New Turntable Advice

@richardbrand. 

Here in New Zealand, we use 3D printing of titanium to build rocket engines . but I digress.

Yes there is a lot of cool tech out there, some dating from way back. The trick is to use this technology to further the state of the art in audio reproduction. A healthy eye on the past along with innovative use of tech advances, rather than slavishly adhering to the current fashion.  

All audio equipment design is fundamentally an engineering problem. My passion being TTs which I see as an impossible engineering problem. One can only get as close as possible to the ideal, not actually reach it.  

To describe what a TT/TA needs to do is easy. " As viewed by the cartridge rotate the record at a constant speed under dynamic conditions" 

To unpick this statement. W & F figures are meaningless if measured by a steady state tone. This is not stressing the system dynamically and the TA will have an impact on the end numbers. Any movement in the platter other than its plane of rotation is  viewed by the cartridge as a change in speed. Any play in the main bearing is viewed by the cartridge as a change in speed. Any flexing of the main bearing housing changes the speed. Any resonance or flexing of the chassis (plinth) will be viewed as a change of speed. Outboard, standalone, arm boards need not apply. Any bending, resonance in the arm wand changes the apparent speed, Arm bearing play.....   etc etc. The list of speed deviation possibilities is extensive 

So when designing a TT we need to consider the perspective of the cartridge and work backwards with this knowledge to reduce these speed change impacts. If we turn this approach on its head and say that absolutely constant speed as viewed by the cartridge is the goal and that any deviation from this is movement, then the TT/TA  pair need to be "still"  And yeah, there is also the cartridge body in the mix. 

Cheers.

I was able to locate a beautiful bespoke refurbished Sony PS-X9 today here in The USA. In fact the person who refurbished my Sony PS-X700 has both a Nakamichi Dragon CT and the Sony PS-X9. It’s been his reference TT since 2020.
 

The unit has been carefully reworked caps, transistors and some special devices also with cleaning and re-lube all the actuators and mechanicanisms. So I’m very excited to be able to see the unit and take a listen. He has been a great trusted source for me in the past. No need to ship it within driving distance!

Richard we 3D printed large propellant tanks for our Satellites. We designed a built a manufacturing cell with four robotic stations 90 deg apart. Two stations which were 180 apart from each other were additive manufacturing and the two stations were machining centers. And all four stations included optical inspection. These tanks were ~ 40-50" in diameter and ~ 6-7' tall. 
technology ! 

@richardkrebs 

Here in New Zealand, we use 3D printing of titanium to build rocket engines

Hadn't realised you were just across the ditch!  About the only place better than Oz?

I had not heard of laser technology to fuse titanium particles until I read Wilson Benesch's paper on the design and manufacture of their latest tonearm!  Do you know what technology is behind 3D 'printing' of titanium?

To add to your discussion, any positional difference between the groove and the cartridge body in two of the three dimensions will be magnified by the pickup.  That also includes reflections from vibrations induced in the vinyl coming from the vinyl/platter interface

@richardbrand,

Well you are speaking to someone who is wildly biased towards NZ, so is it a great place to live? yes indeed. Maybe we can catch up some time. I'm in AU from time to time and perhaps you visit NZ?

I'm not ofay with the tech used in titanium 3D printing, just know that one of our customers does it and they ain't telling,. 

Yes when you view everything from the cartridge's perspective, the impossibility of the engineering design is most apparent. It is amazing that we get a facsimile of music at all, let alone one that can, at times, appear almost real.