My personal experience with Direct Drive versus Belt Drive


This is my personal , yet limited experience, with a DD versus Belt Drive. This A/B took place in the same system. with literally the same tonearm. I am choosing not to mention brands at this point. I feel by keeping the brand out of the discussion, anyone who contributes to the the thread (myself included), can be a bit more forthcoming. I am not big on audiophile jargon, so I will keep this short and sweet. I started with DD, in a system which I was very familiar with. The room of course, was different. The DD struck me as near perfect. I could hear the starting and stopping on a dime, and the near perfect timing that many have associated with the DD.  It didn't take long at all for me to conclude this was not my cup of tea. It satisfied my brain, but didn't move my heart. Maybe I was used to the imperfect sound of belt drives, and it was indeed that imperfection, that made for an emotional experience. Who knows? (-: Fast forward to the belt drive.... Again, same actual arm. It sounded more analog to me. Decay was much more easy to hear, along with subtle spatial cues. Was it the less than perfect timing, that was allowing me to now hear these things I could not with the DD?  I have no clue! What I was sure about was the emotion of the music had returned.
fjn04
I went from a Scout 1.1 with Zepher cart to a SL1200GAE with an AT ART9 cart. The Art 9 is a special cartridge but I did keep the Zepher MI cart before selling the VPI. I will be getting another head shell and putting the Zepher back in and then I will report back with a better idea of the differences between the two TT's.

I don't mean to change up the discussion but I want to point out that Teres turntables were originally belt drive and later Chris came out with a Rim Drive. It's my understanding that different materials used to make the belt, made some type of difference with the music just as the Rim Drive sounded different from the belt drive. All of these changes could be performed on the exact same turntable.

Not to disagree entirely with Lak's point, but let's not equate rim drive with direct-drive.  They are or can be as different from one another as BD from DD.  Likewise, I think the Reed Muse turntable that I mentioned above offers the option of a form of rim drive vs belt-drive.  In my thinking, rim drive is closest to idler-drive.  On that subject, I've got my much modified Lenco sounding pretty near exactly like my tweaked Victor TT101.  That was not intentional; it just came out that way.

I appreciate the input. I opened up the thread with the hope that discussion would not only talk about DD, Belt Drive..., but also discuss various turntables and tonearms. I plan on getting out to hear more turntables this year. Next on the list is a TW Raven GT. The other tables that have caught my interest are Oracle Delphi, and also the Well Tempered Royale 400. I have a Well Tempered GTA at the moment. These tables are at the very top of my price range. The Royale 12K with arm, the GT 10K sans arm, and the Delphi $8.5K sans arm. I'm not considering vintage at the moment. Hopefully, that won't come back to haunt me. lewm- I enjoyed trading the PM’s with you. I appreciate the input very much. Cheers -Don