Are more turntable motors better?

Dear Kipdent, if you do change position of your HS-80 and put it on the right side of the RX-5000 - in mirror position of the RY-5500 - you will even be more astonished about the increase in overall sound quality. By doing so you will almost eliminate any horizontal force on teh RX-5000 bearing and that will pay off.

Any discussion about one motor vs multiple motors is totally off point.
The answer is simple and obvious.
Same for direct drive vs belt drive.
Look exactly what are the demands and than think what really happens and what physical forces are involved when platter spins and rotates......
The answer is clear - even if it won't find everybody's appluse nor approval.

BTW - Dan_ed and Syntax are on the "right" path.
The answer is quality.
Not quantity.

You wouldn't think about using multiple cheap motors for your car to improve its performance - you would go for the "big block".
Same here.
Quality may be much more expensive than quantity......

Dear friends: IMHO I think that to know if one TT motor is better than 2-3 TT motors in a TT design is totally useless in the practice for several reasons.

Mosin and Stanwal point out that that sole factor/characteristic in a TT design can't determine its quality performance because the TT design is not only a motor factor but a whole/series of adding factors/characteristics that along a high quality implementation/execution ( like the design on almost any audio device. ) define its final quality performance.

If we see of what we have out there on the TT overall subject we can attest that each TT designer has its own aproach ( valid or not, good or bad. ) to give his " best " answer to our needs, some ones achieve the targets or are near the targets better than others.

The differences in how each TT designer " see " the " right answer " are really wide: from one motor approach to several motors, from BD approach to DD one, from acrylic build material to a blend of build material elsewhere, from massive platter approach to low mass platter one, from suspended TT approach to non-suspension at all, from DC motors to ac ones, from air bearing design to magnetic one, from almost no-plinth to heavy plinths, etc, etc.

Now, if we ask to any one of those commercial TT designers the why's of their approaches they have , part by part , answers on it: answers that go with what they believe about, what they find on their design research, what they find on " day by day " TT work ( like any customer will hear it. ) in an audio " real " system, trying to choose the " best " trade-offs, obviously what they like and of course between a price range.

This is part of our reality that we can't make " disappear " on this thread/forum.

In the same way, if we ask to the one motor TT owner if he is satisfied ( Walker, Rockport, Galibier, VPI, ) the answer will be almost yes and if we make the same question to a three motor TT owner ( TW Acustic, Clearaudio, Transrotor, brinkman, ) he will say yes too. Even if we ask to this 3 motors TT owner if he likes more than the same model one motor his answer will be: yes I prefer the three motors approach.

This, like it or not/fortunately or not, is IMHO where we live, nothing is perfect. The good news is that we ( manufacturers, audio dealers and customers ) have a lot of " land " to improve in our future and this ( between other hings ) is a reason why we love our home audio music/sound reproduction " hobby ".

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Raul,

I believe the test is whether the majority of listeners of a designer's product are genuinely moved by the passion of the music it produces. If they are, he has succeeded. If not, he has failed. At the end of the day, the number of motors, weight, etc., etc. are only talking points because the performance of the piece stands on its on merit. One cannot hide behind features when discerning ears report back to their owners.

Best,
Win

Yes, Dentoarm, I am desperately wanting to set up the HS-80 flywheel in the correct "mirror image" position. Initially I had to set it in the less-than-ideal position due to WAF issues. However, I think I've figured out a way to juggle all my components in my cabinet to allow the mirror image positioning and I will report back once this is completed.

Thanks!