I think I made this point once before. If the reason the Lencos sound better is superior speed stability, then CD should have kicked vinyl's butt long ago. I would look elsewhere for the reason you prefer the sound of idler wheels. |
This is an excellent topic and discussion! What I find so intriguing about the resurgence of interest in DD and idler wheel designs is the retrospection it is prompting abou how the high-end has developed. Do you all remember Harry Pearson's first review of the Linn LP in which he described it as something that appeared to have been built in a Bronx garage? He took huge flack for that. He had been an SP-10 enthusiast, but gradually shifted in other directions as DD lost favor in the high end. Art Dudley's latest S'phile column acknowledges that he (and most of the rest of us) may have bought into a certain way of thinking about turntables that we perhaps we need to re-consider. This is fascinating stuff, don't you think?
Seveeral of the threads here about the Technics SL1200 (w/ KAB mods) compare it to belt-drive tables in the same price range. Okay, so it's serious competition to Regas and Music Halls. But tell me, Psychic and others, is it serious competition to the next rung up in belt drives: Linn, Nottingham, Basis, VPI, Kuzma, etc.? Forget about the Walkers and Rockports even, but in the segment around $2K - $4K do the DD's compete? David, (4yanx), am I right that you moved from a Nottingham, which you were very enamored of as I recall, to a DIY idler wheel TT? Has it been an unequivocal step up? |
Can't speak for Sean, but it seems to me that is the argument. For example, the Nottingham has such a low torque motor (but high inertia platter) that you have to give it push to get the platter going. That's by design. |
I know much less about the science and engineering of this subject than most of the excellent posters in this thread, but I feel the point I made above merits further exploration. Tom (Macrojack), your response, which is essentially that problems with the CD format obscure the big payoff it delivers in speed stability, is certainly credible, but I'm not willing to let it go at that.
What are the sonic benefits people ascribe to DD and IW? Better PRaT? What else? If this were due to better speed stability alone, surely we would hear at least some of this benefit from CDs. Do we? As piano is the reference standard for hearing pitch stability, shouldn't this be obvious from CD? (Some people think it is, but not all of us.)
My layman's hypothesis is that average speed variation from the reference (33 1/3) is more significant to sonics (and more widespread) than the very tiny moment-to-moment stability issues that are being argued about in this discussion. Rega tables run fast and -- guess what? -- they have great PRaT.
And let me toss out another idea. How stable, moment-to-moment, was the cutting lathe? And how close to perfect 33 1/3 was it? These issues confer obvious and huge advantages to digtial recording and playback, certainly on paper (listen up, Miss Pickler), but in actual practice they do not seem to be as significant as one would have thought. Ditto with inner groove distortion, the crude way in which stereo is extracted from vinyl (see an earlier thread about mono cartridges), and numerous other shortcomings of the vinyl medium. |
Tom, my arguments address the conversation that deals with why one technology is better than the other, which has been the dominant conversation in this thread. That's not the question you asked, but it's where the discussion has gone.
I don't count myself among the audiophiles who do not care to ask why but just accept what they hear as true. It's a fine line, of course, but to abandon reason and critical thinking is unacceptable to me. If belt drive superiority proves to have been a distortion that the market adopted wholesale 25 years ago, it is partly because we accepted the erroneous arguments for why it was superior. Same will be true here if we buy into statements such as "pushes the platter instead of pulls it" without critically examining their merits. |
I'm in violent agreement with you about measurements, David. However, when what I hear flies in the face of reason (irregardless of measurements), I want to know why, or at least I want to think it through. That's just me, and it reflects my self-doubting personality.
I'll make a confession that may get me kicked out of the club. I used to believe fiercely in "trust your ears," but I have come to suspect that our ears (mine at least) can sometimes lie to us also. This does not mean that I choose what measures best (I don't pay attention to that), only that I pause and reflect if something doesn't make sense. I may end up choosing components or techniques that don't make sense but sound best to me (e.g., using a linestage). The thing is, I don't do so without first questioning it, and I continue to question it even afterwards. |
Macrojack, you are one fine gentleman. |
Then send it to me in email. I'm very curious to hear what you have to say on the subject. |
Isn't that backwards? If the lathe slows and the playback turntable also slows, aren't you re-doubling the problem rather than adapting to it? |
No. Think about it again :-) Right you are, sir. |
Really. Consider yourself busted, Phd. |
This topic belongs in the Audiogon Hall of Fame. Absolutely brilliant stuff here (if you exclude my posts). |
It wouldn't prove anything I don't think, but it certainly would be interesting. You would want identical arms and cartridges, equally broken in and meticulously set up to the same exacting parameters. But even if you couldn't manage that, you would probably discern the differences in overall sonic character between the three. Doing it blind would be a good thing since many of us clearly carry expectations with us when it comes to this topic. Does anyone here have the wherewithal to organize such a comparison? |
Dan, do you have any sense of whether the differences you heard in the 380 match up with the kinds of differences people seem to hear between BD and DD generally? Put another way, was it the "DD sound" that you heard (admittedly at a very high level and admittedly with a whole lot more going on)? |
Thanks. I knew it was a tough question. |
Was that you, Alex? I felt so stupid, and it wasn't even the first time. |
