Albert Porters after market panzerholz plinths

Rhythm is the heart of music. It is more important than melody, harmony, tone color etc. Ask any musician, and he/she will tell you that the most beautiful tone, sounding the most beautiful melody, but with bad rhythm is meaningless. There is a truism among musicians that "no-one ever got fired for having a bad sound". An exaggeration perhaps, but the point is that without a great sense of rhythm, resulting in beautiful, controlled expressiveness, everything else becomes irrelevant. That sense of rhythm/expressiveness is also the most fragile element of music. The slightest deviation/distortion, and the "feeling" of the music is destroyed; to a much greater degree than by deviations from an "ideal tone", whatever that might be.

I often feel that we audiophiles are not respectful enough of the fragility of music. The recording/playback process, even under the best conditions, can only destroy some of the expressiveness. What is left, to be retrieved by the stylus tracing the grooves is even more fragile, by virtue of the fact that there is less of it there, as compared to the original performance. This is the reason for being intimately familiar with the sound of live music. We simply won't know what we are missing otherwise.

What does all this have to do with the subject of this thread? To me, everything. After years of trying to make my belt-drive tables (currently a VPI TNT6) sound right, and having owned some of the less exotic direct-drive tables, I am coming to the conclusion that direct-drive is the way to go. I have not heard every heavy-hitter in either camp, but have heard enough of them to feel comfortable with this conclusion, for myself. My TNT is adequate in the speed stability department, but only adequate; most of the time. Tonally, I think it is great. The DD tables I have lived with (not the heavy hitters), have had great speed stability, but not the expressiveness. I think this is due to their inferior tonal characteristics. This is the tricky part of all this. The sense of rhythm/expressivenes of a turntable, regardless of it's drive technology, is affected by it's tonal qualities; which are the result of the resonance properties of the materials employed. But, as with musicians, if you don't start out with rock-solid speed stability, nothing else matters. For this I am now convinced, you need direct drive, and high(ish) torque. The only tables I have heard that struck what I consider a really great balance of rhythm/expressiveness and tone were of the DD/heavy plinth types. These were a replinthed SP-10 MK2, and a lowly replinthed Luxman DD, that as much as I hate to admit, made more music than my TNT.

So how do we explain the sense of rhythm/PRAT of the Linn-type tables. I believe that with those designs, the balance of rhythm/expressiveness and tone has been tilted in favor of a tonal balance that psychoacoustically "lifts" the sense of expresiveness, without actually being as rock-solid (accurate) as the direct drives. Kind of like those "low-fat" potato chips that have twice as much salt as the regular ones, in an effort to make them as satisfying.

Just some thoughts; fire away.

**** The notion of essence is from Aristotle. For him then a particular part
must be essencial while the other parts are 'only' accidental. This doctrine is called 'essencialism' but is untenable in logical, philosophical and scientific sence.****

Namdric, in one of your own posts in a different, previous thread you also wrote:

****I was wrong to suppose some kind of 'objective facts' behind our preferences****.

I disagree.

Aristotle was correct. The notion of "essence" is at the root of many of the discussions/arguments that we engage in, in our efforts to determine the superiority of one "part" over another similar part. It is usually a pointless argument because there is always that pesky issue of "preferences". But, the fact that we all have our preferences does not invalidate the existence of an indentifiable "essence". Or, to use a term dear to audiophiles, an "Absolute". The real issue, as I see it, is the normal and very human discomfort that we all feel at the notion that our own personal knowledge and understanding is incomplete; that there is room for further knowledge and understanding.

In that same previous thread you also correctly pointed out the "we all hear the same way". Putting aside the issue of the "interpretation" of what we are hearing, you are absolutely correct. As concerns music and sound, the "essence" of music is something that is most definitely identifiable and recognizable. Extensive exposure to the sound of live music is not the only way to gain a deeper understanding of the essence of music, but it is certainly the most effective. I say "not the only way", because the power of music is something that will always touch us; in spite of ourselves. But this "essence" that we talk about, as concerns the record/playback process, is something that is primarily at the mercy of those "parts" of the equipment "composition" that concern rhythm. There is where most of what determines the preservation of expressive nuance lies. I don't believe this is a matter of "preference", but in fact, an absolute.

Regards.