What's the deal with idler turntables and do they have a place in modern HiFi?

Hey Tom.

Who would have thought that music is about emotion, how it makes us feel!

As you say, some get tied up in he numbers, but the acid test is 'How does it make me feel?"

No emotion, no contest.

cheers. 

Hi Pani,

There is also a price to pay when the platter is massive. Light weight platters have been preferred by any "well-designed" TT designers for the same reason.

I would state this differently:  no single parameter can be optimized without taking the entire whole into consideration. Any architecture will always have strengths and weaknesses. Intelligently optimized, varying architectures converge but ultimately still carry their basic DNA (the architecture's key attributes - their strengths and weaknesses).

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design

Thom and Lewm, when I brought out the high mass vs low mass platter thing, the idea was not say one was superior over the other. Rather I wanted to point out that while high mass is a "workaround" for the torque generation in belt drive systems ultimately it has its own downsides too. At its best it is just a "workaround" with strings attached (no pun intended). Torque should come where it is supposed to come from and thats from the motor.

I am not a TT designer but having heard many turntables (most of them are belt driven and many of them with heavy platters), less than 5% of them actually could hide their "high mass" artefacts. So, for me it is just statistics

Thom
Have you considered introducing a little series R Into the power supply and scoping the motor current draw to vicariously look at stylus drag as a function of motor current draw?

cheers 

"Torque should come where it is supposed to come from and thats from the motor. "

imo - the torque should come from the part the record interfaces with - the platter. 8^0

@mjperry (OP) I own a direct drive, idler drive, and previously a number of belt converted to thread drives.  My reference is a string drive.

You can see the idler drive I own on my virtual system. I think they are alot of fun (especially with rock music) and remind me of big American iron cars from the 70's.

Great in a straight line, but noisy. and hit that first curve and you realize the part that is weak ... the brakes.

From an audiophile perspective most noticeable on Classical music with big dynamic swings meaning big groove modulations followed by small. The wheel can't slow down, and gives you a little blip in the sound - an upbeat so to speak - that I personally feel imo that some like to call PRAT :^)
   
The above is a memory taken from a serious audiophile nervosa phase.

Again really fun tables, but you can't just buy a stock table and build a plinth for it. There will be a big learning curve.   

The best designs I have seen - imo - focus very heavily on decoupling the plinth from the noisy motor. Mine is multiple layers of different wood and has large voids in the 100 lb plinth where the armboards bolt to.