Why According to some Turntable extremists Pitch Control and Direct Drive is Sacrilege?

The question is: How much will cost the belt drive turntable which outperforms EMT950?

Yes I know. There are great belt drive TTs, like, Micro Seiki 5000, 8000, 3 motor Clear Audio, and others...
In any case, all people who use these best belt drive turntables listen records done using lacquer cutting produced by DD machine. :-)

It also depends from a preferences of a person.
There are a number of famous audiophile who can afford almost anything, but they prefer modified Garrard 301.

And Techdas and Micro Seiki before that are unable to build
DD tables ?  You make me laugh! Even VPI builds DD tables, when they want to. All design can yield excellent results when implemented correctly. You seem to be focused primarily on
what you can afford and have heard in your probably mid priced
system.

There is a lot of experience and knowledgeable guys on this forum,but I wonder how many less the argumentative narrow views of a few have caused to no longer be as active.

Just this!

A lot is the answer in only the last couple of years to boot!

Most any company , big or small producing turntables could produce a direct drive table if they chose . Most companies don't produce any motors themselves at all  and outsource and use the expertise of the manufacturer to build to suit. Just because technics can do it in house don't think outsourcing couldn't find the same results. Its scary how narrow some people's views of business and ability are. The only question is...would you buy it at a cost like the 20 k the new technics is or 10 k and still need to build a plinth and arm....
So if your too cheap to buy that and opt for the 1000 dollar 1970's DD. ....why would anyone bother to invest what won't sell....that's the question not that they can't do it...

Dear @alexberger : As the Sp10MK2 the EMT 950 was designed for studio/radio stations of those old times and designed to fulfill the studio/radio stations needs.

One of those needs was that the TTs been ready for a roughly/hard 7/24 kind of work with out almost no maintenance and with very fast start/stop function.

But those " machines " truly fulfill an audiophile needs ? certainly not.

All SP10MK2 owners ( including me. ) already made several changes in those TTs because were not designed thinking in home audio systems.

In the case of the 950 even its specs are not something  extraordinary but very similar to a mid or low-fi belt drive units with  speed stbility  around +,- 0.1%, w&f  0.05% and around 70db in signl to noise rtio. The Technics has better specs but specs does not says the whole " history ".
Additional to that the 959 included tonearm is a balanced design where the VTF set through a "ringing/resonant " spring tension that at studio/radio stations no one cares about because in that kind of job they were not looking for the penultimate quality listening level performance that it is what a true expert audiophile is looking for.

I owned two true audiophile tonearms balanced designs that did not comes with that normal string tension mechanism: the MS MAX 282 and the Lustre GST 801, both true audiophile items designed for the home audio system needs.

I posted before that a good audio system set up/build mainly belongs to the audiophile/owner knowledge levels and skills before money and of course that if that audiophile has the rigth knowledge levels and skills along more money then he can improve the overall home/room audio system quality performance.

I own both drive TT designs and for me rhythm is as important as for you and I can tell you that with DD or BD I achieve  a very good rhythm levels.

That characteristic does not belongs in exclusive to any TT drive system and depends on each one of us quality level set up.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.