LP12- Power Supply- Need education

Millercarbon since I know you are a smart guy I have to believe that you have never had a chance to live with a properly designed suspended turntable.

My first turntable was a Technics SL-1700. Still have it. Next was a Basis 2005, another suspended table. Had that one around 10 years. Not sure about the Technics, but Michael Fremer himself recommended the Basis (along with a similar VPI) when he called to help me out. So pretty sure that yes, I have lived with a properly designed suspended table.

Living with the Basis taught me a lot about turntables. Taking it all apart, seeing how its all made, modifying and hearing how each mod affects the sound. Its all been described before but every part- motor, belt, power, platter, bearing, suspension- was over the years changed. Not merely swapping out one whole table for another like most guys do. How can anyone possibly gain any understanding of what each part is doing if all - the whole thing- is changed at once? Impossible. Changing just one part at a time- the belt for example, or the motor, or the bearing- that's how you learn what's going on.

Any minor irregularities are filtered out by the mass of the platter. They never make it to the record.

Good example. First thing I ever did, swap the power cord on that Basis turntable. Same platter, same mass, same bearing. Same motor. How could the power cord make a difference? It did. 

I have changed motor, pod, motor pod feet, motor pod support location, and material, motor controller, motor controller umbilical cable (!) and more- all with the same bearing, plinth, and massive platter. Easily heard differences each time- not all of them a lot or good but always a difference. If platter mass filtered it all out then how is that possible?

Oh and yes some of it is damping. Also have changed damping under the motor, turntable, plinth, and base. Individually. So I know exactly what each change sounds like. There is definitely a difference between the lowering of the noise floor and revealing of inner detail that damping achieves and the reduction in grain and glare and improved air and depth and imaging that comes with more precise speed control.

Every single one of these is a trade off of some kind or other. Damped and isolated lowers noise- and dynamics. Massive and stiff is more dynamic- and noisier. There's a million different stories but its trade offs right down the line. Would love the chance to hear a SOTA. Never even heard of anyone who has one, least not around Seattle. 

 

Suspended tables like the Linn are not my cup of tea. Not at all.

But you didn't ask that. You asked how a turntable motor power supply can make it sound better. Actually quite easy to answer. Should not even be all that hard to understand.

Its really enough to understand the primary component in a power supply, the rectifier diode. These tiny little parts, all they do is convert AC to DC by allowing the AC to flow one way only. Pretty simple. Should hardly even matter really, because the resulting DC power goes straight to a bank of storage capacitors. These things are typically over spec, meaning the caps store enough power to run the unit even sometimes for many seconds even after being turned off and unplugged.

So how could diodes possibly matter? Well, I don't really care. All I care is I know if I swap them out cheap bad ones for expensive good ones it makes a huge improvement. Not subtle hard to hear. Huge. 

But you asked technical and there are technical reasons like switching speed. Looked at microscopically and at high speed nothing goes perfectly on and off. There's always a transition of some kind. Its the speed and slope and nature of that transition that matters. Because yes, in spite of all the capacitance you can throw at it some ripple still gets through.

So technically what you have then is a power supply with less ripple. That's just one reason. But a big one. More than enough. 

But we got more. There's also the way the power supply responds to fluctuations in demand. Because it only looks to us like the motor and platter and all are turning at a perpetually steady constant rate. In reality and viewed up close and microscopically again the whole thing is vibrating like crazy. People use examples like bass notes or drum whacks or orchestral crescendoes, all things with massive groove modulation that makes it easier for us to accept the extra modulation is extra drag that might cause the platter to slow down a tiny amount.

In reality this is happening all the time. Its never enough to hear pitch changes. Nothing like that. You make a change that affects speed like I'm talking about and you will understand. These tiny near instantaneous speed changes are heard as hard, flat, lifeless. Improve the power supply and you hear more sense of ease, more depth, greater drive and life. Its not hard at all. 

If the improvement in the power supply is significant, I mean. With Linn, who knows. I am not a fan of Linn. All the Linn I have heard is overpriced and underperforms. Turntable, phono stage, all of it. To go by my experience then this power supply is probably not going to be much different. Lot of money, might sound a tiny bit better.

Doesn't change a thing about how it is that technically a power supply can make a difference. You asked. No one else got it. So I answered.