Is idler drive better than belt drive or direct drive?

A very informative and interesting YouTube can be pulled up by:
“Garrard 301 vs Studer reel to reel”. Not only is this one of the best sound quality MP4s I have heard, it is a great comparison. When he changes from TT to Tape, you don’t want him to go back to TT!

Well, I went there.
Sound quality is low fi at best, even allowing for MP4.
No low bass, mid bass so diffuse, sounded like it had a six pack of love handles.
Reel to reel was more tonally accurate, but surprisingly 301 did have some areas in the upper mid where there was more information, albeit somewhat coloured.
For the price of the system - garbage.

If the LP was not a direct to disk then this is very easy to see. Of course a lot depends on what was used for playback of the LP in the example.

Yep, no mention of cartridge.
SME arm is so so, mid fi at best. You can hear the upper mid saturation endemic in those arms if you know them.
I demoed some thirty year old MIT 330/750 Shotgun to a guy with Tellurium Q Diamond all through his system - the Tellurium Q ( over $10k ) never went back in again. The Tellurium Q Diamond was significantly down in resolution compared to the 30 yr old basic MIT.

Chord electronics - mid fi at best.

Pretty underwhelming demo really. Sad advertisement for hi end audio.

By the way - tapes have massive droppoff in high frequency over time, not to mention bleed through ( from layer to layer ). I used to import Reference recordings - talk to Keith Johnson about tape quality, there is no decent tape made any more since the 60's.
At least the vinyl is more robust in maintaining performance over a longer period of time, provided you are not ham fisted and habitually abuse your records.

And of course, if you dont like a record they make great placemats or frisbees - yep, vinyl records were into recycling long before the greenies arrived.

@teo_audio

If we modified a impact testing rig so the given edge of the moving or rotating platter could impact upon said impact gear, we could probably prove, via data obtained... that idler wheel is better than belt or direct drive.

Not necessarily, the main advantage the old idlers have is the size of their motors and that most of them are AC/hysterisis type motors which self correct if the motor starts to lag. The weakness of most belt drives is their small motors & elastic rubber belt. The problem with DC motors and direct drive is that its like digital - only a little bit out ALL of the time. DC motors have zero torque at a constant speed, only when they change speed does the torque go above zero.
Thats why DC motors need feedback/computators to maintain speed.
Furthermore if you look at the response of AC and DC motors to lag, AC motors recover sinusoidally, whereas DC motors recover trapezoidally.  In other words DC motors recovery from speed aberrations is rough compared to AC.

Here is my Final Audio Parthenon with big AC motor, silk thread belt & 26kg platter and record clamp. The motor is controlled by sine & cosine wave generators and driven by a 60wpc Onix Audio OA60 power amplifier. All cabling in the turntable motor drive is phase coherent MIT Oracle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwugFlbCOww
Video playing Carol Kidd ( Linn Record) Dynavector Cartridge, banging the record with knuckle.

Try that with your Linn, Oracle or TW Acustic.
By the way I also have a personally rebuilt/restored Garrard 301 idler ( higher spec than your run of the Artisan Fidelity & Classic Audio 301's ), close but no cigar - cant compete with the string drive Final in speed and precision. The key here is that the silk thread does not stretch.

Oh, forgot to mention the string drive Final was built in the 70’s.