Helius Omega Tonearm
Retail prices:
Standard arm (copper internal wire/copper external cables/standard
bearings): $2900
Standard arm with silver internal wire: $3100
Deluxe arm (silver wire/ruby bearings/ceramic journals/bi-metal arm tube):
$4200
History of the Helius Omega
The ancestors to the Helius Omega tonearm were the Orion and the Cyalene arms. There were three principal ideas behind the Orion. The first was to develop a new type of bearing, the second was to dynamically balance the arm. The third and most significant was to utilize a theoretical point of zero potential. The bearing design was simple, but extremely effective. In many respects, it could be described as a captured unipivot, in which the unipivot acted as a focus for all dynamic forces acting within the arm, although it was not itself subject to vibrational forces. It used three balls captured in a close-running “cup.” The Orion used a sharp and hardened cone in the center to complete a perfect tetrahedral bearing that offered minimal friction, and thus, by definition, nothing to rattle.
The resulting product, introduced some twenty years ago, set a new industry standard. Its ultra-wide bearing, its damping by differential masses, plus its unique style, set the Orion on a ten-year path to success. In Greek legend, Orion was a fabled hunter, and the Orion arm was a hunter/seeker, intended to take on—and beat—the performance of larger and more well-known tonearm manufacturers. However, as good as the Orion was, the arm tube and headshell were not the most rigid, and the overhardened points on the bearing tips occasionally gave grief. Also, the counterweight design was not particularly sophisticated. The arm did not have strong bass performance, and the treble always seemed accentuated. A successor was needed that addressed these shortcomings.
The successor was named the Cyalene, after the fabled mountain akin to Mount Olympus. In the Cyalene, the arm tube and headshell were perfected, and the bearing was completely redesigned to accommodate the concept of line contact instead of point contact. These design aspects could be regarded as evolutionary, but the counterweight was revolutionary. In the Cyalene, a principal, heavy weight was placed as close as possible to the bearings, and a spring was used to adjust the down force. As a styling exercise, the Cyalene was also exceptional. Additional new ideas came from the inclusion of a silicon elastomer to provide the bias compensation and a damping fluid built into the bearing as an alternative to the use of differential masses. Although the ultimate in reliability, the new Cyalene’s bearings were not as innovative as the Orion’s, nor was its dynamic balance as good, but the bass was deeper and better defined and the overly-detailed treble was corrected.
As the name suggests, the Cyalene was supposed to be the pinnacle, but later developments were incorporated into what became known as the Super-Cyalene. Very heavy cartridges went out of fashion, so the inbuilt bearing damping was removed and a major improvement was the change to a bimetallic arm tube. In what might be thought of as a retrospective move, the down-force spring was changed for a more classical design of sliding weight. This was due to the fact that with dynamic balancing as an integral part of the design, the spring caused a slightly variable down-force as the arm functioned at different heights, i.e., with thick records or thin, warped records, and so on.
The Cyalene remained in production for ten years. The advent of CD caused Helius to move into computer-controlled astronomical telescopes, then into CCD imaging technology, and finally into aspheric scanning optics. However, for several years, Helius had been coming under pressure to reinvent the Cyalene, taking it to new heights. The new arm had to incorporate the best features of the Orion and the Cyalene, and to overcome their shortcomings by developing new ideas.
It is now time for the new Helius arm, the Omega. The name Omega is derived from the so-called Omega Point. Physicists argue about the definition of the Omega Point. It depends on whether you take Einstein’s, Penrose’s, or the time-reversed Eddington-Lemaitre-Bondi model of the universe. In essence, however, the Omega Point represents the ultimate evolution of the universe—spacially, temporally, and, more importantly, with respect to observers within this ultimate state of the universe. The Omega tonearm is the ultimate evolution of the Helius design theory, its Omega Point.
With respect to the headshell and arm tube, the Cyalene was fine, as was the curvaceous approach to the styling. This feature was not entirely esthetic. A wave front will lose amplitude as it enters a larger spatial volume. It was intended with the Cyalene that the sectional surface area increased with distance from the arm tube. The Omega takes this concept to new heights.
In the Omega, the conical needles of the original Orion have been replaced by hard tungsten balls. Four spheres now provide minimal contact area and minimal friction. The casing in which these balls are placed are almost as hard. Within the limits of normal use, they cannot break or be damaged. If any movement is ever felt within the bearings, it is almost certainly due to thermal expansion in the aluminium bearing housing. It is not possible to design this out of the arm, short of using stainless steel housings or aluminum balls. One solution is too heavy, the other too soft.
The Orion’s approach to dynamics, and its “point-of-zero-potential” had to be revisited in the Omega. The heart of the new arm is a central one-piece bearing unit that replaces the inner gimbal. It simultaneously integrates both vertical and lateral bearing movements. A point often overlooked in tonearm design is that as a wavefront exits the bearings, it should exit both sides simultaneously. Otherwise there will be a time delay, and the one wavefront will split in two and appear twice in the next component along the trail. This is the closest we come to a phase error in mechanics, and can result in an echo in the music. The new design places both the vertical and lateral bearings on the same component, ensuring the highest efficiency of mechanical coupling.
The Cyalene counterweight idea has been adopted, although the new gold-plated weight is now more directly coupled to the housing. This provides some internal damping for the aluminum parts, increases rigidity, and, because of its higher thermal coefficient of heat retentivity, will help in accommodating thermal expansion in the bearings. In essence, the bearing are adjusted to the limits of thermal expansion. They should remain close-coupled at 40 degrees C, which means that at room temperature they are under a small amount of internal pressure.
Another key feature in the new design is the internal wiring. Traditionally, the internal wire is coupled to a phono lead from the underside of the arm. There are two problems with this. First, the cables interfere with turntable suspension, and second, everyone wants to able to select their own phono cables. In the Omega arm, the internal wire is extended out far enough from the underside of the arm to eliminate or certainly reduce the effect it has on suspension. Customers can now also change phono cables if they wish.