Stylus-Drag..Fact or Fiction?

Ralph, i was not the 'Mike' asking you that question. i already knew you had a lathe and mastered Lp's.

i owned the Rockport Sirius III turntable (subject of the Peter Moncreiff article) for 9 years (2002-2011). no doubt it did overcome stylus drag. then i acquired the Wave Kinetics NVS direct drive tt, which briefly sat next to the Rockport and i heard the same thing (no stylus drag).

but stylus drag is not everything. there is also something called 'steady state speed'. absolute servo corrected speed i think might be not quite as significant as steady state speed. our ears seem to be very sensitive to the speed being steady.

recently i added a Saskia model two idler turntable to my system, which sits along side my direct drive NVS. i've switched cartridges and arms from one to the other these last couple of months. the Saskia is not just another idler. it weighs 250 pounds, has a Pabst 3 phase motor, and very heavy platter. the Saskia has no servo loop for speed. it sets the speed and then maintains it. inertia and the leverage of the idler wheel keep things steady.

as a result there is a solidity and flow that is undeniable. the tonal density must be heard to be believed. zero stylus drag + absolute steady speed. 

i had heard the Saskia at shows back a few years and was always very impressed, although the systems it was in were unfamiliar and different than mine. so i thought i knew what it might do, but it was a stab in the dark.

i just love what i'm hearing so far. every day of listening to the Saskia is a learning experience. i still enjoy my NVS direct drive too. they both have their strengths.

stylus drag is a real issue. but servo correcting speed comes with a price too.....even at the very tip top of the food chain.

Mike, you need to get rid of both the Wave Kinetics and Saskia. Get yourself one of those Monaco 2.0 tables and put a Gabon Ebony Durand arm on it. The Gabon Ebony has seriously better timbre than the rosewood and has much lower stylus drag. And here I am stuck with this crappy Clearaudio Statement. But don’t worry. I just ordered a Basis Work of Art. I can put the Statement in my Summer home in the Catskills

i had a Monaco 1.0 with a Dynavector arm in my system for a year back 10 years ago. very ’meh’ to my ears and far prefer the NVS to that. haven’t read Mr. Gregory’s review of the 2.0, but as far as timbre i think the Saskia is quite the king of that. neither of my tt’s are going anywhere.

’if’ i was acquiring another tt, it would be a belt drive of some sort. i already have what i consider top echelon direct drive and idler examples.

sorry, but not up to speed on what a Gabon Ebony Durand might be? please point me in the right direction and i’ll get informed. i’ve owned 4 different Durand tonearms and also own his record weight. i’ve owned 3 separate wood arm wand Durand arms, and have a wood arm Durand Telos on my NVS now with a Miyajima Premium Be Mono cartridge on it. sweet sounding arm.

i guess i could ask Joel directly about the Gabon Ebony, he is a local friend of mine. he was here in my room two weeks ago tweaking my Durand Tosca tone arm and listening to the Saskia.

of course, this is a natural selection problem. far beyond numbers or instruments. my son-in-law is a physicist working for the Allen Institute. they do brain research. he assembles big data for the neuroscientists.

he said in maybe 10 years they will be able to replicate a cubic cm of mouse brain tissue. but right now it’s too much data to replicate. he does not think he will live long enough for them to be able to do that for a cm of human brain tissue. just too much data.

so when we think that we can measure what our senses have evolved to sense, we are kidding ourselves. and not just the hearing part. the whole body is involved in whether we think something is fake or real.

which is why getting as close to absolutely steady as possible means more to our musical sensibilities than what we view as corrected speed. there are no naturally occurring servos.

In general, accurate rotation is obtained by servo-control by negative feedback, but at the micro level, if it rotates or becomes faster, it detects it and slows it, and repeats the operation to make it faster if it gets slower. If you try to measure a period with a small level, you cannot measure the instantaneous state, so you should measure the average value. Therefore, fine vibration generated by servo-control cannot be measured by the measuring instrument, it depends on the human ear.

back years ago when i switched from my Basis belt driven tt, and belt driven Rockport Sirius II SE, to the direct drive Rockport Sirius III turntable; the most obvious ’stylus drag’ thing i heard was lack of clarity and coherence on large musical peaks. you would get a hardness and lack of cohesion with those belt drive tt’s.....absent with the DD Sirius III, then later the Dobbins SP-10 Mk2, then the Mk3, and then the Koda ’The Beat’ and finally the NVS. yes; piano sustains also could be an issue too. but for me, a lover of big music, it was how those belts handled the peaks that bugged me. you assume that distortion is in the recording....and then hear it sound absolutely right and do the head slapping thing.

which is not to say all belt driven tt's are equally vulnerable to that malady. i know some are not. but it has to be overcome somehow as it's inherent in the approach.

The 30/12 is an amazing turntable. It’s degree of isolation is better than any turntable I am aware of.

while the passive isolation for the 30/12 from all those rubber bands is relatively effective, it is limited. OTOH the overall build quality of the 30/12 results in top level sound, but the isolation component is relatively pedestrian. i think maybe Peter has his 30/12 on a passive air decoupling Vibra-plane platform to improve isolation. that is degrees better than the stock 30/12 isolation, but still passive.

for ultimate turntable isolation you need to observe how science does isolation. they use active shelves with piezo-electric sensors and actuators in 6 axis’s.

http://www.herzan.com/products/active-vibration-control/ts-series.html

as it comes stock for science this product is not fully ready for high fidelity purposes. it has a SMPS which broadcast’s noise into your signal path, plus it’s limited to effectiveness under 200hz so needs further modification to cover the whole FR. and as it cannot discern the source of resonance it attenuates, only tt’s with very low self resonance work well with it. but properly modified and applied to the right turntable it takes things where no passive isolation approach can follow.

mike, there is such a thing as "carrying it to far." Why don you just stick your turntable in an isolation camber so airborne vibration doesn’t get to it? I bet if you sit on one of those tables your hearing will improve:)

in a thread about ’stylus drag’ you are complaining about ’carrying it too far’? really? i think any participants in this thread would be considered by non audiophiles as ’carrying it too far’. it’s what we do here.

i will shamelessly admit to likely being at the far end of the ’carrying it too far’ bell curve.

i have 5 of those modified active platforms in my system; under both of my mono block amps, under my preamp, under my dac, and under my turntable. they are awesome tools to eliminate resonance. the musical connection they allow, especially when the music gets very dynamic and soars, is worth it. you can see pictures of those platforms if you look at my system page.

'carrying it to far. i'm the poster boy for that.

i have maybe 20+ recordings of Beethoven’s 5th and double that of the 9th.

every one has a slightly different tempo. even by the same conductor and orchestra.

none are really wrong. just different. i do have my favorites.

which is a different issue than tonal solidity verses that very distrating slightly wa-wa sour sound of speed discontinuity.

Non-feedback motor control

In LFT 1, the rotation control is not performed, and the constant speed rotation is left to the high moment of inertia of the 27 kg platter, creating a rotation free from unnecessary vibration caused by the control. Only the positive direction force is applied from the motor, but by using a coreless motor with less moment of inertia, the influence of the vibration is reduced. Motor rotation control with no negative feedback · The XFD method realizes a drive with the minimum fluctuation.
*XFD method: Based on a crystal oscillator with high frequency precision, a direct digital voltage generator is formed to supply a voltage with high precision without fluctuation. It is a system that was independently developed by CS Port. It is a system that eliminates fluctuation by driving a super heavy platter with light load bearing with a low inertia coreless DC motor.

the above approach is with the CS Port LFT1 turntable

http://www.csport.audio/products/products-lft1-en.html

ignore the technology and measurements.

i did......or i do every day.

i purchased the Saskia idler to place next to my Wave Kinetics NVS direct drive. both toward to top of the heap for their types. i think my system allows each to flourish. maybe not every system is as flexible.

switching arms and cartridges back and forth it's obvious they are different in a good way, neither is wrong.

the NVS bigger and more organized in the sound stage. the stage edges get expanded. no limit to dynamics. very neutral tonally.

the Saskia has amazing energy, images more holographic and astonishing tonal density. more weight and impact to the bass and it digs deeper in flow and timbre.

both tt's are very good in the areas where the other is outstanding.....and different types of music are better served by each.

love them both.

I never understood this position.

especially if you take it out of context. and then twist it around.

this is a forum for listeners. my whole point, not the 5-10 percent you lifted, was that we have to listen to what these turntables do without preconceived notions about what we might expect. what does this tt actually do? and then i went on the relate what i heard from each turntable.

obviously i invested significant dollars to enjoy these turntables (supporting guys like you) partly because of my view of their technology and execution. i’m not blind to it. but there is a point where you listen objectively and let the music speak. i’m never going to be someone who has to first agree with and understand the technology and whether it fits what my engineering prof told me. others need this and i say knock yourself out with it.

but for me the technology only interests me only up to a point.

measurements are important. and i do agree there is a relationship with turntable performance between measurements and performance. but no matter the measurements the final arbiter is our ears. i want to know what people heard from their turntable. that is where the proof is.

i was one of the first ones to order the AS-2000 from David Karmeli that you were involved with, but i later changed my mind. i heard his AS-1000 at his home. sure, i appreciated the technical merits of it, but then cleared my mind to hear it on it’s own merits. it was awesome sounding for sure. what was significant to me was the other four turntables David had sitting there that i also heard and how the AS-1000 compared. not the tech.

i have read your posts here with genuine interest; of course at a particular point it goes completely over my head. i appreciate your participation on this thread. and i do care about the technology and especially observe the degrees of apparent execution of various turntables. but mostly i listen and follow my ears.

if you limit your customers to the ones who truly understand and can converse in the technology you work with that would seem to be a bit self destructing. but good luck with it. you might consider being more understanding of those who don't need to know everything.

i'm happy to talk more about my system (or my experiences) on a separate thread or my system thread. or not. but not here. with all due respect. and i'm happy to continue our dialog if you want to.

Mikelevigne, I am truly jealous. I which I had as much money as you have to spend on Hi Fi equipment.

hard to know how to react to that. might be a compliment, or something else.

i would only say that it’s taken me many years to assemble my system and most of the pieces have been resident for almost a decade. i’m not a rich guy, just relentless, and old enough for that to matter.

and when i built my room and first moved into it 15 years ago i had expensive gear, but the room sounded like crap. over another 10 years it was not much better. then after learning and making many mistakes i did figure out how to get the room to work. and getting the room to work was almost free in terms of dollars, although it took literally 9 months of constant effort to complete (details on the my system page comments down 10 or so posts if you are interested).

finally my expensive gear could really work properly. and likely a few levels less gear would be quite effective.....as well.

my point being that throwing money at it is not what works. working at it is what works. we can all do that. i feel better about the system/room tuning progress i’ve made than having shiny toys. not that i don’t like my toys. i certainly do. and work 6 days a week for many years to have them.

hope that does not come off as too defensive, but felt i needed to respond.

That’s also true of most of us here, isn’t it?

i suppose it depends on your definition of ’here’.

on an analog oriented thread like this one, i’d say most have, or prefer, tubes or a tube like presentation. otherwise in general maybe a bit different. just my 2 cents.

i do think that darTZeel solid state does get as close to the positive attributes of tubes as any solid state. and avoids the worst of solid state similarly. even though it's got that red and gold 'ironman' look.

ok, since we are in a free fall anyway here we go......

back in the day (in spring 2001) i had borrowed Atma-Sphere MA2 Mk (something or other, i’m sure Ralph will jump in to clarify). had them in my system for a couple of weeks, and was about to order a pair. very impressed other than my wife thought they were ugly. then the friend who loaned me the MA2’s called me to tell me about some other tube amps he had, the 75 watt Tenor OTL’s. i went to listen to those and preferred them to the MA2’s. the Tenor was just better to my ears. more fleshed out and natural sounding....with a magical mid range transparency and sparkle, even though it had quite a bit less power. so i went with the Tenors.

three years later, after a number of Tenor OTL explosive events, i had the opportunity to try this new solid state stereo amp, the darTZeel 108. here was a solid state amp that did not sound solid state, it had that breath of life of tubes, but the low noise floor of solid state. i loved it.

i still love it. i’ve had some pretty awesome tube amps in my system to run against the big darts. the big darts are still here. (if i ever stop buying turntables, arms and cartridges i will upgrade my 7 year old 458’s to the new 468.....but not yet).

my reference sound now 18 years later is still that Tenor OTL. and the darts deliver it....and much more.

and you have every right to your opinion on the look of the darTZeels. opinions are free.

a note about Atma-Sphere; no one takes better care of customers than Atma-Sphere, and i love the sound of their amps. and Ralph is a great guy and very helpful on the forums. i just don’t happen to own them. i’ve highly recommended them to many over the years.

basically i’m a tube guy who owns solid state.

much respect for your amp install approach, but a useful discussion of the details of active isolation is too deep for a brief comment. it's a big subject. maybe another day?

ok; i started a separate thread on active isolation; with a few basics and some reference to it's use in my system. happy to get as deep as you want on the subject there. and hopefully allow specific turntable related things to continue here unabated.

http://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/active-isolation-what-can-it-do-for-music-reproduction/post?postid=1819746#1819746

mikelavigne, you ever listen to JC-1’s in your system? Maybe just a slightly better value many of us can afford.

i’ve met John Curl a few times, and had his CTC Blowtorch preamp design in my room for a few days once when my friend, the dear departed Bob Trump (who also was involved in the JC-1), visited me. but only heard the JC-1 amps at shows, never in my own system. a real giant killer for sure.

you could do a lots worse for 4x the dollars. agree it is one of the better modestly priced amplifiers ever and could handle most speaker loads easily. i have zero negative things to say about it.

maybe the best of the current crop of class D amps might compete on dollar value. but i’ve not really paid close attention to those products to know. not been in the market for an amplifier for a long time.

feedback from CS Port LFT1 users i’ve spoken to is that the Kevlar string works exceedingly well. directly compared to a number of tt’s, belt, idler and direct drive.

i’ve not heard it personally. and have never owned a ’string drive’ high mass platter turntable myself. so i don’t have any personal opinion on the kevlar choice. OTOH this part of the turntable is the least costly and easiest to experiment with.

i would expect that CS Port has their good reasons to use kevlar.

i agree with your views up to a point. it is possible that one choice is actually better or best all around, and not just a different set of compromises. but more likely it's as you put it.

were i to go down the string drive, heavy platter road, no doubt i would have to become conversant in these 'voicing' string drive material choices.

CS Port LFT1 is not distributed in the Western Hemisphere as of right now.

in the UK it’s 47k Pounds Sterling....including the linear tracking arm. i think that includes the VAT. then the granite base is a few thousand more.

so equivalent to around $55k to $60k USD if offered here.....maybe into the mid 60k USD range. distributors tend to set their own prices.

i use the information at hand.

when i observe the depth of ct's experiences in his system link it's clear he has spent lots of time on the thread issue. i know from my time studying the AS-2000 when i had it on order that the whole drive thread question is not anything black and white. so i think my answer is the only reasonable way to respond considering i have zero first hand experience.. i'm leaving the possibility that the CS Port view of using the Kevlar might be the one true way, but that more likely it's not certain.

i'm in 'learn' mode here on this issue. it's not being nice, just knowing what i don't know.

Mike, my daughter will be living in Shanghai for a year. She is going to look into getting the CS Port turntable. It should be much less. Rock and Roll!

Rock and Roll indeed!

wow! congrats on having a daughter that (1) can buy a turntable like that, and (2) wants to buy a turntable like that.....and of course (3) gets to spend a year in Shanghai. exciting place, never been myself.

don’t think CS Port has mainland China distribution yet, but Japan is close. good luck on the price part....less.....but maybe not 'much' less.

my daughter likes music, but is not audiophile or vinyl lover. my expectations are more minimal. i just wish her and her husband (married 10+ years) would give me a grandkid or three. i could spend time with them and not buy so much hifi gear.