Honest question about cartridge vs. turntable performance.

@mijostyn

Everything you posted has nothing to do with reality and I am tired to reply to all these nonsense coming from the belt drive owners who never tried a proper direct drive system.

There are high torque direct drive and low torque direct drive, the torque is adjustable on some models. They are all very well isolated and there is NO magnetic field because there is a platter and additional mat on top of it. I use Micro Seiki CU-500, CU-180, SAEC SS-300 and Sakura Systems The Mat on my different direct drive turntables. With tons on MM, MI and LOMC cartridges I can’t remember any single issue with any of my direct drive turntables.

Stable rotation = Direct Drive, and this is all you need from a turntable, the rest is plinth, tonearm and cartridge. Stable rotation is the most important part of the cutting, this is why there is a Direct Drive motor on the most popular cutting lathe (Neumann). What else you can add? 

There must be some good Direct Drive like big and heavy Micro Seiki, but not those overpriced plastic toys manufacturers selling today and fooling people around.

Direct Drive is the best investment and this type of motor will work for over 40 years without service with stable rotation. 

If you like floating pitch use belt drive, the belt degrades in time. 

 The torque of a direct drive motor is now superfluous. A quiet environment is far more critical. You have to isolate the platter, tonearm and cartridge from everything. IMHO this is far more difficult than cutting a lacquer.

Since I've had to set up a mastering operation from scratch I cannot disagree with this more. A lathe has to be isolated too. My setup is pretty old- a Scully- and yet it has a table equipped with adjustable points for feet, plus an isolation base, both made at the same time as the lathe, which was the early 1950s (so if anyone tries to tell you that points beneath your equipment is snake oil, you now have proof that the industry thinks it is not). All the stuff you have to do standing on your head to make it work and not freak out if you look at it cross-eyed is ridiculous. Cutting pressure, track ball height, stylus temperature, tangential-ness, bearing noise (the bearings need frequent greasing and should be warmed up for 20 minutes before making a cut), controlling cutter resonance... I can go on; not to belittle your comment but really its pretty amazing that the technology (record and playback) is as good as it is!

Atmasphere, in some cases it might be because they work better:)

We've made a belt-drive machine for over 20 years. I'd put it up beside any belt-drive made and no worries expecting it to keep up; you can walk up to this machine and thwock the platter while its playing and not hear anything significant through the speakers; the platter is damped, the plinth is rigid and dead, it has a powerful drive and the motor itself is a significant flywheel. Its very neutral. But I think Technics makes a better turntable (and for less money, but I'm not a fan of their arm) so we're not making our 'table anymore...unless someone begs us :)

Linn has just updated the most important part of their turntable, and it is not the motor, the type of drive, the speed control, the tonearm or the suspension system. It is the bearing!!! Precision engineering in the bearing is actually where I believe the biggest gains are to be had, others may disagree, but listening to what the bearing can bring is crucial. Direct drive tables are fine, so long as the motor doesn't cog ( which unfortunately a lot of them do) or contribute any noise into the platter. 

@daveyf, what exactly is the difference between the old and brand new Linn bearing?  

@testpilot There have been two prior bearings for the Linn. The original and then the Cirkus. The new one called the Karousel attaches to the subchassis with a three point system. It is also more precisely machined to a mirror finish at the base. The added rigidity and the precision go a long way in improving the signal to noise ratio. If one looks at the typical bearing that most turntables utilize then one can see the obvious differences. This aspect is not something that we see discussed that much, most naysayers of the Linn platform have no idea as to what the bearing in their favorite turntable consists of, or even how accurately machined it is ( never mind the current condition of said bearing!)...yet IME this is a huge factor in the ultimate SQ.