Direct Drive vs. Idler Drive vs. Belt drive

@atmasphere

With Mijo, I wonder about that too. If you were running a really low output MC like some of the AudioNotes, you would think that the electro-magnetic noise from the motor might have an effect. It is not clear just how that noise would manifest, and if it were a subtle veiling of the music, one might ascribe it to something else, or even not hear it consciously at all.

That would depend on distance and magnetic isolation, I suppose - and on the plinth and platter material; so I suppose that aluminum (paramagnetic), or even better, copper (diamagnetic), might be a solution. Might that be why a copper mat works well on some turntables?

Hi @terry9 ,

Nottingham Analogue  Sapcedeck is not entry level. It was a third level after HORIZON and INTERSPACE. I bought Nottingham Sapcedeck with Spaecarm in 2002 a brand new by full price.
I bought EMT948 in 2011 on eBay used by 2400 Euro. Yes I know that it costed 12000 DM brand new back in 1980x. But I payed a similar amount of money for both turntables.
An I also had Lenco L78 in between 2010-2011. And I liked this  low budget TT more than  Nottingham Sapcedeck. 

Regards,
Alex.

It seems that 10x was an exaggeration. I stand corrected.

I payed $3300 USD!!! for Nottingham with Spacearm included taxes.
The price was higher because I was living in Israel that time.
I don’t care about brand new price of EMT948 in 1980.
Personally, I didn’t pay more for EMT than I payed for Nottingham...

Ralph, One of the virtues of a coreless motor as originally designed by Dual and used by Pioneer, Yamaha, and Kenwood, and even now Brinkmann, is that the field it generates is in the horizontal plane, mainly. The engineers who designed for these companies and those who designed for the iron core motors in the Denons and Technics turntables, were not ignorant of this potential problem.  They took care to provide shielding.  In the case of my Kenwood L07D, in addition to the motor being encased in a metal that adds shielding (the motor in its case looks like a metal discus, sealed all around top and bottom), the platter uses a thick heavy sheet of stainless steel for a "mat".  Kenwood call it a "platter sheet".  Nevertheless, L07D owners are known to add even more shielding by various methods.  In my case, I had a machinist (Colby Lamb in Oregon) make me a new platter sheet out of pure copper.  It mimics the original in shape and weight to within a few centigrams.  I've been meaning to buy a cheap field strength meter to see whether I can detect a difference in radiated EMI, comparing the original stainless steel sheet to the new copper sheet, but I have not done it yet.  Although I like to think my copper platter sheet makes a big difference, because I paid Colby $700 to make it, I really cannot say the difference is huge, because I heard no problem before, and I hear no problem after, maybe a very very subtle difference.  Anyway, I don't care because the copper is beautiful to behold.  With my SP10 Mk3, the platter is simply enormous and thick, made of brass and aluminum.  It's dead silent.  With my SP10 Mk2, when I owned one, there I may have heard a faint grayish coloration to the sound, only when comparing it to the former two turntables named above.  Belt-drivers like to claim that the faint coloration they say they hear with the Mk2 is due to the servo "hunting" to maintain constant speed.  I think it's more likely due to EMI which could easily be ameliorated by either using a metal mat (which many do use with the M2 and others) or by simply adding shielding under the platter.  Perhaps the reason people like metal mats on some DDs has to do more with blocking EMI than with the inherent goodness of metal as a mat.  One reason I sold the M2 and kept my Denon DP80 is because the DP80 lacks that faint coloration I thought I heard from the Mk2.  (This is before I was lucky enough to find my Mk3 and the L07D.)