Upgrade from TW Acustic Raven AC-3 to what?

Transrotor Apollon, maxed out with 80MM platter, Magnetic drive bearings, 3 motors, SME V, and outboard Transrotor drive controller with manually adjustable fine tuning for speed. I am just saying, for me, my turntable is the "LAST" part I will ever think about changing for my main system, forver. Non-Suspended on Clearaudio MontBlanc turntable stand. I have never had any issues that people talk about with many other turntables; no bass feedback even at 100db plus levels and a large 15" subwoofer, no vibration pick up from walking, absolutely quiet and very stable. Ultra black backgrounds and velvety smooth highs with that silence between instruments and delicate and intricate breathing and parting of lips that you can hear in a lot of music, but just can't because the system is not high resolution enough.

I am not making a sales pitch, but if your system is already offering you all of that, then you have reached virtually the end of the upgrade road, the expenses from here on out will be for exotic materials and who knows what else to give you that .05 increase in quality.

I too was on the hunt for an end of life upgrade path years ago, and that is exactly what I did. I only worry about changing tubes out now when I need to and never the turntable, except when it is time to retip the Benz. I have a spare MC for that very purpose.

Good luck.
Ciao,
Audioquest4life

Audioquest,

I saw one of your Transrotors in HK. Very nice bling :-)

Laws of physics say that for every action there is a reaction, therefore any "give" in a bearing means you are losing the leading edge ( I think you will find the downwood pressure/energy of the minute stylus tip is surprisingly high ). For an air bearing or magnetic bearing to be completely rigid they would have to have infinite pressure - impossible. The only benefit of air bearings is that they are much cheaper than a decent mechanical bearing that does not induce vibration and noise, they dont wear out and they are more forgiving of poor set up ( soft bearing = soft sound ). Remember Enid Lumley of TAS - drop the air pressure until it fouls and then raise it slightly - this gives you the softest mushiest sound possible.
Lewm
I can only draw on experience - listening to the L07D demonstrated the later Goldmund direct drives were cogging, similarly when comparing the SP10 Mkiii against the Mkii you can clearly here the instability of the Mkii. The mkiii is the best dd I've heard - I'm just not totally convinced. I would not be averse to picking up an SP10 mkiii for experimentation to find out more.

Writing off air-bearing featuring TT's categorically because of an individual point of view how bearings in TT's work and interact with tonearm, plinth and underground is not at all an approach worth further consideration. While the SP-10 MK3 is a nice and well made DD-TT, it is nowhere near an estimated nor possible optimum in TT design. It is a 30+ year old design made for broadcast applications and following a certain, - then en vogue - principle of the day. As the idler-drive TT were 2 decades earlier.
An air bearing (working...) being less expensive than an average "true mechanical grounded" bearing ? What do you think the bearing in the SP10 MK3 did cost ? Whatever you guess now - its not half of that figure.
It is somehow funny, how - especially in TT design - everything is worshipped which tries to get around physics and real investemnt in material and financial resources. The one and only real clever approach in making a good cheap TT I have ever seen was Bill Firebaugh's initial design - it only suffered seriously from choosing the wrong velocity in its damping fluids.....

True mechanical grounding ? Tell that anyone in any laboratory working with microscopes - you're in for a good laugh and instant empirical proof that it won't work.

We will never see a lightweight TT nor an unsuspended one, with a platter less than 30-50 lbs coming anywhere near the point of closing the book on TT nor approaching its true frontiers.
As we all will see - as they will come and go in half years turn.
The same they have done so for the past 40+ years in high-end.

I can certainly understand the microscope analogy. However, microscopes don't create vibrations nor do they interpret them, so to some extent the analogy is not complete as a comparison. I know many of the isolation techniques used in audio look at those used for elaborate electron microscopes. Turntables are selective vibration detectors, however, with the vibration starting at the device. They also have to decide how much vibration to "keep" and how much to "filter". That is somewhat different from maintaining a clear visual field in a microscope.