, the sound starts with your turntable. No matter how great the rest of your system chain is, if the information does not get pulled out of the record groove, no amount of great gear will allow you to hear it. That is why we believe the turntable is one of the most important parts of your system.

For most people, the Planar 8 with the Apheta 2 cartridge will be amazing. However, if your system is really good, you will be able to appreciate every single nuance of additional information you’ll hear with the Planar 10. Plus its deep bass response just knocked us out, along with its even deep black and silent background.

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