Stylus-Drag..Fact or Fiction?

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.

Now in regard to turntables, speed inaccuracies, wow and flutter only affect two things in music, pitch and tempo. Now since the vast majority of us are pitch and tempo stupid the very minor variations seen in high performance turntable is totally inaudible.  if you hear a difference between two high performance tables it has nothing to do with speed inaccuracies. Different cartridges, arms, cables, setups maybe but not speed inaccuracies.

In not all but in some respects I don't think what we each are saying is all that far apart. The ability to detect timing differences is a necessary condition for assessing tempo;  the ability to hear frequency differences is likewise a prerequisite for gauging pitch.

I assume you believe you're making a deductive argument. Validity is one thing, the truth value of premises and conclusions is something else.  Saying something like " the vast majority of us are pitch and tempo stupid"  is silly.

The only thing I can think of to explain the main quoted comments above is perhaps there is not enough experience yet with high performance tables and their comparison.  I write this so others interested in a purchase and who consider evaluating their choices understand that the two most critical physical/technical  factors for a table are stable speed accuracy and low noise. 

The Ideal evaluation of two tables is to have the only difference in a comparison be the tables themselves.  Same cartridge, same tonearm, cables, entire rest of the systems and room are identical.  Critical sonic evaluation between tables is possible with a playing field level.

Under such conditions it is easy to hear differences in stable speed accuracy and noise in terms of listening to music.  Granted it is unusual to read about such a comparison, but that is exactly what is found in coverage of the Monaco 2.0 from two years ago.  Here were two similar tables but with clear physical differences, both having highly stable accurate speed measurements with one set of measurements much better than the other and likewise clearly different sonic differences.  Fwiw, per the standard DIN measurement, wow & flutter were unmeasureable. 

Electron microscope video of stylus tracking the groove,

https://youtu.be/GuCdsyCWmt8

jtimothya, I am going to do that tomorrow! I will take an Air Force 1 with a 4 point 11 and an SME 30/12 with a 4 point 11 both with PC-1 Supreme's 
and make that comparison. I already have the 30/12. mikelavigne will lend me the other $150,000 and you can come tell us which one you like better. Graham Engineering is right down the road.
You might notice that the rags do this type of comparison all the time. The problem for all these audio aficionados is that if I do this study correctly, double blinded nobody would be able to reliably tell the difference between the two except for jtimothya of course. The major attraction to turntables is mechanical. They are cool devices and we all have our perspective on what cool is. You take for instance a Hurican, a 488 and a 720s. Three very competent sports cars all around the same price. All are in the same performance envelope, All three have their champions who will swear their car is the best.....actually it is the best looking to them because that is where the real difference lies. Me, I'll take the 720s any day. mikelavigne is a financial wizard so he would take the 488 for it's resale value. jtimothya wants to be as cool as possible so he would take the Hurican. That is what turntables are. 
Mikelavigne, that is what all of us long term audiophiles do. We evolve our systems over time always attempting to improve performance. You are just able to do it at a higher price point. Very few of us are going to be able to jump for DZ NHB-458's  or have you gone to the 468's? Now personally I would never even listen to an amp like that. I think it is the silliest looking amplifier ever made. I would go for the Atma-Sphere MA-3.
All go and no show until you take a look inside, all beautifully hand wired point to point. You can see where the money went. Oh, and I do not have to put my amps on seismic platforms, they are under the speakers in the room below on a shelf near the ceiling attached to a concrete wall. The speaker cables are 32" long. Each amp has it's own 20 amp service:)

Mike 

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?