Stylus-Drag..Fact or Fiction?

I have not run from lions but I can hear pitch variations like no tomorrow.   It is the variation that is the problem.   Weather the pitch is correct to a tuning fork or not is not that important.   But the band needs to tune to themselves.  Kind of blue ,Miles Davis album, is off speed by a mile.  But the whole band was off and the pitch did not vary.   Lots and lots of singers can not hold a note with stable pitch.  Not sure how many people can hear that?...


Enjoy the ride
Tom

Mikelevigne, I am truly jealous. I which I had as much money as you have to spend on Hi Fi equipment.

hard to know how to react to that. might be a compliment, or something else.

i would only say that it’s taken me many years to assemble my system and most of the pieces have been resident for almost a decade. i’m not a rich guy, just relentless, and old enough for that to matter.

and when i built my room and first moved into it 15 years ago i had expensive gear, but the room sounded like crap. over another 10 years it was not much better. then after learning and making many mistakes i did figure out how to get the room to work. and getting the room to work was almost free in terms of dollars, although it took literally 9 months of constant effort to complete (details on the my system page comments down 10 or so posts if you are interested).

finally my expensive gear could really work properly. and likely a few levels less gear would be quite effective.....as well.

my point being that throwing money at it is not what works. working at it is what works. we can all do that. i feel better about the system/room tuning progress i’ve made than having shiny toys. not that i don’t like my toys. i certainly do. and work 6 days a week for many years to have them.

hope that does not come off as too defensive, but felt i needed to respond.

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. 

Electron microscope video of stylus tracking the groove,

https://youtu.be/GuCdsyCWmt8

jtimothya, I am going to do that tomorrow! I will take an Air Force 1 with a 4 point 11 and an SME 30/12 with a 4 point 11 both with PC-1 Supreme's 
and make that comparison. I already have the 30/12. mikelavigne will lend me the other $150,000 and you can come tell us which one you like better. Graham Engineering is right down the road.
You might notice that the rags do this type of comparison all the time. The problem for all these audio aficionados is that if I do this study correctly, double blinded nobody would be able to reliably tell the difference between the two except for jtimothya of course. The major attraction to turntables is mechanical. They are cool devices and we all have our perspective on what cool is. You take for instance a Hurican, a 488 and a 720s. Three very competent sports cars all around the same price. All are in the same performance envelope, All three have their champions who will swear their car is the best.....actually it is the best looking to them because that is where the real difference lies. Me, I'll take the 720s any day. mikelavigne is a financial wizard so he would take the 488 for it's resale value. jtimothya wants to be as cool as possible so he would take the Hurican. That is what turntables are. 
Mikelavigne, that is what all of us long term audiophiles do. We evolve our systems over time always attempting to improve performance. You are just able to do it at a higher price point. Very few of us are going to be able to jump for DZ NHB-458's  or have you gone to the 468's? Now personally I would never even listen to an amp like that. I think it is the silliest looking amplifier ever made. I would go for the Atma-Sphere MA-3.
All go and no show until you take a look inside, all beautifully hand wired point to point. You can see where the money went. Oh, and I do not have to put my amps on seismic platforms, they are under the speakers in the room below on a shelf near the ceiling attached to a concrete wall. The speaker cables are 32" long. Each amp has it's own 20 amp service:)

Mike