Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Ultradeck Plus M Turntable Review

It is easy to set up and provided no-fuss performance over an extended evaluation period. I fell in love with this turntable and I think you will too.

I decided to go ahead and purchase the review unit as the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Ultradeck Plus M Turntable proved itself to be one of the most engaging turntables I have yet reviewed. I am extremely impressed with this product. We have a love affair on our hands.

Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs (MoFi) is a very cool company. MoFi was originally founded in 1977 and made its mark with high-quality half-speed mastered LPs. Over the years, MoFi has produced remastered CDs, SACDs, and LPs, all the while pioneering new technologies to wring out the highest fidelity from old and new recordings alike. They certainly have a knack for selecting highly desirable titles to focus their energies on. It’s a little like a playlist of my life if I’m being honest!

Now they are getting into electronics in a big way. Established in 2017, MoFi Electronics is a new division of Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs. So far, they have been producing and marketing Turntables, Cartridges, Phono Stages, and Accessories. They currently have three turntables on offer. The one I am reviewing here, the Ultradeck, is MoFi’s best expression of a turntable at this time. It is also the basis of one of the most lovely turntables I have seen, the limited-edition Fender. Check it out here https://www.mofielectronics.com/fender-precisiondeck-turntable

Well go ahead and take a few minutes to kick back and read about the incredible Ultradeck!

Despite what you may have been told, nobody can build the perfect turntable or any perfect audio component for that matter. But it is particularly difficult to build a perfect turntable with all their electro-mechanical elements. A designer’s goal is to address as many salient design features as possible within the budget available for any given turntable. Choices are made such that some items can be optimized and others may not get perfectly optimized. In my view, the best designs put their resources and refinement into the areas that have the greatest payoff in terms of the performance of the final product.

In many cases, I have my own ideas as to what parts of a turntable are more critical than others. Where can the designer focus their limited resources for the biggest possible payoff? It is a balancing act and I tend to really like products that were designed more or less along the same workflow I would pursue if I were the designer. Finding these products is rarer than I would have thought. The MoFi Ultradeck +M just happens to be one of those products: if I had my way, I would design a product basically just like this one!

Much of the credit for this incredible design goes to Allen Perkins of Spiral Groove. MoFi collaborated with him on the design and I feel they have optimized this turntable for the anticipated price point. Let’s walk through the design aspects of the Ultradeck.

Let’s start with the plinth. It is fabricated of three aluminum layers that are bonded to an MDF substrate. The design adds mass to the plinth and reduces “tonal coloration” to ensure the music is passed on without editorialization. I also find that layered plinths are better at isolating the platter and tonearm mount from environmental vibrations.

Speaking of the platter, this is a generously-designed one for sure. It is reasonably heavy though not a back-breaker. It is 1.3” thick and made of Delrin^®. According to MoFi, “Delrin^® is a next-generation polymer developed by Dupont. In the world of audio, Delrin’s^® highly crystalline structure presents a wonderful impedance match to vinyl records, effectively grounding unwanted noise and keeping it away from the stylus.’ Ahh, I love this! This may be the first turntable I’ve tested that may actually suffer when you add a mat to the platter. This Delrin^® stuff really does mate up almost perfectly with the vinyl it is spinning and the impedance match dampens unwanted vibrations from entering the stylus.

The all-important main bearing is one area MoFi did not skimp on the design. It is a hardened steel inverted design that incorporates steel, bronze, and sapphire much like many of the very expensive tables I have reviewed. MoFi does not specify the standard tolerance of this bearing, but assuming it is commensurate with the rest of the turntable, one can expect reliable long-term performance of this turntable.

The motor is a precision AC Synchronous affair. The pulley is Delrin^® with races for 33-1/3 and 45 RPM playback. The motor is mounted to the plinth and MoFi states that it is isolated “using advanced dampening materials that decouple the motor from the rest of the turntable”. Isolation is very important and many belt-drive tables provide a separate motor assembly for this reason. But I have heard numerous fine-sounding tables that were designed similar to the MoFi Ultradeck. I wish they would state the dampening material but I suspect it is probably very similar to Sorbathane^®.

I find that isolation feet used to be really quite horrid a few decades ago but they have improved exponentially over the last few years. The feet provided for the Ultradeck were developed in conjunction with the engineering team at Harmonic Resolution Systems (HRS), a world leader in vibration isolation for audio equipment. In practice, these feet were incredible in isolating this table. The turntable is on a solid shelf but right next to the right speaker. I never heard even a hint of feedback at even the highest listening levels I enjoyed.

The tonearm weighs in at 10-inches. MoFi does not specify the material but I would guess it’s aluminum. MoFi does state that it uses “smooth, high-quality ball bearings for low friction in the vertical and horizontal plane so all you hear is what is in the grooves”. The wiring is from Cardas from the headshell leads all the way through to the gold-plated RCA connectors. This is another design decision I support.

This review unit was pre-fitted with a MoFi MasterTracker Cartridge (hence the “Plus M” designation when you want to order one of these bundle deals for yourself). Allen Perkins also helped with the design of this cartridge which is made in Japan. The design philosophy is simple: the signal generating structure mimics the design of the cutting heads that are used to cut the master discs. What this means is that the generator is a V-Twin dual-magnet configuration. According to MoFi, “Two powerful low-mass magnets are carefully aligned in parallel with the stereo record grooves to achieve excellent channel separation and detail retrieval true to the Original Master Recording.” The magnets are the lightest in the MoFi series of cartridges. Also, The cartridge body is billet aluminum which is said to control resonances and results in tight, accurate bass.

The stylus is a micro-line shape which, in keeping with the theme, is shaped like the cutting head of a record lathe, MasterTracker traces vinyl groove walls with microscopic precision.

This cartridge follows design philosophies I can also support.

MoFi sent along two other key pieces with the turntable and cartridge. The first was the Super Heavyweight Champion Noise Dissipation Record Weight. This is a record weight that drops in place versus being threaded and screw-on. I like that a lot. It was developed in conjunction with Harmonic Resolution Systems (HRS) engineers. The record weight is designed with a proprietary HRS polymer selected for its noise-absorbing properties. This means the weight acts like a vibration sink and “eliminates resonance, elevates resolution and enhances stability – feats that translate into greater dynamics, firmer instrumental foundations, and better definition”. In practice, it worked as advertised.

The other component they sent me was the UltraPhono Phono Preamplifier/Headphone Amplifier. Sadly, this unit was damaged in shipping so I was not able to evaluate it. But I love the idea of a small phono stage with a built-in headphone amplifier. This would be the most direct way to get the music out of the grooves and into your ears.

Probably everyone reading this knows what a pain in the arse it can be to set up and dial in a turntable especially if you need to install the cartridge yourself. After that initial hard part, there remain a whole host of parameters to set that involve tracking weight as well as a number of geometric variables. Some tonearms are easier to adjust than others too, by the way. So I was most happy the MoFi UltraDeck came with a pre-installed cartridge. This made the set up as easy as pie.

The steps are pretty common. Once I got everything out of the box, I attached the feet to the plinth first. These screw in by hand. Once back upright, I then slid the platter in place on the bearing hub. The next step was to install the belt around the pulley and the platter.

There was a marking on the tonearm that was calibrated to ensure the proper tracking weight. You install the counterweight to this line and it should result in the correct tracking weight. I did this and checked it with a scale I have. It needed only the slightest adjustment to get the weight to precisely 2.0 gm.

Then I added the anti-skate weight. This one has a total of four notches that are used depending on the cartridge’s overall mass. In this case, I placed it in notch 3 and then draped the line over the hanger.

The last step is to fine-tune the level of the platter, attach signal cables and power, then set the dust cover in place.

I checked everything on the setup and all was spot on. The tonearm does have rudimentary adjustments for VTA and azimuth. These are typical of many tonearms in that you loosen a set screw and then make the adjustment, tightening the screw when the setting is right. I prefer tonearms that use threaded adjustments that you can more reliably adjust before locking in. But, thankfully, the adjustments with the MoFi tonearm only modify one dimension at a time, eliminating the annoying interplay that comes into effect with lesser arms.

Now I was ready for a little listenin’!

I love it when a turntable comes along that isn’t fussy or fiddly. The MoFi Ultradeck is exactly a table that falls into that category. In fact, this may be the easiest turntable to set up and operate that I have reviewed to date. It was also super reliable in its operation and performance.

A few things stand out to me. I needed to slightly adjust the tonearm lift. But, once set, it never drifted or failed as I have experienced with other tables, some of which were pretty high dollar. So major kudos to MoFi for this.

Another area that I liked involved the belt drive. The Ultradeck is the easiest to switch speed yet. A lot of belt drive turntables can act pretty dicey when you shift the belt. The MoFi turntable, on the other hand, has pronounced races on the platter and the pulley so the switch out was always smooth. I never had the belt fall off the platter or slip from one speed to another. It was a breeze to use.

These experiences regarding the operation of the table spilled over to the sonic performance as well. The Mastertracker cartridge is a very competently designed and executed cartridge. I know a lot of audiophiles probably prefer moving coil or moving iron cartridges among other designs. But in actual practice, a well-designed MM cartridge can sing with the best of them. MM’s are also known for being among the best in their ability to track the grooves. They are most commonly used for archiving records and I constantly thought that I would choose the Ulradeck + M setup if I were ever tasked with archiving important records. This was because of the ability to track almost any record groove and also because of the balanced and engaging sound I was getting.

Another reason I was drawn to request this turntable for review was because of MoFi’s records. They do put out some excellent vinyl, currently in three levels of fidelity. I assumed (correctly) that MoFi would only offer a turntable that was capable to resolve the differences among differing quality levels of records. This table was more than sufficient to highlight the relative sound quality of all my favorite records. So it stands to reason, the table would also allow valid introspection of various phono stages and it did indeed.

I primarily evaluated the Ultradeck + M with a Vincent PHO-701 phono preamp. This combo provided a great synergy. The treble was light and airy. The mids were fluid and precise but slightly recessed in the stage. The bass was tuneful and not overbearing. I held on to the review until I could get a Pass Labs XP 17 phono stage to see what the heck would happen with such an incredible phono stage. Well, it did not disappoint and bested the Vincent in every facet of its performance. The Pass XP 17 was way more dynamic with a greater bass slam and revealed the Vincent was just a little thin and lightweight sounding by comparison. I was able to hear these differences quite readily thanks to the resolving abilities of the Ultradeck+M setup. A lesser turntable may have masked these differences. Or maybe it is more appropriate for me to flip it around and say that the highly resolving Pass Labs phono preamp didn’t reveal any audible flaws with the MoFi Ultradeck’s performance.

The performance of the MoFi Ultradeck was on full display on this Janis Joplin classic. There are so many things that can go wrong when playing back vinyl: wow & flutter, mistracking, warped records, infrasonic rumble, feedback, channel imbalance, etc. I can honestly say I never once heard an audible foible coming from the MoFi deck. So that was all very fine and dandy but there is more. You can have an accurate audio component that may nevertheless lack that special je-ne-sais-quoi that makes one component stand out over the other. The MoFi Ultradeck had this elusive quality in spades. It was able to fit in among some stellar components in my reference system and it held its own. And the MoFi really engaged and entranced me more than just about any table I have reviewed. It was a late-night musical orgy arbiter bibendi!!

The Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Ultradeck Plus M is an outstanding turntable in every respect. I enjoyed it so much that I bought the review sample. I can’t pay it a higher compliment than that!

As much as I still love analog, I do not enjoy complicated turntables that need constant attention to stay in calibration. So that right there is my biggest plus with the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Ultradeck Plus M Turntable: it was easy to set up and the calibration never drifted during the review period.

I have concluded that the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Ultradeck Plus M Turntable provides reference level quality at an affordable price. As I said in the main body of my review, this is the turntable I would use to archive records. That is because it does track the grooves as well as any table I have used and it also gives you all the music from the grooves with very little editorialization.

Now, you may be thinking that super-accurate equipment can sometimes sound lifeless, but that was not the case with the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Ultradeck Plus M Turntable. This table was extremely musical and had that engaging property where you get lost in the music while the hours pass you by.

I was similarly impressed with the sonic improvements offered by the Super Heavyweight Champion record clamp. This accessory provides excellent performance by opening up the soundstage and letting the bass and treble shine.

The Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Ultradeck Plus M Turntable also looks very striking looking on the shelf and this is just icing on the cake.

I went ahead and purchased the review unit. I am going to use it in a secondary system I am putting together. It will star in its new role, this I’m sure of!