Honest question about cartridge vs. turntable performance.

Nothing will help a bad sounding cartridge.

definitely @danvignau 

A lessor table, especially a mediocre belt drive would be completely unacceptable to me. I cannot listen to piano not holding pitch.

good point @sdrsdrsdr  

The primary functions of the turntable are consistently turning the platter at 33-1/3 rpm (stable accuracy) and doing so with little noise. It is the most critical component in the analog chain.

Right. All high-end Direct Drive turntables are the most stable in speed accuracy on the planet. This problem does not exist for DD owners. There is no issue with speed at all. Motor on Neumann cutting lathe is also Direct Drive and this is the first step in vinyl manufacturing process.

Turntable that can’t guarantee speed accuracy are junk.

Problems with speed accuracy associated only with Belt Drive turntables, but people loves them, don’t you see?

If you want to use your cartridge on some other turntable:

The most important is cartridge + tonearm combination.

In my opinion you have to get rid of that entry level mmf 5.1 turntable but you can keep using your good Ortofon cartridge.

Look for $1700 brand new Technics SL1200GR turntable, find a shop to try it and you will understand why there is a huge difference between turntables, especially between cheap belt drive and coreless direct drive motors.

Technics tonearm is fine for your cartridge.

The turntable can make a large difference. I just upgraded from my old Rega Planar 2 to a Technics SL1210GR. I’ve kept the same cartridge and everything else is the same also. So much less surface noise and overall cleaner sound.

Right, because Rega is an awful overpriced belt-drive turntable.

Your GR has a coreless Direct Drive motor, heavy cabinet, excellent and fully adjustable tonearm with detachable headshell and all this just for $1700.

How you can upgrade your cartridge on Technics and the difference will be huge compared to the difference you have noticed between belt drive TT and proper DD.

@mammothguy64

So Chakster, then why is it that the vast majority of the most high-end turntables are belt drive? I welcome your explanation. There could be something to learn from it.

In a wider perspective most of high-end turntables are Direct Drive, especially if you know the history. I don’t care much about High-End Industry today, this is where the ugliest and most expensive turntables coming from. It’s been said before, but i can repeat it again - marketing is the reason, if they can sell those ugly beats then why not make a profit? If someone can sell BD turntables like Rega then why not sell them, a belt drive motor is easy to make. The lack of knowledge is on the customers side in this situation, some of them don’t even know there are other turntables on the market today.

Let’s get back to the basics, this is my favorite argument:

I’m pretty sure most of your records made with this Neumann cutting lathe, and this is a first step in record manufacturing, this is how a lacquer disk actually cut. There must be the most stable motor to do so, because there is a cutter stylus right on lacquer, it’s obvious that any pitch errors must be eliminated in this process if you want to cut a perfect record (master cut). This is where nothing but a Direct Drive can do the job. And Neumann cutting lathe has Technics SP-02 Direct Drive Motor. I can’t find a better image for you since our member jpjones... removed the catalog from his new site (temporary, i hope) .

But let me tell you this:
If our records made with direct drive motor rotating the platter then why not reproduce them with similar direct drive motor ? This is it. Not only Technics made amazing direct drive turntables, there are many from Victor, Denon, Luxman, Kenwood, Pioneer Exclussive .... from the golden age of analog.

Today you can find superb direct drive motor only from Technics in SP10R series.

Why a belt drive manufacturers still selling their overpriced belt drive turntables ? You tell me. Obviously those BD turntables are NOT from Japan where Direct Drive was and still is a king.

@mijostyn

Everything you posted has nothing to do with reality and I am tired to reply to all these nonsense coming from the belt drive owners who never tried a proper direct drive system.

There are high torque direct drive and low torque direct drive, the torque is adjustable on some models. They are all very well isolated and there is NO magnetic field because there is a platter and additional mat on top of it. I use Micro Seiki CU-500, CU-180, SAEC SS-300 and Sakura Systems The Mat on my different direct drive turntables. With tons on MM, MI and LOMC cartridges I can’t remember any single issue with any of my direct drive turntables.

Stable rotation = Direct Drive, and this is all you need from a turntable, the rest is plinth, tonearm and cartridge. Stable rotation is the most important part of the cutting, this is why there is a Direct Drive motor on the most popular cutting lathe (Neumann). What else you can add? 

There must be some good Direct Drive like big and heavy Micro Seiki, but not those overpriced plastic toys manufacturers selling today and fooling people around.

Direct Drive is the best investment and this type of motor will work for over 40 years without service with stable rotation. 

If you like floating pitch use belt drive, the belt degrades in time. 

Now I have never used your Microseiki turntables but I find it interesting that their chief designer now makes only belt drive turntables. (Techdas)
A thin platter and a rubber mat are not much for shielding. The best shield from magnetism is distance.

@mijostin
I have mentioned only Micro Seiki BELT DRIVE, not any Direct Drive from them. The Belt Drive from Micro Seiki is something like this. Do you know the price? Not sure how many reference direct drive turntable anyone could buy instead of one Micro Seiki reference belt drive, the price is insane!

Chakster, in order for any turntable to be first class it has to be able to maintain speed in spite of any reasonable interference, it has to have an adequate record clamping system either reflex or vacuum, it has to be able to mount any tonearm you desire and it has to have a suspension that isolates it from anything over 2 hertz both vertically and horizontally.

No direct drive turntable I know of meets all of these requirements.

I am able to mount almost any tonearm on my $4000 Luxman PD-444 direct drive. Not a fan of vacuum clamping, but disc stabilizers or record camp like Micro Seiki ST-20 / CU-180 mat is what I use. Long time ago we came to conclusion here on audiogon that Luxman motor was made by Victor (not Micro Seiki). This turntable is suspended. Mode images here. The armboard system on the rails is the best I have ever used, ideal for tonearm collector like myself.

More reference direct drive turntable that you may never tried:
Victor TT-101, Denon DP-80, Technics Sp-10 mkIII or latest SP-10R.

All those are the best bang for the bucks as Lewm pointed out.
If a $2000 drive can give you more than $20 000 drive then why even look for the most expensive? You’re talking about turntables what will never be withing a price range that I (and many others) can spend on a turntable, in my opinion it’s a waste of money.

@mammothguy54

When you address your message to someone directly, please mention it. In my opinion Rega is a crappy and overpriced belt drive turntable like almost all modern BD turntable in this price range, nothing can change my opinion about it.

...making a recent purchase for a Rega Planar 10, I somehow have made a very poor decision.

Don’t you think the same? Let’s face it.
And let me mark the best Technics models since you have mentioned your positive experience with some old Technics turntables. The SP-10 mkII cost only $1500 today in perfect condition. The SP-10 mkIII is still a reference Direct Drive and cost about $5-7k.

I have explained in details in my earlier posts why (in my opinion) Direct Drive is better than Belt Drive.

Comparing any Rega to Technics SP-10mkII or mkIII is a joke, really.
Same about any Rega tonearms versus vintage Technics EPA-100 tonearm.

A brand new Technics SL1200G (about$4k) and GR (about $1700) are better than any Rega turntable today. 

Vintage DD turntables are definitely not the way to go. There may be some new ones that are fine I do not know. There certainly is no Technics turntable that I personally would bother with. For the most part they just dusted off the old designs when vinyl came back and made up a bunch of new marketing to make people think they were buying a cheap turntable that was better than any of those high price belt drive things.

@mijostin you know nothing about reference Direct Drive turntables so how can you tell someone anything about them? Would you like to recall top of the line DD turntable you ever owner in your life? Then we can talk about it.

Technics new design is NEW, not old.

It’ new Coreless Direct Drive motor. This company knows very well what they are doing, it’s not a funny little hi-fi manufacturer in his garage like most of those small Belt Drive companies with huge margin in the price for their toys.

And finally who cares about your own choice? We know you like Belt Drives. But everything you’re posting about DD turntables is wrong. You’d better study a bit about proper Direct Drive design - this is the missing link. Technics products are not overpriced just because they are able to make millions of them and sell them all quickly. The best selling turntable in the world is an old SL1200mkII series, probably you don’t know about it. Today they can make reference SP-10R and keep the price low, so some audiophile for whom the price is the key don’t really understand what they are missing, they can pay 5 times more and not even get close to SP-10R.

I know there must be some good belt drive turntables, but there are much more problems with belt drive than with direct drive motor.

This is absolutely pointless thread and these % calculation is nonsense.

How can it help someone ?

If you want a decent analog system you need a great cartridge, tonearm, turntable, phono stage, amps, speakers ...

You have hundreds of different alternatives for each component and everyone has personal preferences, every room is different.

5% or 10% what are you talking about ???