Why do you line up their respective products as you have done? The Bardo and the Oasis are direct-drive. All of the Raven products are belt-drive. The LaGrange is a high end belt drive type. If you like direct-drive, don't consider any Raven. If you like belt-drive, my advice would be to stick with single-motor or double-motor set-ups, but that's just my opinion, and it's based only on hypothesis and "thought experiments". My bias among the belt-drive turntables would be toward the LaGrange, again with no data, only hearsay. |
Iaxelrod, Just to be accurate, the Lenco is a great turntable, but it is NOT direct-drive. It is an idler drive, like the Garrard 301/401 and the Thorens TD124. This means that the motor is in direct contact with a wheel that is also in direct contact with the platter. (The TD124 is not quite this simple.) The motor drives the platter through the motion of the wheel against the platter surface. I love my Lenco, but I would not recommend it for a novice unless you buy one that is "ready to roll" with all the necessary upgrades to get the best out of it. Artisan Fidelity and OMA sell turnkey revised Lencos, as does a gentleman named Peter Reinders in Europe. The Reinders Lenco can be found, I think, on Lenco Heaven website, where Lenco freaks go to worship. Probably a great sound for a little more than US$3000.
Someone commented that the Bardo does not differ much from the "sound" of other, belt-drive, Brinkmann turntables, despite its being DD. I suppose that's possible due to the use of similar build materials. The Oasis DD, I think, is upscale in cost and performance from the Bardo, but if you can afford a LaGrange, you can also afford an Oasis. Both Brinkmann DD's seem to use coreless motors, which is desirable, altho some great DD turntables use conventional motors, too. At this price level, and assuming that there is indeed a dealer in the US, you might be well advised to get on a plane and go hear some of these turntables you are considering. However, the experience will always be colored by tonearm, cartridge, phono stage, amplifier, speakers, etc. Thus you want to hear them in a single environment if possible. |
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Suteetat, I quite agree with you that the differences in absolute speed you posit are trivial and probably not at all audible to anyone but a super golden ear, of which there are very few. The real issue is speed stability, the ability of the turntable to maintain a constant speed over very small intervals of time (not "average" speed stability). If one were to graph time vs speed, where speed is continuously recorded, one would like to see a flat line, in other words. This is where some turntables fail and where some drive systems perform better than others. Even the Sutherland Timeline is not a perfect instrument for detecting such a high standard of speed stability, but if that red dot is moving in an irregular fashion across the wall, e.g., the red dot is displaced from its starting point by variable distances from one rotation to the next (good luck trying to measure that on a flat wall), then the turntable is probably not speed stable by this high standard. If the red dot creeps "regularly", I don't think that is so terrible, assuming the pitch is perceived to be correct; it indicates the type of slightly off-speed but stable operation you describe. My opinion, anyway. |
Dev, I and Suteetat were referring to the audible difference, if any, between 33.3333 (I don't recall how many decimal places Suteetat proposed) and 33.3334, or the like. The software itself (the recording and mastering process) is not accurate to that level. Whether one can hear such a speed difference, if the speed is constant over time, is open to debate. I happen to think even you would not hear it, but perhaps you would. However, the main point of my response to Suteetat was to say that it is not so much super accurate 33 and one-third rpm as it is speed constancy over even small time intervals, i.e., not "average" speed, that is of prime importance in assessing a turntable. And that is only my opinion, not necessarily gospel. |
Raul, You tend to use the term "distortion" to describe any factor that results in a deviation from perfect reproduction (whatever that is, and sadly it is often subjective) of what you perceive to be in the grooves. In that sense, I agree that electronics that distort and distortion due to tt speed aberrations could be lumped. All I am saying is that the two are qualitatively very different. They will be perceived differently. If you have perfect electronics, you will still hear the tt distortions. If you have a perfect turntable (in terms of speed accuracy) then you will still hear imperfect electronics. The two "distortions" are of a very different kind with respect to one another. This is why I wrote that one has nothing to do with the other. By now, we know how you feel about tubes. I don't think your analogy between distortions due to electronics and distortions caused by tt speed aberration is a very good one, for reasons just stated. |
I think we can all agree that it is possible for a turntable to be "Timeline speed accurate" and sound bad, for other reasons. It is also possible for a turntable to be slightly inaccurate for speed under load and still sound great.
Dear Raul, Your cabeza is como un rock when it comes to tubes vs transistors, but could you not at least admit that the "distortion" (your word for everything that is not perfect) due to "tubes" would be qualitatively categorically different from distortion due to turntable speed aberration. So, why do you even bring it up on this thread? The subject is not relevant. |
Raul, I take your point.
Syntax, Another story. I have a neighbor with a different brand of megabuck belt-drive turntable. I will not mention it, because I do think it is a very good sounding high quality product. I was in his listening room when he first tested it with his newly purchased Timeline. As we watched the red dot move steadily across the curtain behind his turntable, he leaped to his feet to adjust the speed controller. This only momentarily worked to halt the inexorable progress of the red dot. Two minutes later, he was on his feet again, and then again and again. (It would have been funny, if the turntable cost $100.) As I could hear no obvious problem due to speed aberration, I suggested that he should just ignore the Timeline so we could listen to music. However, the red dot is very distracting. A week or two later, he reported to me that the maker of his turntable tested the motor controller that is sold along with the table and reported it to be "defective". He also reported that the problem was now "fixed". The story does not end there, needless to say. "Fixed" is a relative term. The Timeline has created some havoc at the elite level among those suffering from audiophilia nervosa. Still, it does tell us "something". I would posit that if a turntable is speed stable enough to look good with the KAB strobe (the most accurate of the strobes because of its battery power), while the stylus is down on the LP, then it is probably "good enough".
So far as I know, R2R machines have their issues with wow and flutter, too. As most know, the famous jazz album, Kind of Blue, with the Miles Davis Quintet, has survived in its popularity for many decades despite the fact that it was mastered from an off-speed tape recording. As a devotee, I am so used to the pitch and tempo of the original that I find the recent release of the corrected speed version to be not nearly as involving. I daresay the original owes some of its staying power to the "dark" feel of the music, imparted by the speed inaccuracy of a tape recorder. |
This may end up competing with Raul's thread for longest on the website, but it also competes with the now defunct TV series, "Seinfeld", in that the subject is "nothing".
Thuchan, I have to disagree with you. At least in theory it should not be best to place the motor drive of a belt drive system on a completely separate support from that of the turntable itself. This is a cardinal sin of bad belt-drive turntable design. (The commercial product analog is to use a suspended chassis bearing the platter and tonearm whilst the motor drive is fixed to the inert plinth.) This results in some of the most obvious "wow" that I've ever heard in vinyl reproduction. The original AR turntable was guilty of that infraction, as were the early SOTA turntables. Especially, to put the turntable on a Vibraplane or similar device and the motor on an inert shelf system is asking for trouble. |
Moonglum (and Thuchan), I kind of regretted the acerbity of that post. What Thuchan proposed is not nearly as "sinful" as were the designs of the AR turntable and the early SOTAs (and maybe also the LP12; I wouldn't know). His set-up is not going to allow nearly as much relative motion between the motor pulley and the platter as did the two I cited. Further, I am sure he uses string or some other relatively non-elastic belt; the AR and the SOTA used elastic belts, making the problem worse.
I used to hang out at a dealership where the proprietor was fond of the Verdier. He used to mount the turntable and the motor about 4-5 feet apart, as was the custom. This meant that the two had to be on separate supports, using string drive. The shortcoming of that set-up for the Verdier would be that the table itself is mounted on "spongy" feet; as I recall it actually can rock a little if you push on the chassis. That would concern me, since the motor is immobile. |
