Ring Clamps. What do you think?

On my main TT (85 lbs, including a 35 lb, lead-weighted cocobola platter), clamping the record makes a big sonic improvement. Center clamp helps. Ring clamp helps more. Both together help most.

The biggest benefit is not warp flattening (though that's significant). The biggest benefit is reducing background sonic mud. This is undoubtedly due to the damping phenomenon described by Redglobe. Clamping to a high mass platter, bearing and plinth engineered to absorb, deaden and dissipate a lot of extraneous energy makes any record play with a very quiet background.

OTOH, my old, cheaper TT rings like a bell. Clamping a record to an echo chamber is a sonic disaster, obviously. If I cared enough I'd experiment with mats, which would probably be better on any such table.

YMMV, depending on your TT.

As to records "breathing like guitars", that's nonsensical as others have said. The only time a record should do anything like a guitar is when it contains a recording of a guitar. In that case, only the modulations in the grooves should emulate a guitar. Aside from groove modulations, the record itself should do, well, nothing.

This is an interesting thread. The people that make the Ringmat use no weight on top of the record at all, the argument being that it channels energy away and lets the record breath

The Ringmat, like many mats, is designed to ISOLATE the record from the platter. This is why it should be used unweighted.

However, the Ringmat doesn't "channel energy away". It barely has any points of contact, so how could it channel anything? What it does is (1) limit the amount of noise from the TT that gets into the record and (2) limit the amount of intra-vinyl energies that reflect off the platter and back into the record, as Lewm described.

As I just described, isolation works best on tables that are (a) noisy or (b) not particularly engineered or built to dampen/dissipate intra-vinyl energies on their own. Just guessing, but it might work well on your EMT 950, whose relatively lightweight platter may be subject to (b). OTOH, isolation provides no benefit on my main TT, which works best when the record is COUPLED to its high mass, energy absorbing platter.

ISOLATE the record FROM noisy turntables, COUPLE the record TO quiet ones.

As to records "breathing", I've yet to see one inhale or exhale. That's just pseudo-mystical marketing babble.

Some good reading for anyone interested in the nature of human hearing and what true hi fi actually does and what makes "AIR and SPACE"...location and distance in analogue music...compared to digital

Read both parts.

Also test reports of (spectral analysis) TTW Audio outer ring/mat and copper center weight.

http://www.ttweights.com/web-page_2.html

Thanks
Larry

Stringbean,
Ever notice the interlocking joints on the pavement of a long bridge? The bridge needs to have some play or it will surely collapse. That's engineering, same as with the guitar.
If you believe movement and air have no place in turntable design that is certainly an opinion your welcome to have.
I would think a heavy metal deadening ring would do just that, deadening the sound.
When is enough enough?