Wow, this is certainly spinning around. Lewm, in order to support myself in medical school I was a Hi Fi salesman at a store called Luskin's Hi FI in Miami, FL. It was a discount box store and volume was the key. On the side I installed systems in the houses of very rich people getting equipment from several places but mostly Sound Components the high end store in Miami. We blew up quads in HQD systems for fun. Not kidding. I can not remember the names of all the DD turntables I set up and evaluated. Can you remember the names of all the girls you ...dated? If you can you led a very boring life. At Sound Components many if not most evaluations were done as a group. No one thought the current DD turntables sound even close to being good. They were pretty and reliable enough so that you could sell one to John Smith with a straight face. Very few of the customers at Luskin's knew what they were listening to. The rich people certainly did not. The Owner of Flagler Dog Track though I did such a good job he had me redesign the entire PA system at the Track.
I made serious money on that one. I set him up with Beveridges, Levinson preamp and amps, a Tandberg cassette machine and Reel to Reel, and a McIntosh Tuner. CD had not been invented yet and he was not interested in Vinyl.
One thing we did notice a Sound Components was that DD turntables did considerably worse with MC cartridges. I can theorize why but I have proof of nothing. Is it possible to do a DD table that sounds as good as a belt drive. I guess. But, I have not personally heard one I would consider buying. There are other factors at play than just drive type. I have also not been exposed to near as much equipment during the last 40 years as I was back then. But no matter how you parse it putting an oscillating
magnetic device under a modern low output moving coil cartridge is a silly concept and I am not the only one who has that opinion although I may be the most vocal. I have no overwhelming proof to back up my opinion. But, It is my opinion and you are entitled to yours.
My next turntable is going to be Dohmann Helix 1 with two Schroder LT's
on it:) |
Chakster, as always there are conflicting attributes. Yes DD tables are some of the most stable. Most think that added stability is meaningless.
The Dohmann Helix turntables are belt drive and even more accurate.
It uses twin belts of different durometers and a drive system that will maintain the programmed speed regardless of friction, etc.
Having an oscillating electromagnetic device under a very sensitive electromagnetic device is a bad idea especially when the platter is paper thin. XactAudio's Beat turntable might get away with it as the platter has got to be 4" thick. Remember magnetic field strength drops with the square of the distance. Price is about the same as the Dohmann. I would take the Dohmann in a heartbeat. Dohmann is far more open about its design whereas the Beat is cloaked in mystery most likely because there is nothing patentable about its design. The Dohmann's MinusK suspension is patent protected. I also prefer suspended turntables. The Beat is supposed to be isolated but it is not suspended. I do not believe in magic.
The one saving grace of the direct drive turntable is you do not have to worry about belt wear. I figure if I can change the accessory belt on a 911, I can change a belt on anything:) |
Atmasphere, in some cases it might be because they work better:) |
Atma-Sphere, I have this nagging itch that tells me it is the "less money"
part that is most significant here. Now, I have not had a recent direct drive in my system for comparison's sake and to be real It would have to have the same tonearm and cartridge to be meaningful. It is a hard comparison to make. We did do this at Sound Components back in the late 70's, early 80's and the results were uniformly disappointing as far as direct drives were concerned. Theories abounded but nothing was ever proven.
I have zero interest in the SP10 however I would love to be able to listen to the Grand Prix Audio Monaco and the Xact Audio Beat under similar circumstances. Both are even more accurate and both go to length to mitigate magnetic interference with the cartridge. However at this time if I were to purchase a turntable it would be the Dohmann Helix, just another belt drive. |
Chakster, take it easy. It is already obvious that you and I occupy alternative realities. I said your logic was faulty in that you can not compare cutting a record to playing one back as the parameter are substantially different.
Yes, there are low torque and high torque direct drive tables. I would bet my wife that all the motors used in Lathes are high torque.
Now I have never used your Microseiki turntables but I find it interesting that their chief designer now makes only belt drive turntables. (Techdas)
A thin platter and a rubber mat are not much for shielding. The best shield from magnetism is distance.
Neither of us is going to change the other's mind. We present our arguments in a gentlemanly fashion and let others decide for themselves. |
tubelvr1, the characteristic that is most noticeable in turntables is noise either self generated or from the environment. Most modern turntables have reasonable speed stability. The way the cartridge performs is determined by the tonearm. The tonearm has to be the right mass for the cartridge and it must give the cartridge only two degrees of freedom, up and down, side to side. Any other freedom particularly torsional is bad. There are other fine points of tonearm design that are also important. The way the anti skate is set up. It should decrease as the tonearm moves towards the center of the record. A neutral balance arm is always best. Most arms are Static balance which is worse. You can tell right away what an arm is. Defeat the anti skate and put the stylus guard on. Balance the arm so it stays perfectly horizontal then lift the head shell up an inch and let go. A neutral balance arm will stay there and inch up. A static balance arm will bounce up and down eventually finding the balance point.
Will you hear a difference? Depends on your system and how critical you are. There is definitely a point of diminishing returns. Get a SOTA Sapphire. Put an Origin Live Enterprise arm on it and you are 95% of the way to the best turntable made. Whatever that is:) |
Lewm, that would go against every review ever done on the Sapphire and my own personal experience. Getting a Triplanar on there must have been a lot of fun. I would have to assume something was wrong with your table. I have never been next to the Nottingham. It reminds me of the Brinkman Balance. At any rate I prefer suspended tables. You can make a decent improvement on your Nottingham's performance if you put it on a MinusK platform.
https://www.minusk.com/products/ct2-ultra-thin-low-height-vibration-isolation-platform.html?hm
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Faulty logic Chakster. Cutting a record and playing one back are not the same. Cutting requires more torque and consequently is more difficult to control. The cutting head is powered and is easily able to overcome any magnetic fields near by.
Playing a record back is a relatively low torque situation with much less strain on the drive system. Now you have a very sensitive magnetic device trying to make sense of squiggly grooves. Any magnetic field near by is going interrupt the process. The torque of a direct drive motor is now superfluous. A quiet environment is far more critical. You have to isolate the platter, tonearm and cartridge from everything. IMHO this is far more difficult than cutting a lacquer.
Vibration and noise is everywhere. You think your turntable is isolated because your rack is on concrete? Guess again. Keeping the motor as far away from the cartridge as possible is a good start. Suspending the sub chassis (what the platter and tonearm sit on) is another important issue. A suspension tuned as low as possible will isolate the sub chassis from any noise transmitted above the resonant frequency of the suspension. Vibration transmitted through the air is another problem. Putting your turntable in another room works. When I see turntables on a rack between the speakers up near the front wall where the bass is exaggerated I die laughing. That is the absolute worse place to put a turntable. Using a dust cover that is isolated from the sub chassis is another way of putting the turntable in another room.
In short for playback properly designed belt drives are the way to go. They may not be simpler depending on the method used to control speed. Some of the motors are very high tech. Just as high tech as any direct drive. I think the Grand Prix Monaco and the XactAudio Beat represent the apex of direct drive turntables. They are interesting designs and I can not say how well they function but if I'm going to spend that amount of money on a turntable without a thought I would go for the Dohmann Helix. Total no brainer. It pushes all the right buttons.
Direct drive turntables are great for DJ's and that is about it, not to mention the tonearms they come with are pretty poor. |
Yes lewm, no matter how hard I try I can not warm up to Techdas tables. There is just too much filigree. They are beautifully made but more complicated than they have to be and complexity buys unreliability. For that kind of money I expect a turntable to out live me. As an example look at the SOTA Cosmos for less than 1/10th the cost of an Air Force One you get all of the same features, vacuum hold down, a suspended platter (magnets instead of air), an isolating suspension and electronic motor control. Is the Tecdas 10 times better? I would bet with the same tonearm and cartridge most of us would not reliably be able to tell the difference. Is the Techdas more reliable. I doubt it. On the other hand SOTA is right close by and has a great reputation.
If I were going to spend crazy money on a turntable right now the Dohmann Helix is the one. It accomplishes everything I expect in a turntable in the most elegant manner at the highest levels.
Chakster, in order for any turntable to be first class it has to be able to maintain speed in spite of any reasonable interference, it has to have an adequate record clamping system either reflex or vacuum, it has to be able to mount any tonearm you desire and it has to have a suspension that isolates it from anything over 2 hertz both vertically and horizontally.
No direct drive turntable I know of meets all of these requirements.
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Atma-Sphere, I will never ride a bike with anything but Campy on it. That Jap stuff is cheap overweight crap. It only worked better if you did not know how to shift.
My current bike is a Specialized S works Diverge with Campy Super Record 12 speed EPS disc brake group. Fulcrum Carbon tubeless rims with Hutchinson Sector 32 tires. Perfect bike for an old fart with bad wrists:) |
Hang on sdrsdrsdr, Accuphase was very much alive back then and they made some awesome equipment. If I know the Japanese we were also not getting their best stuff. They hoard it for themselves. Woodworking sharpening stones are a great example. We get the garbage here. In order to get good ones you have to do business with a store there.
Most peoples experience when it comes to Hi Fi is anecdotal. They here some things in their own system and think it's gospel. An anecdote does not a study make. There are too many variables to be able to say much about anything except one individual prefers this over that. Multiple observers have to note the same characteristic over broad circumstances, multiple units etc.
Your Linn sounds better because it has a very small low torque motor far away from the cartridge and it is isolated from the environment by a suspension consequently far less noise gets to the stylus than any currently made DD turntable. It would be interesting to put a Monaco turntable on a MinusK stand to see what you get. But, the Japs never took isolation seriously. (that should raise some eyebrows) The Linn's problems are that it's suspension is not designed well and is poorly damped, the universal arm board is poor, as you mention tonearms are limited and lastly it has developed the silliest cult following. But, it certainly does sound better than any direct drive and we compared it to at least 10 if not more. There were weeks when we sold at least 10 LInns and we had 3 or 4 DD tables set up to compare it to. The DD turntables were selling the Linns for us. You just had to make sure the customer had a really stable location for the Linn or you could have an angry customer.
Vintage DD turntables are definitely not the way to go. There may be some new ones that are fine I do not know. There certainly is no Technics turntable that I personally would bother with. For the most part they just dusted off the old designs when vinyl came back and made up a bunch of new marketing to make people think they were buying a cheap turntable that was better than any of those high price belt drive things. |
Chakster, I definitely do not have to own one. I suspect I have had very close contact to more of them than you unless you have similar experience. It is not my fault you drink the Kool Aid. Do yourself a favor. Contact Hideaki Nishikawa here,
https://techdas.jp/pages/contact-techdas/ and ask him why he did not use a direct drive system. You can come back and give us his answer! |
Lewm, The record was discharged on both sides and it is spinning with the dust cover up (old trash record:) You are right about the probe. I get a quick 150 volt spike and that is it. The record simply does not have enough capacitance. I discovered I have the perfect static electricity detection device. While rubbing the record with paper to get the charge the hair stood up on the back of my fingers. You can see it being attracted towards the record. Very...Handy:))) |
Ralph, I was saying that tongue in cheek. The Japenese made much better stuff than Campy for a while. They had to drag Campy out of the stone age. Camply could never catch up in mountain bike gear but in the mid 90's campy finally got serious again. I use it because I prefer ergo shifting levers, more intuitive, the EPS gear is better than Shimano DI2 and the disc brakes are seriously better.
The Rohloff hubs are very cool but heavy. I have a Merlin Extra Light and for certain I think Ti bikes ride better than most carbon frames. The reason I got the Specialized is because it has a shock absorber in the head tube and it will take 42 mm Tubeless tires. I have an artificial wrist and I have to do everything to protect it. The Specialized Diverge is the most comfortable bike I've ever ridden but other than the shock absorber it is not due to the frame but to the Fulcrum carbon rims and the 32 mm tubeless tires. If I could put those tires on the Merlin I think it would ride even better but it is limited to 25 mm tires.
The wife and I rode Tripole Rd last weekend to celebrate our 32nd aniversary (White Mountains, NH.) 6 miles with an average grade of 10%! We made it to the top without putting a foot down:)
I'm not sure I'm crazy about Lewm's analogy but overall I think he is right. The cartridge and tonearm act as a unit apart from the turntable. He is also right concerning noise and resonance. The Dohmann Helix takes all of this into account. I do beleive it is the quietest Turntable you can purchase today and hopefully I will be able to afford one before he goes out of business. I do believe the noise and resonance affect the sound more so than wow and flutter in most turntables. I do not think it is taken seriously by the establishment because it is impossible to measure. But, this is the reason I have always prefered suspended turntables. Even on a concrete slab there is loads of garbage that can make it's way to the cartridge by way of the turntable's feet. I'm afraid most of them are hopelessly inadequate. The SME 30 series is an excellent example of a quiet turntable.
Tubelvr1, I think you be best served by spending the 2k on a nice cartridge. I do not beleive it would make a significant improvement on your turntable, tonearm or Phono amp. Tackle them when you have more money to spend. |
