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

Hi Pani,

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

I’ve had the same experience with most high mass turntable designs as well. It’s not my place to criticize other manufacturers, but I think everyone knows my position on drive belt materials.

I’m coming to the point that mass (when done right) is more about noise sinking than about speed stability. It’s something that I can’t test, because all of my platter damping tricks add mass (one of the ingredients is lead shot), so I can’t separate the two variables.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design

I havent heard your TTs yet Thom. Would love to hear it some day.

By the way, I also owned the Verdier previously (before deciding go direct and idler drive route). I agree that Verdier is more extended and more resolving than many of the DD and ID turntables. But I ultimately felt it is not keeping up with the tempo and pitch of the music. Music seemed to be dragging a bit. This is something I find in many belt drive TTs so I cannot single out the Verdier.

Thom -I agree with your comments. As well I find it interesting that the higher up the ladder you go on a TT manufacturers line - the platter becomes heavier, whether we are talking about new tables, or restoring vintage ones. My Jean Nantais Lenco has an added heavy Metacrylate mat permanently glued to the Lenco platter matter. Whether this is for noise sinking and/or or speed stability, one thing is true from my own experiences - you need good brakes. You rarely hear any forum discussions on how a platter is doing its braking ?  the Platine is the only table i am aware whose platter system by design is "smart",  has braking from the opposed magnets to deal with the record behavior without electronics. 

When I introduced the 100 Lb Jean Nantais lenco idler into the room I was on version 6? of my DD project, and the modded TNT at the time was still running on belts used with the SDS. The Lenco raised the bar is some categories. I was impressed with the noise reduction with no suspension, solely based on damping and weight. The modded TNT matched the Lenco in tempo once thread was added, but it was not designed to run this way. . Then the Platine was added and ..... the delta so large that I just got back to listening to records.  Been 3 years now I think.  
 

Pani - But I ultimately felt it is not keeping up with the tempo and pitch of the music. Music seemed to be dragging a bit.

Pani - imo there are too many variables with vinyl to single out one area of a turntable system whether the table itself, tonearm, cartridge, wiring, phono stage.They all play a part.  You can change out a cartridge with different stylus profile and experience your symptoms. Heck, you can move your speakers, cause bass issues which will produce your symptoms. You need to get the bass right for your selected speakers set up in the room or the music will drag... period. That has been my experience especially with speakers that are able to reproduce bass to provide compression in the room.   
 
So the turntable system has many parts and its the front end to the rest of your system. In the end it is setup error and it is all fixable. Whether someone chooses to fix the issue, or move to something else depends on them. I say this from personal experience and I think we have all made setup errors. I think you owned the Nouvelle Verdier table ?

What a question, listen to an EMT 927 and you will have THE answer 👌