Direct Drive vs. Idler Drive vs. Belt drive
thuchan, that is a hypothesis that nobody has ever proven, it just seems nice intellectually. The greatest turntable of all time was belt drive with one motor. Everyone who owns a turntable needs to see this brilliant video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rgK0YMsJXM I guarantee this video will change your view of turntables forever. |
chakster, no joke at all. You should review your audio history. The AR XA was a ground breaking turntable. Not only was it less expensive than everything else. It was also better performing and not by a little. It's only over site was the lack of anti skate. It is in the Museum of Fine Art and one of the 10 best turntables of all time according to Absolute Sound. Watch the video and you will never look at an unsuspended turntable again. Room Rumble. Oracle , Basis , SME, SOTA, Techdas and others followed ARs advice. Edgar Villchar was one of the true geniuses of audio, right up there with Edison. At one point he had 33% of the speaker market! Henry Kloss was his partner who later on started KLH. |
No argument theophile. But no where in audio history except Edison was such a big step taken by one guy. Not only did he invent the suspended belt drive turntable but the woofer design used in at least 1/2 the subwoofers and speakers made, The AR 1. He started by cutting up an Electrovoice woofer and making a new spider and surround for it. It worked. AR had 33% of the a very competitive speaker market. He was not the only show in town. |
By today's standard it is not so hot but back then not bad at all. An SME arm cost twice as much as the whole turntable! If you put anti skating on it along with a real horizontal bearing it would be quite competitive. There are aspects of the XA tonearm's design that are very important. It is a neutral balance design. It's vertical bearing is at record level. It has a very stiff but light head shell (it just happens to look cheap) These aspects of design are critical for the best performance. The Kuzma 4 point arms are designed this way as are the SME and better Origin Live arms. The crazy expensive SAT tonearm's vertical bearing is way up in the air and it is a static balance arm! I don't know about you but I would never consider one even if I had that kind of money. If you don't believe in warp wow raise the back of your arm all the way up, put on a test record with a steady 1000 Hz tone and stick a nickle under the edge of the record. The tone will change very noticeably as the stylus passes the nickle. Now drop your arm so that the vertical bearing is at the level of the record. Very little tone change. IMHO the SAT arm is an extremely well made paper weight. |
