3 New UBER Decks - Is this Turntable's SwanSong? 🦢

In my honest opinion, beyond a certain point, it is pretty hard to hear a discernable difference between numerous well constructed turntables at a moderate price level. I do not think these uber expensive decks bring as much to the "table" as one is led to believe, except maybe eye candy (subjective) and expensive materials. 

Fremer can chew the fun outta yer gum with unreadable turntable tweaking articles. Makes you wonder why anybody would bother with vinyl, but vinyl is a current unstoppable success anyway (Swan Song? Huh?). Notice Fremer thought the silly Synergistic Research turntable PHT (tiny and expensive metal JuJuBe, do not eat these!) worked great, and then ignored them completely in every review since. You go Mikey!

I met Michael Fremer in the 80’s - he’s a lovely guy, but the reality is he is now 74 years old by my reckoning.
The chances that he can set up a top end turntable accurately is remote.
The chances that his hearing is up to par is not high.

I always remember a comment in Hifi News in the early 80’s - if you have been listening to an amplifier with a narrow dip at 3k for a period of time, then any accurate (flat) amplifier will sound bright, because your brain has adjusted to the imperfections - it compensates.

What I am saying is that Fremers comments are conditioned by hs own historical imperfect equipment. Unless you have been listening to the exact same equipment for the same amount of time, then his comments are irrelevent in absolute terms - all they are are impressions from someone of whom you have no idea what they are hearing.

Unfortunately, due to reliance on advertising revenue, audio reviews have become like car magazines - advertorials - where only the positives are discussed, and no at length comparisions as in the hey days of TAS.

You only find out about the flaws when the upgrade comes out the following year.

@antinn 

Some of these uber tables have impressive amounts of engineering, but they have yet to correct the spindle hole centering issue

The wow and flutter induced by eccentric records would far exceed the minor deviations in speed of a decent turntable, and most records are eccentric to some degree. Therefore what relevance does .001 or .0001 speed variation really have ?

In my view what you want is stability, and every direct drive I have heard thus far including the SP10mk3, LO7D, Denon DP100M has been slaughtered by my Final Audio thread drive VTT1 - the DD's sound thin, lacking body, are grainy or have a grey wash through the sound, and the Final has been more resolving of low level detail.

In case you think I'm biased, no, my Final Audio VTT1 weighs 300lbs, the AC motor is driven from a sinewave and cosine wave generator, power amplifier, Oracle MIT interconnect and speaker cable and if I could find a single box turntable that sounded better I'd be very happy. By the way the 26kg platter can be brought up to full speed in less than one platter rotation depending on how much torque I dial up on the controller.

My gut feel with historical top end DD's is that error correction servos, like digital, are doing the damage.

I know one well respected top end TT designer who has provided design services for a DD for another top end company and his solution was to provide a soft error recovery spread over multiple revolutions simlar to the Victor 101 error correction system.

They can’t tell that old high-end DDs are better (and 100 times cheaper) than some new high-end DDs. Same about cartridges.

Old cartridges you and I agree on, and I admire your stamina in continuing to repeat this message over and over again on this Forum.
I've long ago given up on offering advice to people who essentially don't want it.....🤭
But the message has obviously gotten out.
When I first began buying old cartridges on EBay 15 years ago.....good examples cost $200-$300.
Today those same cartridges are regularly going for $500-$1,000 so hundreds of audiophiles have gotten the message....even if most of them might be in Japan 😛

And don't forget 'old' tonearms......
People are conditioned to think that 'modern' is better and that 'progress and technology' continually improve things 🤩
It's true for many things like cars and computers but for traditional, well-understood crafts like watchmaking and analogue HiFi equipment, it ain't necessarily so 🤥
Do you really believe a 'modern' Steinway Concert Grand is way better than the same model made 40 years ago?