EMT 927 vs. Micro Seiki 5000 or 8000 - different?

Does anyone know what is so special about the big M-S turntables, apart from their obvious build quality, which can after all be matched by several of today's high end belt drive turntables? They seem to use an inverted bearing; is there anything special about the materials used in the bearing? How is the bearing lubricated? The motor assembly seems quite large but probably in part due to the incorporation of an elecronic drive system. The belt? I know a guy who used to sell M-S in the 80s and 90s. He thinks of them as "good" but not mind-blowing. I don't necessarily take his opinion as gospel. I am interested to learn more.

Hi Win, If you are still out there, did you mean to imply that belt creep does not occur with string drive (or with the use of other materials that presumably do not "stretch")? I thought Mark Kelly's analysis suggested that belt creep in a conventional belt drive tt, (where the motor is stationed at some distance from the platter and there is no re-routing of the belt by use of a capstan), is inevitable. I take no position pro or con, but what now puts me off of belt drive turntables is this variable that is left to each individual user of a bd turntable with an outboard motor: each user is responsible for the tension in the belt, which can even change from day to day due to vibration, etc. And belt tension would seem to be a major determinant of speed stability (due to belt creep, slippage, etc). So we try to fix that by using a gigantic and massive platter. It requires too much fiddling for me.

I have a good friend who just acquired a very expensive belt drive and tonearm. He invited me over for a listen. He is using a record weight with a built in strobe, so as to allow constant monitoring of platter speed. The sound was excellent but the experience was maddening. Commanded by the drifting of the strobe light, my friend was up out of his seat adjusting the motor about every 2 minutes, in order to keep the damned strobe stable. Turned out he did have a problem with his 3-phase AC synchronous state of the art motor controller, but still...

Dear Dover and Raul, Dover wrote, " My turntable speed never changes so I only check it once a year or so " I am happy to hear that, but the statement is not relevant to the issue of "belt creep" and does not necessarily mean that there is no variation in platter speed at the micro level. However, if you love the sound of your tt, that's all that counts. Pay close attention to piano reproduction. The capacity of a bd turntable to accurately convey the sound of a decaying note struck on a piano is for me a measure of its goodness. Pitch should be unwavering until the note dies below the audible level.

Dear Dover, "direct drive"? You hear speed instability in a direct drive turntable? All of them or one or two samples? A truly vintage direct drive turntable that has not been serviced can manifest speed instability due to aging capacitors, but the technology is not in any way speed unstable per se. If you hear speed instability in a direct drive turntable or if speed is grossly unstable by observation of the typical built-in strobe, then the table is defective.

I am not qualified really to hold forth on belt creep. Instead I can recommend that you go to Vinyl Asylum and do a search on that term. Then read the relevant posts by Mark Kelly. Belt creep is not incurable, by the way, as Mark shows. But also take a look at the Artemis turntable, where the belt travels around a capstan so as to nearly fully encircle the platter, a la one remedy suggested by Mark and others. But really I did not mean to detract from your pleasure with your turntable or to infer that it cannot be fantastic just because of this theoretical issue. I apologize if you got that message.

Dear Nandric, the VTF seems trivial but when you consider the very tiny area over which that downward force is distributed (the contact between LP and stylus tip), then the force per unit of area is very very large. This is not to say that I don't also have trouble with the concept. Nevertheless, all empiric and circumstantial evidence suggests it is a real phenomenon.

Oh yes, I forgot that old canard about hearing the servo at work. I guess some can hear something they don't like from certain direct drive turntables and choose to ascribe it to the servo. None of these devices is perfect. Then too, the early dd efforts might have been faulty in some cases even though working perfectly but due to design flaws. Certainly that might have been said of products lacking a quartz servo feedback mechanism. So I was naive to have inferred that dd tables as a class have flawless speed stability. Sorry for that exaggeration. I myself am not crazy about some of the dd tables that are much loved, like the low end Technics.

I just love my L07D once I installed an EMI/RFI shield under the stainless steel platter mat. Otherwise it had a slightly dulled sound that one might have said was related to servo. The L07D actually has a very novel and modern approach to the use of the servo, relying to a great degree on platter inertia, a la Dertonearm, altho the platter's mass would not suit him. The coreless motor is a big plus for the L07D, IMO. I am just this week finally listening to my SP10 Mk3 in a massive slate and cherry/baltic birch plinth. It gives a very free and open musical sound once resonance is markedly reduced by the plinth plus a mass added to the bearing housing, a la Albert Porter's plinths. Best of all, no fiddling with drive belts.

Nandric, I do buy DT's belief system possibly as it relates to belt-drive turntables. I do not believe (and this is nothing but my personal "feeling" based on no data, which makes me just like everyone else) that the massive platter hypothesis necessarily applies to idler drive or direct drive turntables, although high platter mass is certainly not a bad thing in any case. I also love my (highly modified and non-original) Lenco and could live with it happily if I had no other turntables. Some folks on Lenco Heaven have doubled up on the Lenco platter, i.e., they use two of them stacked! Invariably these persons report an associated improvement in performance. I will never go down that road, but there may be something to it, or there may be a placebo effect. I would love to hear an EMT in my own system.

It's pretty astounding to turn on the Mk3 and see that 22-lb platter come to speed in a near instant and then stop "on a dime", as we who use dimes are wont to say. The platter may be "too light" (altho among the heaviest ever made for dd), but the complete control of it by the motor is what determines whether you like the Mk3 or not. This is not the same as the use of a massive platter on a belt-drive turntable, where inertia is king. The L07D was designed to use both factors in maintaining stable speed, a modestly powerful coreless motor drives a fairly heavy platter (made heavier in my case by the use of the optional outer ring weight made by Kenwood for the L07D in the 1980s) with sparing use of the servo mechanism.

Travis, I took some photos the other night. Have not had time to post them.