Direct Drive vs. Idler Drive vs. Belt drive

Dear @rauliruegas

thank you for the kind words my friend. it is always a pleasure discussing the finer points of vinyl playback with you.

you say that in your 3 today TTs MUSIC flows and spin with speed stability that at least you can’t detect.

I want to think that your TTs comparisons were made it using the same cartridge and at least in the NVS and Saskia with the same tonearm model.

The DD servo motor control always comes in any drive TT discusions and for the same characteristics that @richardkrebs posted here but even he can’t really detect that characteristic because he use DD TT.
I have first hand experiences with several DD TTs and BD TTs but not a first rate idlerdrive one. As Richard and you I can’t detect any non-stable speed changes because the servo control.

i simply have to disagree that it is necessary to isolate cartridges and arms to draw conclusions about drive characteristics. even if we duplicate arms and cartridges, there are always synergy issues involved which can be issues. having lived with many high level direct drive tt’s in my system for almost 20 years now, with all sorts of arms and cartridges, i have a real feel for what they do, and where they are not ideal. will everyone accept my view? no, and i don’t need that to happen. i just have my reality based on my experiences.

after so many years with direct drives, you might ask why now i have added these two other turntables, the idler Sakia model two, and the string drive, high mass platter CS Port LFT1? why indeed?

it is to be able to answer this EXACT question for myself. what makes each drive type special? what can each drive type bring of value to the musical equation and allow my record collection come as fully alive as possible as i sail into retirement in the next couple of years. choosing the Saskia as the ’uber’ idler was easy, i had heard it at shows a couple of times and was always blown away, i knew Win Tinnon and so when i saw one for sale last summer i found a way to acquire it. and it’s been all i expected it to be......if not "the" top, "at" the top of the idler heap.

choosing the CS Port as my belt drive choice was more involved. i reached out to my friend Mik in the U.K. who knows more about turntables than maybe anyone anywhere, and we talked about all sorts of choices. i met Mik in 2004 when we both had Rockport Sirius III's. Mik now has -4- Rockport Sirius III's as well as maybe 75-100 other turntables.

https://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/unique-audio-uk/

i almost bought the VYGER Indian Mk4, but the more i spoke to Mik, the more the purity, energy and Japanese ’zen’ calmness of the CS Port appealed to me and i loved it’s low pressure low flow air bearing 60 pound platter and linear tracker. Mik has pretty much everything at his place and this was his choice for what is currently on the market.

and it’s been everything and then some to my ears for the last 6 months. that arm and that turntable transport the music to another dimension. the lack of any grain or edge, yet such musical essence is magical. and at the heart of that is the ’drive’ approach which no direct drive can capture. other high mass string drives at the top of the food chain do similar things and i’m not claiming it’s ’better’ that those others, but it has it’s own effervescence and sparkle. it digs out a level of nuance and musical truth i’ve never encountered before.

both the Saskia and CS Port have that flow and musical rightness that get’s into your body and feels right. that musical energy and life. alive, tense, and enveloping.

when i play all three turntables the drive differences are not subtle, yet all three are each excellent in their own ways. none of them fail at anything, yet each brings it’s own strengths.

So it does not matters if air bearing or DD or idlerdrive all of them are " resonating " somewhere in different way ( using the same cartridge/tonearm. ) and the cartridge is taking that overall non damped resonances/vibrations/feedback or whatever you want and for me it’s here from where comes all differences in between, at least the detectable ones.

i disagree. at these levels of execution, with the Saskia with a 200 pound plinth, and 40 pound platter.......and the CS Port with a 100 pound plinth, air bearing, and 60 pound platter, and both with truly top flight build quality, these are really completely sorted out and finished designs. neither are well known or widely heard. don’t count that against them.

both of these designs allow the arm and cartridge to be optimized. there are no compromises.

but the separator turns out to be the lack of servo on the belt and idler. i’m drawn to those two emotionally more. now that i’ve lived with those i’m always conscious of that aspect of my NVS direct drive. my NVS has the advantage of the Taiko Tana active isolation and that is an attractive aspect of listening to it as it has this other worldly ability to retain textures and fine threads of the music. and the big, powerful direct drive sound does add power to certain music that plays to big bold pieces, large scale rock and certain electronic music. it is my long term reference and so many cuts are so familiar.

however; all the theory in the world melts away when you hear a top level belt drive or idler on great vinyl. never has my vinyl listening been more satisfying than these last 6 months with these 3 turntables, i can find the ideal approach for any pressing. or hear different faces of the same pressing. it’s a cap’er to my multi-decade system building efforts.

Mr. Krebs is invited any time to hear how these compare. he can bring his SP-10 Mk3 if he likes.

Mike.

Many thanks for the invite. There is a little problem of distance however, since I live in New Zealand.

I do not disagree with you at all re the signature of "most" DDs. I spent 15 years whittling away at my mk3, little by little mitigating the very signature you describe. This journey started back in the mid 80's when this trait in my Sp10 mk3 was, to me, obvious  Note I did not say that I totally eliminated it. Still, I really liked the good things it did, does.  

More recently, I was approached to build a ground up TT. The options were ID or DD, I chose DD. I was given total license to do what ever I wanted. This was an opportunity to apply all that I have learnt in my professional life and in this hobby and someone else was offering to pay for it. I said to myself " How hard can it be?'.....Well that turned out to be a very naïve question.

The project took five and a half years, with 1000 hours of that time ( six months, 8 hours a day, equivalent) devoted to programming the controller. There are literally thousands of setting options and many of them interact with others.  We were making changes to the speed stability in the order of 0.001% and we could hear them. We were actually changing the 'shape' of the W&F. As I have said in this thread, it is really hard to get a DD to sound right. But I do not consider it to be impossible. Time will tell if others agree with me, I'm fine with their opinions either way. This is inherently a subjective hobby  

Servo controllers get a bad wrap in these and other parts. Yet most of us are listening to systems where amplifiers are using feed back and we do not think twice about this. A servo controller is a form of (electro-mechanical) feedback. Its application is a bit like Goldilocks and the three bears. Too hot, too cold or just right.  

Another thing which many DD owners like to demonstrate is the long term speed accuracy. Watching a stationary laser dot on a distant wall. This is touted as a virtue and proves the superiority of DD over all other drives. I do not agree, and do not claim to be able to hear the difference between a constant 33.334 and 33.332 rpm. My design doesn't concentrate on this metric.  What, to me, is important is the speed accuracy at a micro level. How speed stable is the drive under dynamic load, between a few arc seconds of rotation and the next set.  Firing of a shot of red light once every 1.8 seconds does not tell you jot about what is happening at this microscopic level. 

Cheers 

Well said Richard. Wow and flutter after a point are more noticeable than absolute speed. That point it seems to me is 0.1%. Under this it is inaudible. Speed wandering is always a problem if it occurs rather quickly. Quickly enough to hear a pitch change during a side. 
A significant reason for varying opinions is that all of our experiences are anecdotal. None of us has listen to a large panel of every type of turntable under controlled circumstances. I do not like DD turntables because all the ones I have listened to in situations where I have been able to compare them directly to belt drive tables have not done well. So, in my experience DD tables are not good. But I can't accurately say all DD turntables are bad. There may be some new designs Like Mike's that may be fine. I am also talking about tables over $10K . 
As Richard says this is mostly a subjective hobby and unless we go out of our way to be objective (which is very hard to do) our subjectivity only applies to ourselves. Therein lies the danger of giving and taking advice as to what and what does not sound good or better. 
Geoffkait, I have to agree. The dynamic compression used on many CDs is disgusting. But, there are high res downloads that are incredible. Recent examples are the Punch Brothers, All Ashore and Brittany Howard's, Jaime. 
Lewm, I have a bunch of re mastered Miles stuff on modern Prestige pressings, many of them mono that are excellent.
Lastly, everyone should take a look at Reed's 5T tonearm. What a brilliant design. I do want one of those!