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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
lewm
13,430 posts
 
Sorry if I was too rough on you.  You told me privately which two turntables you compared.  I was interested to learn that they are both from the same company, one a DD and one a BD.  That right there is a topic worth discussing: why did the one company market two technically different turntables, and how is it that they sound so different?  I'll leave it to you to reveal the name of the company, if you wish to do so.

There's also that Reed turntable, the Muse, I think, which can be configured either as a belt drive or as a rim or direct-drive, can't recall which.  Some early adapters seemed to prefer it as one or the other, with a very clear preference.

My position would be that the single most important job of the turntable is to get the speed right and keep it right during play.  Once that job is accomplished, there are still many other factors that govern how the turntable "sounds" overall, probably related to resonance or lack thereof. I've come to believe that a really good DD does the prime job better than a BD at the same level, but when BDs get REALLY good, they can do it too.
ct0517's avatar
ct0517
2,041 posts
 
fjn04
Some years ago 2010 ?, I ran three turntables, in the same room, side by side with the same tonearm and cartridge, hooked up to the same pre/phono. It was a lot of fun. One was a custom direct drive, a custom belt drive modded with thread, and a 100 lb Lenco idler.

They were tested two at a time so two tonearms/carts. All I needed to do was switch wires going into the preamp,  to change tables. They were run against each other and also against 15 IPS master tape copies. Against tape all I needed to do was start the tape, then the record, and toggle between the two,

Very big differences between the tables as one might expect. The results I got helped me in purchasing my final table.

If interested, my findings and results are found easily here at AudioGon by typing "Goldilocks and the three turntables", in the top forum search field.
See also pic 19 of 42 on my virtual system page.

Cheers
lancelock
1,101 posts
 
I went from a Scout 1.1 with Zepher cart to a SL1200GAE with an AT ART9 cart. The Art 9 is a special cartridge but I did keep the Zepher MI cart before selling the VPI. I will be getting another head shell and putting the Zepher back in and then I will report back with a better idea of the differences between the two TT's.

lak's avatar
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lak
4,708 posts
 
I don't mean to change up the discussion but I want to point out that Teres turntables were originally belt drive and later Chris came out with a Rim Drive. It's my understanding that different materials used to make the belt, made some type of difference with the music just as the Rim Drive sounded different from the belt drive. All of these changes could be performed on the exact same turntable.

lewm
13,430 posts
 
Not to disagree entirely with Lak's point, but let's not equate rim drive with direct-drive.  They are or can be as different from one another as BD from DD.  Likewise, I think the Reed Muse turntable that I mentioned above offers the option of a form of rim drive vs belt-drive.  In my thinking, rim drive is closest to idler-drive.  On that subject, I've got my much modified Lenco sounding pretty near exactly like my tweaked Victor TT101.  That was not intentional; it just came out that way.

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