A Copernican View of the Turntable System

@halcro yes, we do share similar tastes in some regards

the Grand Prix Audio Brooklands shelf is not in any way springy or flexible -- once correctly installed and locked down it is completely rigid. The only compliance on the design is in the typical GPA sorbothane discs that sit under the shelf and with the Herzan I have defeated these by simply overloading them.

Furthermore in my current installation the shelf is not actually attached to the wall but is instead mounted on three dedicated studs that are not connected to the drywall, each stud is in turn damped by an ASC stud damper.

Herzan were concerned that this would be an installation that fought against the active isolation but I have had no issues. The main problem the active platform addresses is seismic disturbance from construction (plus traffic and quake of course) there are six active multi story construction sites within a two block radius of my house and the whole area is reclaimed wetland so not the most secure of foundations. All of my stands and my speakers are seismically isolated via roller ball type footers or Townshend podia

The effect of active isolation is to make the table sound more stable and secure. Peaks no longer overload, bass seems diminished but is in fact cleaner, lower and more detailed. Frankly all of the euphonic (and nice to listen too) distortions of LP playback are significantly reduced and my LPs sound much more like my digital system but with all the air, emotion and interior dynamics that analog always excelled at. The improvement is actually most obvious with mono recordings which become even more dynamic and clear. I would certainly put the impact of adding active isolation above either an arm or cartridge upgrade, it would be interesting to see if a sub $10k analog rig on a Herzan outperformed a $20k one without it, I suspect it would

The Palladian is still performing exceptionally, I used to have issues with stylus muck build up but since getting an ultrasonic cleaner this is a problem I no longer have. I’m still waiting on a new arm board from EAR so I can drop the arm another .5mm which I think will be ideal but other than that no concerns. Where do you have yours riding relative to horizontal? At present I’m a hair tail up which is as low as my arm can go with the sub board I currently have to use

@halcro 

Hi Ralph,
I've noticed that both you and J.Carr have recently 'transferred' over to 'The Dark Side' by adopting the new Technics SL1200 DD turntable over your previously loved belt-drives.
The Empire in your case and the Final Labs and big Micro Seiki in Jonathan's.
Can you reveal why you have changed, and what the Technics does that the Empire doesn't?

Actually I still run the Atma-Sphere model 208 (which looks for all the world like an Empire 208 but uses an entirely different plinth).

However I also have a lot of respect for the Technics SL-1200G. We had one here in the shop recently; a customer wanted to install a 12" Triplanar on it and wanted to know if that was possible. It was.

I took the machine entirely apart and since I've had a lot of experience servicing consumer electronics in the last 45 years, I was very familier with the older SL-1200s. The new machine looks the part, but is an entirely new design with many improvements.

One improvement that impressed me was how much attention was paid to rigidity of the plinth, while at the same time applying five different damping systems! In addition, the speed stability is one of the very best in the world, being second to only the SP-10MkIII. Its a very impressive machine and anyone serious about high end audio and wanting a turntable should consider it.

Dear @downunder : The JC reference always was the SZ-1, he is in love with Micro Seiki. This TT more than a piece of enginnering " art " is a piece of machined " art ". Micro Seiki is not my " cup of tea ", to many design problems with.

Taking in count the JC prefrence for the MS designs is not " weird " that he is testing the mediocrity of the TT1000 that’s a MS design and builded by MS not Marantz. There are nothing that can tell us TT1000 is a must to have especially that Marantz choosed to use glass on the platter and even in the plinth, glass is way way resonant material and " forbidden " to use it in a TT.
In the other side and even that’s a DD its measures are really poor but you can pull the trigger for it.

Is out of my mind JC choose ( ? ) in the Marantz and if he modified other than use the carbon fiber mat that a little less resonant than the glass but resonant at the end. Yes, JC priorities/targets are different from the ones of some of us.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.

Dear Halcro,
what I learned is that taking an active isolation vibration platform, Herzan or Accurion, the latter one is not really cheap, may establish an even less nervous and more relaxed sound stage. As I showed on my blog it is quite an investment but you will get back a lot. Great discussion and philosophy!

Since i am not an engineer, the complexities of plinth and motor sub-assemblies and suspensions are largely lost on me. But I do believe that the key of vinyl is looking upon the cantilever stylus-groove contact as being analogous to a tire of a car being under load and being steered in a rough rut in a road. Allowing that tire to follow and negotiate the rut with maximum contact with the rough area in the rut without careening side to side or bouncing out is the goal. Constant speed is next. Freedom from extraneous noise is next. Pretty simple stuff. 
We hobbyists sweat over turntable design and set-up because it is there to be sweated over. By that, I refer to the fact that loudspeakers are the opposite of phono cartridges in terms of being transducers but all of the compromises and settings have been pre-set for us by the manufacturer-other than placement-so we don't think about them much. For every audiophile that has given up on vinyl as obsolete, I point to their choice of loudspeaker and say, "perfect sound forever, huh?". That is before we even start with their choice of filtering algorithm and the compromises implicit in them.