Direct Drive

You guys are worse than the motorcycle forums.

Pasta burner vs kraut burner vs rice burner. Chain vs belt, vs shaft. 

WHO CARES DD or Belt it's about the music. 

Silly!

My turntable is rim drive.....so what.....its the resultant sound that is the result.

Direct drive's "rumble", which is almost unmeasureable, always trumps belt drive's speed instability and having to replace the damn belts.

@dover wrote "If you want to buy a direct drive turntable you might as well buy a digital front end - its the same sound

I believe that dover takes issue with how DD achieve speed stability by using a feedback loop system that makes a speed adjustment after the error has been detected.

"If you want to buy a direct drive turntable you might as well buy a digital front end - its the same sound."

Bill, I totally agree with you, ABSURD. what a lack of understanding displayed by that statement.

I say: Analog does overtones, time and volume delay better than digital. Getting the speed PERFECT for the fundamental yields perfectly timed overtones.

Perfect speed, highly desirable (look at all the belt drive speed controllers) has nothing to do with platter weight, bearing design, isolation techniques, arm design, cartridge, phono stage, all the things that vary the audible results in the TT world.

Ortofon Red is a decent easy start, but nothing special.

You will get superior results from advanced Stylus Shapes, however they MUST be properly aligned.

https://www.sound-smith.com/articles/stylus-shape-information

You can move up to an excellent advanced stylus shape for $300.

https://www.audio-technica.com/en-us/cartridges/type/moving-magnet/vm540ml-h

After that, if you get deep into Vinyl you will want to move into the world of Moving Coil cartridges.

Later! Get Started!

So what was boring about the Clearaudio Concept Turntable and what cartridge, tonearm and phono stage did you have paired up with it? 

I love my Direct Drive JVC TT81. I encourage DD, certainly Technics knows how to do it superbly.

Auto-Lift is a TERRIFIC feature!

Built-In Phono EQ to Line Level (can be turned off to use an existing or future external phono stage) is easy, and may sound darn good. I actually preferred my AT120’s built-in to my McIntosh C28’s phono. Later I turned it off and used my McIntosh mx110z’s phono stage which sounds wonderful.

Included pre-aligned Cartridge is an excellent feature for a beginner. I would encourage acquiring a few tools and skills to mount and align cartridges, so other cartridges could be pre-mounted on headshells, waiting to play: MC; MM; Mono ....

The arm base looks like it adjusts height easily, important if cartridge heights vary.

I've owned Rega and VPI belt drives, much prefer my Technics SP10MKII with custom plinth. Much more slam, impact, pace than the belt drives.

Perhaps my situation unique in that I mostly concentrated on digital side for years,  resulting in superior digital sound quality vs my analog setups. Part of what spurred me to migrate from belt to direct drive was intention to replicate certain aspects of digital sound quality to the analog side, the SP provided exactly what I was seeking.

I'm totally unimpressed with 2M red. It sounds muffled. It seemed to me that if I use it on my rig, I won't be able to appreciate my record collection.

If you have a good digital front end you may be disappointed with analog at your budget.  I have no experience with the Technics table you mentioned, but I would avoid anything with a "built in" phono stage.

Consider purchasing used.  You might be surprised at how good a $500 vintage direct drive can sound.  You can still find SL 1200 MK2 tables that weren't used by DJs and there are a lot of accessories available that can improve sound quality.  I have one and enjoy it a lot.  It's not the same as my Sota Sapphire, but it was about 1/10 of the cost.

I have a JVC QL-Y66F from the 80s that's really nice.  It does have a couple of week spots - the base is hollow and flimsy and it will howl at high volumes.  The feet are junk.  I put a few pounds of plasticlay inside the base and replaced the feet with MNPCTECH feet and now it sings and no feedback issues at high volumes.  I'm using a Denon DL-301 MK 2 cartridge on it and currently running it with my Manley Chinook.  You could pick up a table like this for around $500, around $500 for the cartridge, and get a Parks Puffin phono stage for less than $500 and have a nice setup.  The feet and plasticlay were another $150 I think.  Not much more than you're planning to spend, but a much better setup. 

We all have different budgets and ideas of what's "good enough", and we don't know what your digital setup looks like, so it's hard to say how far you would need to go to get enjoyment comparable to your digital front end, but for a lot of us, the "sweet spot" budget wise usually starts around $5K and then goes up from there.

"If you want to buy a direct drive turntable you might as well buy a digital front end - its the same sound."

That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! Just because a TT maintains perfect speed as the better DD tables are prone to due doesn’t make it sound digital. By that logic the worse a TT maintains speed the more it sounds like analog produced music, totally absurd. The decks used for cutting the master disc are designed with perfect unwavering speed in mind.

BillWojo

@mahler123 

I get ur gripe with analogue and why u like DD.

1. The silence of digital backgrounds

2. stop start bass

3. Better timing - not in the musical sense but in terms of slowing down in complex passages

4. The cleaner sound

I appreciate as I am much the same and I like DD decks and the Townshend Rock as they both display those digital qualities I like plus the musical tone you get with analogue which has that ability to keep you listening.

I agree with posts relating to the JVC and Technics. The Denons are supposed to be excellent but many an idiot has ruined the magnetic tape on the platter. Contact @pbnaudio as he is an authority on denons

@dover 

You probably didn’t mean it that way, but that sounds like an endorsement to me

If you want to buy a direct drive turntable you might as well buy a digital front end - its the same sound.

What about the idler drive tables like the Lenco, Thorens or Garrard? The motors have to be modified to run silent but they are legendary and the arm boards are easy to change out.

Do yourself a favor and look at the Denon DL-103 carts, your gonna need a step up transformer like a used Denon AU-320 to use it with a MM phono stage. Like speakers, carts are transducers. Those DL-103 just make music!

Lots of good vintage DD units out there. Denon DP-75 or DP-80 are very good from what I understand. I’m partial to the Victor (JVC) line of motor drives, anything from the TT71 up to the TT101 will give you excellent results.

At this age any of those old DD motor drives need a good maintenance done to them. When done right there is another generation or two of keeping perfect speed before it needs attention again.

Bottom line is there will never be motor units built like these again. Technics has done it, but see the price? What do you think any of these old DD motor units would cost if built today? To get an idea, look at the price of the Technics, the top of the line model.

Look at the turntable in  my profile, yea, I need better pics. Anyway, this is a Victor 2 armboard plinth, model CL-2P. It's a heavy wood structure made with alternating layers of different material. I made my own armboards with quick change inserts so I can play with different arms. Currently sporting a Audio Technica ATP-12T in the rear with a stock DL-103 and the right side arm is a Victor UA-7045, perfect for my DL-103S.

All in I spent just a little more than the price of a Technics 1500

BillWojo

I still have a couple of phono stages in my bag of tricks but just thought I might make it easy.  What do you make of the Ortofon Red Cartridge?

There are some incredible direct drives, but their notoriety was largely due to motor noise and vibration. If you are open to user gear, you might want to do a search for an older Technics SP10 with a custom plinth. Other marketplaces have some good options for around $1K that then you can fit a better tonearm with, and it will get you much farther than a Technics 1500. Given your passion for classical, you’ll want as good a tonearm as you can let yourself allow so you have the best clarity and separation in imaging. This will also force you to invest in a decent phono stage, as the one built into the Technics will not perform as well as say even a $300-500 phono stage would. If you can stretch your budget a bit more, you might be much happier. 

Another vintage suggestion could be the Kenwood KD-500 direct drive with a Shure 3009 tonearm. You might be able to find this combo for $800 or less if you are really lucky, but even at $1000-1200 I think they would be a steal for the combo. The Kenwood has a great motor and the plinth is made of stone composite.

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