Sota or Technics

Technics for sure

It’s a big deal to build nice quiet direct drive motor. Production requires lots of work and investments so it should cost different figures at exhaust.

This is why Direct Drive from Matshushita (Technics/Panasonic) is the best in the world, they are making direct drive turntables since the 60’s.

DD in SL1200GR is CORELESS DIRECT DRIVE, the best you can get today. You’d better read before you post.

Specific turntable recommended in this thread, not just a DD in general, it's the latest Direct Drive from Technics.

OMA video about boat anchor plinth for the best Direct Drive available today. Watch here. 

The "sound of a turntable" is the sound of a cartridge (first). Owned SP-10 mk2, SP-20, modified SL1200mkII (for over 25 years) and big collection of cartridges and tonearms, I still have no idea what is the sound of the drive itself. Each time I change a cartridge or tonearm the sound is different. I ended up using another direct drive (Luxman PD-444) because in my opinion this is the best "integrated" DD, I mean the one with a "plinth" you can’t change, designed for two tonearms. But again, once the arm/cartridge is changed the sound is different, so I don’t understand when people are talking about the sound of a turntable drive itself. I wouldn’t change any of my reference DD turntables (currently Lux PD-444, Victor tt-101, Denon DP-80) for a Belt Drive. Superb usability and long life is about Direct Drive type. Lower or higher torque DD doesn’t matter for me, they are all great.

Technics EPA-100 mk2 is one of the best tonearms ever made.

Cutting Lathe is also a turntable, but I doubt anyone can say “this Neumann cutting lathe is warmer and more dynamic than Skully cutting lathe”. The function of a turntable drive is to rotate on constant speed, period. The warmth or brightness coming from device that read the groove (aka phono cartridge), we are well aware of different sounding cartridges (completely different). 

I swear I can’t hear any noise from my turntables, they are dead quite and in this discussion I don’t want to talk about bad turntables, I know they are exist somewhere, but not in my world (I don’t use them). And I agree that a good turntable can be a belt drive, direct or idler, for all those good examples a cartridge is responsible for sound (and everything else between the cart and speakers, and room acoustics too).

I think we normally swap cartridges (matched to specific tonearms), phono stages or suts, tube users have fun with tube rolling, some people are crazy about cables.

I think we rarely swap turntables or speakers just for fun. I mean we may have a few systems, but it’s not like 5 different pair of speakers (I have 3 pairs) or 5 different turntables (I have 6), but I use just 2 turntables and a pair of speakers most of the time. When I want different flavor I can choose one of 4 different tonearms with matched cartridges connected to different phono stages, sound signature is different, but turntable is the same (Luxman PD-444 is my reference DD in the Lab, dead quiet low torque DD in its heavymetal plinth).