Stylus-Drag..Fact or Fiction?

Thanks for doing the experiments, making the videos and a very interesting report, Halcro.  I'm not familiar with the Timeline.  Does the horizontal spread of the laser on the wall indicate a frequency range of turntable speed?

I have a tnt and tried belt vs floss. Definitely preferred floss. Then went to a teres with tape drive which seems to me to be the best solution

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@analogluvr For further improvement, try the Teres Verus rim drive.

The belt v direct drive battle has swung to and fro over many decades but is the tide finally about to turn for good in the favour of the latter?

Should anyone in 2019 really leave the vital matter of turntable speed control precision depending upon a rubber belt?

A rubber belt who’s main purpose seems to be an attempt to dampen and isolate motor vibrations at the cost of significantly measurable imprecision.

@cd318
The tide has turned.

Read Moncrieff's article part 1 article on the Rockport Sirius III
http://www.iar-80.com/page12.html
 
It thoroughly lays out the issues with belt drive and other drive systems with a view from several years back.  Those issues still hold today.

Then to get a perspective on where modern direct drive is today, read Roy Gregory's review of the Monaco 2.0 turntable.http://www.theaudiobeat.com/equipment/grand_prix_monaco_20.htm or a different take here:http://www.theaudiobeat.com/blog/grand_prix_monaco_20.htm  The stable speed accuracy of this table is stunning. 

While stylus drag cannot be denied (physics), there are ways to deal with it.

apologies to H for going off topic...

On the other hand I’m sure that beyond a certain point none of us can readily hear speed imperfections, especially not those quoted for the Monaco 2. I mean I know turntable speed matters, it matters a lot, but this is overkill, isn’t it?

No - definitely not overkill.

The gains from stable accuracy are substantial. it’s all about time - the cartridge provides the amplitude of the musical signal but the time element - the frequency - of music comes from the turntable’s rotation, ideally at 33-1/3 rpm.

It’s not a question of what you hear when speed is off, it’s what you hear when speed is both stable and accurate. Wow and flutter are unmeasureable with the Monaco and a few other advanced direct-drive tables (eg NVS). We’re well beyond old standards.

Any aspect of reproduced music related to time - depth, soundstage, transients, dynamics, tonality, etc. - is better or worse thanks to timing in the creation of the original signal. And no amount of downstream electronic wonderfulness can ’fix’ that signal if the turntable rotation is not accurate. These are not just technical considerations, but tangibly audible results.

Perhaps Technics (orig Sony) claim of eliminating direct drive 'cogging' have finally turned the tide for good this time.

Use of spotless motors does this.  Equally important is the drive system that controls them.

Hi @lewm.

... No matter how much I search on that last topic, I have never found a satisfactory treatise on the subject of coreless motors vis a vis cogging, but most talk about coreless motors as if they are free of it. ...

Here's a few links that may be of interest;  cannot say if they count as satisfactory. 

Comparison of Slotless and Slotted Motors. The article does discuss cogging.https://www.celeramotion.com/applimotion/support/technical-papers/slotless-vs-slotted-motors/

Brushless, slotless, and cogless (1999)
https://www.designnews.com/content/brushless-slotless-and-cogless/60538412940113

@phoenixengr

From what I've seen, most of the DD tables use a DC motor with servo control (feedback) to maintain proper speed. This of course, comes with its own set of problems.

Would you kindly lay out what the main problems are?

@mijostyn

...it appears David Karmeli does not have a web site. I can find pictures of his tables but nothing on specs and design philosophy. It sure looks like he has out Kuzma’d Frank. That table looks darn massive. I understand it has an air bearing like the Walker? Nothing on price or how to order one. I have never been a fan of direct drive turntables. It seems to be the solution to a problem I do not have. None of my turntables have had speed variations bad enough that I could hear and that includes the LP 12.

Cost for the AS2000 is into 6-figures with a limited production run.

Gauging a table by audible wow & flutter and believing that not hearing speed variation means there are no problems is to miss out on what the best direct drives (or other high stable accuracy tables) have to offer.

Our ears are far more sensitive to time differences than we realize. Consider two transients, n seconds apart - what would n need to be for a listener to hear them merged as one, a single note? 20/1000th of a second? A string section having multiple performers are not, in virtue of their humanity, in perfect sync. That’s why one hears a harmonic shimmer when they play quickly together. Differentiation in arrival time correlates with perception of distance - exactly what we do in soundstage perception/creation - the timpani are behind the trombones. It’s an ancient skill. Dynamic transients have more initial impact with a more speed accurate table - less blur at the launch edge.

Stable accuracy brings significant sonic improvement to any aspect of music through vinyl playback that involves time or frequency. I urge you to hear for yourself if it makes a difference - listen to a better direct-drive side by side with the belt or idler of your choice.

yes we are very sensitive to timing but not in that way. We are sensitive to the time and volume differential between our ears. We are much more insensitive to pitch and tempo. Many musicians use various devices to tune their instruments and metronomes to set tempo.

Didn't think it needed saying, my account presumes listeners with two ears.

More insensitive (less sensitive) to pitch and tempo ... than what?  Time and volume differentials?  You mean frequency and amplitude differentials?  Pitch is simply ordering sounds on a scale - that scale is frequency. Tempo is pace or speed, impossible without time.  At the stylus groove interface, the cartridge provides amplitude, the table provides frequency.

The conductor is the orchestra's clock.

Now in regard to turntables, speed inaccuracies, wow and flutter only affect two things in music, pitch and tempo. Now since the vast majority of us are pitch and tempo stupid the very minor variations seen in high performance turntable is totally inaudible.  if you hear a difference between two high performance tables it has nothing to do with speed inaccuracies. Different cartridges, arms, cables, setups maybe but not speed inaccuracies.

In not all but in some respects I don't think what we each are saying is all that far apart. The ability to detect timing differences is a necessary condition for assessing tempo;  the ability to hear frequency differences is likewise a prerequisite for gauging pitch.

I assume you believe you're making a deductive argument. Validity is one thing, the truth value of premises and conclusions is something else.  Saying something like " the vast majority of us are pitch and tempo stupid"  is silly.

The only thing I can think of to explain the main quoted comments above is perhaps there is not enough experience yet with high performance tables and their comparison.  I write this so others interested in a purchase and who consider evaluating their choices understand that the two most critical physical/technical  factors for a table are stable speed accuracy and low noise. 

The Ideal evaluation of two tables is to have the only difference in a comparison be the tables themselves.  Same cartridge, same tonearm, cables, entire rest of the systems and room are identical.  Critical sonic evaluation between tables is possible with a playing field level.

Under such conditions it is easy to hear differences in stable speed accuracy and noise in terms of listening to music.  Granted it is unusual to read about such a comparison, but that is exactly what is found in coverage of the Monaco 2.0 from two years ago.  Here were two similar tables but with clear physical differences, both having highly stable accurate speed measurements with one set of measurements much better than the other and likewise clearly different sonic differences.  Fwiw, per the standard DIN measurement, wow & flutter were unmeasureable.