My personal experience with Direct Drive versus Belt Drive


This is my personal , yet limited experience, with a DD versus Belt Drive. This A/B took place in the same system. with literally the same tonearm. I am choosing not to mention brands at this point. I feel by keeping the brand out of the discussion, anyone who contributes to the the thread (myself included), can be a bit more forthcoming. I am not big on audiophile jargon, so I will keep this short and sweet. I started with DD, in a system which I was very familiar with. The room of course, was different. The DD struck me as near perfect. I could hear the starting and stopping on a dime, and the near perfect timing that many have associated with the DD.  It didn't take long at all for me to conclude this was not my cup of tea. It satisfied my brain, but didn't move my heart. Maybe I was used to the imperfect sound of belt drives, and it was indeed that imperfection, that made for an emotional experience. Who knows? (-: Fast forward to the belt drive.... Again, same actual arm. It sounded more analog to me. Decay was much more easy to hear, along with subtle spatial cues. Was it the less than perfect timing, that was allowing me to now hear these things I could not with the DD?  I have no clue! What I was sure about was the emotion of the music had returned.
fjn04
oh weird - for some reason my browser didn’t show me the last bunch of posts before posting the above comment. apologies if I’m already redundant
My friend had a golfmund reference. The power supply had problems so he bought a teres rim drive .He was totally astonished when he discovered that the sound was better with the teres.
Multiple motors. What would interest me to try, if I was still interested in belt drive for my own use, would be two motors positioned at opposite sides of the platter, 180 degrees apart, so as to equalize the forces involved in rotating the platter through a belt connection. Any more than two motors only increases issues related to noise and synchronizing the motors, without enhancing any of the potential benefits associated with more than one motor. It’s a can of worms that I would rather not open. I believe the Kuzma Reference turntable uses two motors in this manner.
I have a SP10 mk2 in a 16 x 24 x 3 1/2 plinth I just placed it on a set of 3 Symposium roller block JR HSE feet this made a nice difference in SQ . The goal with all we are seeking is accurate speed control and low noise . The noise comes from 2 sources the component as well as the sound energy in the room . The roller blocks work as a drain when at rest that takes care of the component noise most needed in the quite passages in music . When the SPL increases they work on minimizing energy from the system entering the component .