Stylus-Drag..Fact or Fiction?

@ct0517, just went back and read your above mentioned posting of your thoughts after you put the three tables to test and found your results very interesting, thanks for sharing that. In this world we live, nothing is perfect and we must recognize what those inperfections are and how to deal with them. Enjoy the music.

@lewm- I’ve never, in the last(slightly over) four decades of listening to vinyl, experienced any loss of fidelity, to, "super-imposed alterations in pitch and timing due to stylus drag, belt creep, and the like." In the years prior; some had to be addressed(cheaper tables). I have perfect pitch. ie: I’ve always been able to accurately tune my guitar, without a tuning aid, etc. Thought that was normal, until a fellow musician pointed out it wasn’t. Were there anything, in any of those later analogue systems, that caused an actual, audible problem(wow, flutter, pitch anomalies); I’d have been the first to notice and would have corrected it. The reason I gave tooblue a +1, is my following the same speed adjustment procedure(done w/stylus in the groove). If you can hear the result of stylus drag, with a correctly adjusted table; that’s patently amazing. Belt creep/slippage is an equipment malfunction, that needs to be addressed, if present. Don’t have it, here. Thanks(for your concern).

Perhaps Technics (orig Sony) claim of eliminating direct drive 'cogging' have finally turned the tide for good this time.

Originally Panasonic's upscale brand.

@atmasphere, nothing new under the sun, eh? Thanks.


@rodman99999, good for you!

I think the main point to bear in mind is that, as stated in the Moncrieff article, is that it’s not just pitch errors that are affected by speed irregularities -

"In the past, most people have assumed that any speed errors in a turntable would be audible only as pitch errors, making the music sound off pitch or at worst slightly wobbly in pitch. But turntable speed errors also have other sonic consequences, which are far more pernicious. By playing the right amplitude at the wrong time, turntable speed errors create a distorted music waveform, even if the rest of your system were to be perfect. Indeed, as cartridges get better and better, becoming far cleaner and more accurate in tracking the amplitude half of the music waveform from the groove, and as the rest of our system chain continues to become at once cleaner and more revealing of everything (including not only the music but also distortions from our program sources), and become the last remaining hurdle of the state of the art."

On the other hand I’m sure that beyond a certain point none of us can readily hear speed imperfections, especially not those quoted for the Monaco 2. I mean I know turntable speed matters, it matters a lot, but this is overkill, isn’t it?

"The peak deviation from a perfect 33 1/3rpm rotational speed for the 2.0 is typically better than 0.0001% (1ppm) -- that’s actual platter motion, not a quartz-locked specification."

0.0001% ? That’s just another way of describing perfection as far as humans go.

On the other hand companies like Linn and Rega to this day remain strangely quiet regarding data on the absolute speed accuracy of their (belt-driven) products.

Doesn’t stop thousands from enjoying them though does it?

Earlier; geoffkait asked, "Is this where low effective mass of the tonearm comes in?" Since 1980; I’ve been using low mass Magnepan arms and high compliance cartridges. Among the reasons I went that way, is the lower VTF at which many higher compliance carts can faithfully track. That translates into lower friction coefficient / less stylus drag. Currently; I’m using a high compliance Soundsmith cartridge, at just a hair over 1G. I’ve no doubt; that helps. I still miss my Sonus Gold-Blue!