My personal experience with Direct Drive versus Belt Drive

I make both - Belt Drives and Direct Drives and most definitely prefer Direct Drive - it reproduce music with an energy and pace that no belt drive have ever done in my system.   A simple test to do for all of you whom have belt drives that can accept more than one belt - VPI with the separate drive stations for an example - add 2 - 3 - 4 belts and the speed consistency increase along with the focus and energy / pace of the music.  DD have a vastly advantage over BD in speed consistency - any timeline test will confirm this and IMO speed stability is the number one job of a TT - yes everything else matters Platters / Mats / Clamps / Tonearm / Cartridge - the last three being variables on any table.  Listen to a well plinthed refurbished DD turntable be it a Technics or a Denon Vintage drive system and all this becomes clear 🎶 and yes I do make this variant along with the Belted ones 



Good Listening

Peter 

Speed stability is the number one job of a TT. For years I thought that too. But it proved to be wrong in my system(s). It´s just another theory, it´s an illusion. How the music flows is essential, and the starting point is the turntable itself. Extremely hard job to do, I have noticed over the years.
But I have made great progress.

This is why I included the phrase, "at a given price point". My old Direct Drive Denon was $750. Of course, that was back in the '80's! And my Scout is now selling for $2K, no surprise it's a better 'table. It should be. But it's the main bearing and the 12 pound platter that really keep the noise down. On that old Denon the silence between songs sounded like a bowling ball rolling down an ally! Of course, at the time I thought it was great! And the platter was not physically part of the motor, the pancake motor was down in the plinth, I could lift the platter off and watch it spin. A platter that didn't weigh 2lbs. So while my external motor is being pulled sideways with its small bearing keeping it straight, it is of good quality and does it very well, and much less of its vibration winds up in the record atop that 12lb platter.  But again, two different price points. If I find a $4k direct drive, I'm sure it will out perform my Scout. Or I would expect it to anyway. "Cheap to make", may be an accurate statement, the $2k Scout may actually out perform a $2k Direct Drive. Any architecture can shine if you throw enough money at it. My first 'Table was an idler wheel drive, it was a BIC that cost me $120. It did a fine job for a 14 year old in 1976! But, not world class performance I suspect. 

For the belt drive guys ... do yourself a favor and buy one of Origin Live's custom TT belt. Its an amazing upgrade and solid improvement for not a lot of money. It worked wonders for my classic Well Tempered Table. 

http://www.originlive.com/turntable-belts-replacement-new.html

Speed stability is the number one job of a TT. For years I thought that too. But it proved to be wrong in my system(s). It´s just another theory, it´s an illusion. How the music flows is essential, and the starting point is the turntable itself.

There is the actual speed you set your turntable at and speed stability - two different things

My first stereo when I was small 10? was a Hitachi am fm cassette player with microphone. I didn’t like the commercials on the radio so I made a cassette tape of favourite songs and played it for two weeks. Only that tape. Then one day I turned to the radio again. The songs I had recorded did not sound as good as my tape. They sounded slower and lethargic. Boring. It wasn’t until I was a little older that I realized that the cassette tape motor was running a little fast. But its speed was stable. I learned the difference between the two at a young age.

If your turntable has variable, adjustable, speed control....some like to set the tempo of their records to suit their moods. Can your Digital system do that ? The important part is that the speed you set it at stays there. It is stable.

Put four musicians in a room and ask them to play on four different consecutive days. They will play a different tempo on each day. Fill them with cappuccino’s before the fourth day playing and see what happens. Humans are not robots.