Tables That Feature Bearing Friction

I'd be interested in the discussions and ideas about turntable design and the 'pure physics' involved, yet at the same time, I'd imagine the 'real' turntable designers, those who have done the physics and actually produced a saleable commodity, laughing at us 'amateurs' wasting our time and efforts without the prospects of reaching any meaningful conclusions or resolutions?
Do we really believe that Mark Doehmann of Continuum Audio has invested 10 years of his life together with a team of 7 experts in various fields of mechanical, aeronautical and advanced systems engineering without understanding the physics involved and then testing the prototypes and manufacturing a finished workable product?
Or the Suchy family who have years of experience in turntable, arm and cartridge design?
Not to mention Harry Weissfeld, Lloyd Walker, Andy Payor, A.J. Conti, Roy Gandy and even Ivor Tiefenbrun?
And yet, for every turntable designer, there is a different solution or variation?
It is so easy for us to 'surmise' and point to the 'weaknesses' of various design philosophies but as the saying saying goes......"those that can, do and those that can't......?
Surely Dertonarm, if pure physics made it all 'black and white' and "I have yet to see a turntable design done right."?.......why have you not yet......done it!?

Dear Raul - I do agree with you 100%. We - the customers - are indeed responsible for the products we get. Unfortunately we are a very small group inside the whole market for audio playback. As our buying power is way too small for the (global players..) industry to focus on, we do only get attention from companies which are small enough to be able (and are forced to...) to focus on a small niche of the market: - us, the audiophiles willing to spend fairly large amount of money to get satisfaction for their endless task for perfection and beauty in musical reproduction. And another "yes" - we will get mediocrity a plenty as long as we continue to buy it.
Only market behaviour will change the quality of the product. Nowhere as true as here in "our" market.

Dear Halcro,******......."Surely Dertonarm, if pure physics made it all 'black and white' and "I have yet to see a turntable design done right."?.......why have you not yet......done it!? "******

I did.
Almost 20 years back. Together with 2 collegues I have designed and built (and they have been sold) 15 units and it did costs me alone approx. 230 000 US$ back then.
However - it was a turntable you simply could NOT sell through any High-End store due to size, weight and technical periphery needed.
The infamous WAF was way below zero. The technical features - brief summarize: a 100 lbs (very complex design internally) compund platter with a still unique approach of clamping the LP - suspended on radial AND lateral air bearing with 4 bar pressure. Whole 400 lbs turntable suspended by active air springs with 0.5 Hz resonance frequency. The motor drive - in the last incarnation without any force vectors on the bearing!! - was the big capstan from the professional Studer tape-machines. This design was backed up in the research and the tests by a division of a technical university.
Believe me - I have done it the hard way. For several years. There are good reason why my former remarks were the way they are.

As for stylus drag: - stylus drag is mainly the result of the downforce on the groove (vertical vector on the groove wall). That downforce is a result of the size of the polished area of the stylus and the VTF. Frequency modulation does vary that force only ever so lighhtly. So there is a varaition in that force, but only very faintly. AS the majority of the force is constant, it does add to the "friction" - however, it does not require correction during operation (which is impossible anyway ..... as you would create an error-correction-loop resulting in anything but certainly not constant speed).

Dear Halcro, I am familiar with all the above mentioned turntables. All those people need to SELL their turntables. Thier turntables need to fit into the living rooms of fairly well doing customers (at least if bought new in the store...) with some taste and expectations in design and a better half which sometimes does have a vote too. Furthermore their is an importer (sometimes) and a dealer (soemtimes) who need their part of the financial cake too.
In the very first all these turntables were designed and built for 2 purposes:

** unique selling proposition (by design or unique technical feature) to support the 2nd purpose:
** to make money....

A turntable "done right" will be huge, very expensive, extremely heavy and will feature some technical periphery aside the turntable itself. Imagine the working bench of a large electron microscope....... then you get an idea.

Well, I didn't read every post, but I agree, that Turntable construction is pure Physics. And like in school, not everyone is good in this, there are differences.
I am very careful with those arguments, that this and that Designer is godlike, because he is doing this "job" (whatever it is).
I heard in the last 15 years more average sounding units than I wanted to. Some are good looking, some are heavy, some are extremely expensive but at the end of day, well you know...average. Unfortunately.
Marketing can replace knowledge and when I read such stories "... sleepless nights the last 10 years because I never had a turntable here which met my expectations .... so I tried it .... and I got it ...."
A.J.Conti is one of those who do a better job, Verdier was one of those guys, too and a few others
But not everyone.

I heard in the last 15 years more average sounding units than I wanted to. Some are good looking, some are heavy, some are extremely expensive but at the end of day, well you know...average.

Couldn't have said it better myself. And I think that one of the reasons why the audio community tends to make deities and martyrs out of certain designers is because their dream of making i.e. the ultimate turntable is something we can all respect, love, and identify with. And yes, the story behind a product is a very powerful (and legitimate) incentive to buy . . . but whether or not the dreams have actually been realized in the product is of course another question entirely.

And there's also the question of what are exactly the objectives of a turntable "done right"? The story that Dertonarm tells of his ultimate turntable pursuit would be a frustrating one for me, because after that amount of work . . . I would personally want to see more than 15 people able to enjoy the pleasure of owning one. I think a truly successful product should put just as much innovation and excellence into the effecient use of materials and resources, and the financial model that allows it to be produced, purchased, and enjoyed to a significant degree.

But anyway, I'd like to steer the discussion more toward what we think are the biggest weaknesses in most current high-end turntables, in a general sense across the industry. Personally, I feel that the suspension/isolation systems are the huge weak spot, along with the proper control and dissipation of resonant energy between the platter and tonearm mount.