Turntables currently considered top of the range. Do you know what they are ?

Any thoughts on the Holbo deck from Slovenia? It combines an air bearing turntable with a linear tracking tonearm, which also runs on air. 

@richardbrand Generally speaking, you want zero slop (play, endfloat, whatever you want to call it) between the surface of the platter and the mount of the cartridge. The engineering problem is very much like that of the steering of car or motorbike, where a little bit of slop can make the vehicle dangerous and unsettling to drive.

Air bearings can work but they have to be done properly to get around this issue of zero slop. Its not a trivial problem!

BTW this is the same reason the plinth of the turntable (which is the thing to which the platter and its bearing are bolted) should be exactly the same thing to which the tonearm is mounted. For example if the arm is mounted to something that is damped better than the mount of the platter bearing, any vibration that the platter bearing might be subjected to can by picked up by the tonearm. To prevent this (to lower noise) the mount of the platter bearing and the mount of the tonearm are the same part. 

Yeah, that's interesting what tube power supply did there. I have a hypothesis - tubes are just superior devices, whatever you do with them, if you know what you do.

@inna knowing what to do with the devices is far more important than what devices they are!

If you really want to figure out what turntable has it right, the best way is to compare it against master tapes using an LP made from the master tapes.

But to do that the platter pad and tonearm are variables, as is the cartridge and the phono section's ability to get it right.

Again, master tapes are really helpful :)

Decent recording equipment is not that expensive WRT some of the prices I've seen on this thread already, so going thru the effort to make a good quality recording and putting it on LP does not seem that crazy in such light.

FWIW, that is why I use a Technics SL1200G. I use a different platter pad since the original does not do its job properly. I also have it perched on a very nice anti-vibration platform and equipment stand designed for it. You need to control variables like this if you really want to get down to the nub of it.

The Technics arm on the 1200G gives a lot of 'high end audio' tonearms a run for the money, but I prefer the Triplanar which can be mounted on the Technics with a proper arm board.