Direct drive vs belt vs rim vs idler arm

Ahhh, three posts and three opinions. Let me be the fourth post and fourth opinion.

All systems at their ultimate execution, direct drive is best. Between idler and belt they are almost perfectly split with dynamics and punch in favor of the idler and signal to noise and simplicity in favor of the belt drive.

Yes, I've owned all three, and multiple versions of each design type.

02-14-13: Ct0517
Hi Richard, Albert Porter, Bill Thalmann
I came across your new website today.
As a hobbyist with no affiliation to any of you - congrats on the new site and good luck.

Thanks Ct0517, but I have nothing to do with the upgrades or the website but did lend my photos to Krebs since my table benefited greatly from the mods he licensed Bill Thalmann to do.

I've known Bill for a good while and always tell people he is the guy that did my electrical and Krebs upgrade work.

Even before this Technics stuff, Bill worked on my custom Dali (tube) crossover and greatly improved both the resolution and dynamics.

I thought I had reached the limit since this was our third version of the crossover but Bill suggested a small design change that required few parts and it REALLY worked.

I love recommending this kind of person to the community.

Lewm
Peter, Basis turntables are suspended? I guess the top models in the line have pneumatic feet. I usually think of such turntables as un-suspended.

Not directed to me, but the Basis Debut Gold is for sure hanging suspension.

The four towers on each corner rotate to adjust hidden springs within enclosed silicone cylinders, allowing for both level and tweaking of the damping rate. Basis even offers different springs so you can adjust precisely for different tonearm mass.

I owned two or three of these, the suspension system is well designed and very effective at isolating the table, arm and cartridge from floor borne input.

I don't know how easy or hard is to the LP manufacturers to have their LPs with a " perfect " hole centered. Today we pay a lot of money for new LPs/reissues and the like but the LP manufacturers never fixed that problem and IMHO no one of them take care about."

Here is a perfect opportunity for someone to create a press that punches out the center of an LP and provide an adjustable sleeve that allows for perfect centering of each LP.

Of course you could not sell the LP once this was done, unless the next buyer was another fan of this product.

Crazy idea? Hey, we had Audio Desk selling a rather expensive device to trip CD edge to make them perfect and by all accounts listeners got a nice upgrade after the tweak was applied.