True for so many brands with over 100 years of history, Dual has ebbed and flowed through the decades, sometimes being the dominant global turntable brand while at other times risking extinction. Three years ago, we reported that the German audio manufacturer Dual, was returning to the North American market after a long absence, to release a new range of turntables, while also working to restructure its international distribution network.
Our story announced two manual, belt-driven record players, the CS 418 and CS 518 that launched in May 2021, followed a couple months later with the release of the CS 618Q, a direct drive player with auto-stop and auto-lift functions. The fully automatic record player CS 429 came later in Q3 2021, and its Bluetooth-enabled bigger sibling, the CS 529BT, made its debut in early 2022.
Dual has now had three years perfecting their distribution strategy to service worldwide markets in collaboration with local partners while also garnering strong and positive reviews for their craftsmanship and performance. The brand has also since released the custom, made-in Germany Primus Maximus that sells for $15,000. For North America, previously Dual’s largest overseas market, Dual relies on Erikson Consumer who earlier this summer provided us with Dual’s still current turntable, the CS 518.
“Dual is returning to its roots as a leading turntable brand,” stated Josef Zellner, Dual’s Owner and Chief Executive in 2021. “New products are being introduced for the future, whilst investing in support for the legacy products”
“We feel very fortunate to welcome Dual into the Jam industries portfolio,” stated Enzo Morelli Vice President for JAM Industries’ Erikson Consumer-Home and American Audio & Video CE divisions at the time. “Judging by early feedback, the brand still holds a special place in the hearts and minds of retail CE buyers, and we look forward to sharing their evolving and exciting portfolio with analog fans in the USA and Canada.”
Many legacy audio brands with a history that span over a century, ownership changes, restructuring and just the passage of time can make it confusing to know if the brand is still a brand or just a badge capitalizing on a once great name. A bit of investigating was required to determine where Dual is today. In 1949, ten years after Dual first introduced turntables, Dual unveiled the legendary Dual 1000 turntable at the Berlin Audio Tradeshow and was the largest turntable manufacturer in Europe employing over 3,000 factory workers throughout Germany. The brand stayed on top of the podium throughout the 1960s.
By the 1970s, Dual was fighting new Japanese brands that were introducing high-quality turntables for the first time to the European market from names such as Pioneer, Sony and Denon, often with more features and better build quality, but at a lower price. Japan’s 1970s audio success paralleled the same success Japan’s auto industry was enjoying with brands such as Honda and Toyota creating an existential crisis for established European brands such as Mercedes, Opal and Renault.
By 1982 Dual was bankrupt and the brand was sold to Thomson SA who only kept the brand for six years before selling to the German low-cost, mass-market audio manufacturer, Schneider Rundfunkwerke AG, later known as Schneider Electronics. By 2002 Schneider was also bankrupt and the assets including the Dual name was acquired by Chinese conglomerate TCL Corporation, who manufactured products using the Dual name in the early 2000s. To further complicate matters, TCL licensed the Dual name to South Korean manufacturer Namsung Electronics for the North American market who today have U.S. headquarters in Florida under the banner Dual Electronics Corp. and sell marine and car audio using the Dual name.
Adding even more to the confusion with ownership changes and bankruptcies throughout the decades, the Dual brand was split into two companies in 1994; The made-in-Germany turntables became Dual Phono GmbH, the company now owned by Josef Zellner that continue to produce hand-built turntables headquartered in Fuchstal, Bavaria west of Munich. The second company is called Dual DGC GmbH, that sells Dual branded consumer electronics mostly manufactured in China, including the marine and auto Dual branded products. Today, some of the Dual CS turntables are manufactured in Asia including the CS 518.
Now that you have some company background the easiest way to navigate the Dual brand confusion is to look for product model numbers that start with CS that identify Dual products that are made by the Dual company designed and in many cases like the top of the line Dual Primus Maximus remain made in Germany, and the products that Wifi Hifi readers should be focused. The website dual.de are the CS products while the dualav.com website feature the marine and car products.
Dual once dominated the mid-priced turntable market, so it was no surprise that the company’s reintroduction to the North American market focused on that sub-$1000 price point. The latest CS 518 stretches that budget slightly with subtle enhancements to the previously released Dual CS 418.
The CS 518 introduced a new twin gimbal bearing tonearm that comes pre-installed with the popular Ortofon 2M Red cartridge. The tonearm has a detachable head-shell which is a convenient feature for simplicity of adding a specialized 78 RPM cartridge on a second head-shell. Indeed, it was a bit of a surprise that Dual added the option of 78 RPM with the more common 45 and 331/3 RPM most users will play on a mid-market player. To reduce the transfer of vibration, Dual has built the CS 518 with a decoupled DC motor and the 518 also adds a built-in phono stage that will be a welcomed feature for connectivity flexibility to pretty much any powered speaker that includes RCA inputs.
The belt-drive turntable is built on a vinyl wrapped MDF plinth with decent weight – a build strategy that keeps the price down. The high height and square plinth design are reminiscent of Dual’s golden days of 1970s industrial design and the CS 518 has a perfect Instagram-worthy silhouette just itching to play Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours or The Eagle’s Hotel California.
Adding to the players overall weight is a hefty aluminium platter with convenient cutaways for easily attaching the belt to the isolated motor. Rubber feet and a heavy-duty rubber mat further add weight and isolation, benefiting the overall performance of the CS 518.
Out of the box, the Dual CS 518 is a breeze to set up. The trickiest part of any turntable setup is balancing and weighting the cartridge, but the Dual CS 518 cartridge is preinstalled leaving the user to simply add the platter, attach the belt and add the tonearm counterweight that we positioned at +0.5. The total time from unboxing to playing was under 15 minutes. I spent more time picking my test tracks.
For testing, we picked Beck’s Grammy-winning album Morning Phase playing close attention to the glorious track ‘Say Goodbye”. Our first test setup connected the Dual CS 518 with the supplied RCA connectors to the Class D 2×100 watts RMS KIN by Totem amp, a compact and stylish amp with a superb MM phono RIAA built-in preamp. We completed the setup with KIN by Totem bookshelf speakers. Not surprising, accessing the phono preamp built into the Totem amp provided a crisper, more detailed soundstage especially in the bass notes of Beck’s track, compared to using the phono pre-amp built into the turntable. Using the Totem preamp also presented zero hum or noise. In the same way that even the highest end flatscreen TVs with built-in speakers will never be able to perform against the sound performance when the TV is connected to an external sound system, the same can be said using an external phono preamp such as the iFi Zen Phono 3 or using the preamp in the amplifier such as Totem’s KIN Amp. Adding a pre-amp as an option to a turntable is a nice bonus and incredibly helpful if you are on a tight budget and can’t extend the funds to an external preamp. However, if you have the option of using a dedicated phono preamp or the built-in preamp featured in higher end integrated amplifiers, that’s usually the way to go. Seeing the Dual CS 518 competes against the more expensive Project Debut Pro but doesn’t include a phono pre-amp, I’d pick the Dual every time.
Now this might sound like taking a knife to a gun flight, but for fun we wanted to see how the Dual CS 518 would stack up against a $3,500 Rega Planar 6 with Ania cartridge hooked up to a $5,200 Moon Ace Integrated amplifier and $2,200 Focal Aria 906 bookshelf speakers all using Audioquest interconnects. I wish I could report a night and day difference that you’d expect from going up 4X in price compared to my upstairs system but that wasn’t the case, The Rega P6, with an external power supply and motor presented a warmer, more balanced and dare I say, more sophisticated playback experience. However the Dual connected to the above gear played bright and lively and rather spry with more detail on the high notes. The Dual CS 518 showed bravado and liveliness to the Rega’s old-world refined sound. I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating it is when a turntable that costs less than a third to the one I own, performs impressively well to what really should have been no contest.
The Dual CS 518 can be found for just under $1000 Canadian. This is an attractive turntable with a classic hefty appearance in matte black. The build quality is impressive, the included cartridge is the work horse of the industry, the newly-designed tonearm is sturdy, and the built-in phono preamp provides a sense of flexibility for anyone just entering the analog world to connect this turntable to anything that includes RCA. The Dual CS turntables are still designed in Germany with an R&D facility in Kiefersfelden. Most importantly, Josef Zellner the current owner of Dual, who in the early 1990s was an assistant to the board of directors of Schneider Rundfunkwerke, and kept a relationship with the brand for decades, is committed to restoring Dual to the preeminent brand for analog playback. The CS 518 is a mid-market turntable influenced by a long brand history and is a remarkable deal at the current $999 street price.