My personal experience with Direct Drive versus Belt Drive

Lewm, I agree with you 100%.

I appreciate the input. I opened up the thread with the hope that discussion would not only talk about DD, Belt Drive..., but also discuss various turntables and tonearms. I plan on getting out to hear more turntables this year. Next on the list is a TW Raven GT. The other tables that have caught my interest are Oracle Delphi, and also the Well Tempered Royale 400. I have a Well Tempered GTA at the moment. These tables are at the very top of my price range. The Royale 12K with arm, the GT 10K sans arm, and the Delphi $8.5K sans arm. I'm not considering vintage at the moment. Hopefully, that won't come back to haunt me. lewm- I enjoyed trading the PM’s with you. I appreciate the input very much. Cheers -Don

The old Lenco I use has a rim drive and I do prefer it to the belt drive, it is more accurate and less noise.  Not sure about other tables.  That being said, the phono stage I use is what makes the sound special.  The other things, table, footers, etc. help out but not close to how the phono improves the sound.  Happy Listening.

Wow I'm jealous! I wish I had $10k to drop on a table. I've got about half that in my analog setup right now, and am very pleased with it. But, being an audiophile, nothing is ever, "good enough", so I'm always listening for that next upgrade. 

 I have to agree with Lewm, just because you liked that one table over the other doesn't mean all BD's will please you more than all DD's.  But I will say that I too hold a similar belief about Belt Drive sounding better, on average. 

There are inherent differences in design around each principle. Belt drives tend to have heavier platters, the motors are located farther from the cartridge, and in high end, the motor is often not even connected to the plinth. And the motor runs at higher RPM's than a Direct Drive. The Direct Drive has a pancake motor, that runs at 33.33. It supports the platter, the bearing is weighing on the motor quite often. And it places the motor windings in close proximity to the cartridge. The voltage fed to the motor is often electronically regulated, phase lock looped, to maintain perfect speed. Anyway, my point is, these differences in architecture have an effect on how the record is played.

I think the simplicity of a Belt Drive is why it sounds better, conveys more of the music, gets in the way less (at a given price point).  A simple bearing supports a heavy platter and the motor is isolated from the playback both in distance and isolation of the belt's elasticity. Higher RPM's smooth out motor pulses. So many things are right about Belt Drive. It solves many of the problems involved, except for one. Accuracy of speed. And that's where Direct Drive excels! But in doing so, it undoes so many of the things Belt Drive does right. Then suddenly platter weight, proximity of the motor, main bearing, and all those things must be dealt with differently. And what you wind up with are two very different sounding solutions to analog playback. Then there is rim Drive and idle wheel drive, they lie somewhere in the middle. Always a trade off, nothing is perfect. 

^ Quite rightly so. And the best Rim Drives have the best of both worlds, I have heard