If I could afford, I’d purchase 100% Oswald Mills Audio gear

@lewm

Mike, have you heard the K3 or are you extrapolating from your vast prior experience as to its sonic character? Also, would you care to mention which of your turntables wins the sustain trophy? I’m guessing it’s a belt drive type.

my take is based on feedback; (1) mostly Fremer’s review, but also.....(2) feedback from ears i trust who has heard it in Fremer’s room, and (3) feedback that people who have heard digital transfers from it compared to other similar transfers from other tt’s under review.

all those sources are saying the same thing. they respect it, but hear what it’s doing.....and not doing.

my take is also based on looking at the design and how it approaches each design aspect. having owned a number of direct drive turntables; the Rockport Sirius III, which had an air suspension, air bearing, and linear tracking air bearing arm. the Technics SP-10 Mk2 and Mk3, EMT 948 and Wave Kinetics NVS with active isolation.......the presentation feedback for the K3 approach, connects the dots completely. it’s exactly what i would expect.

the K3 ultra focus on speed accuracy maybe does not yield the musical benefits that were intended. a little too ’left brain’ maybe. matters of taste and preference i suppose. the K3 miight be the perfect answer for some.

i’m sure it’s a dynamite turntable and does it’s thing superlatively. the question being whether you like ’it’s thing’ $360k or not. at a more reasonable price point it would be fun to have this formula one car of turntables sitting here to do hot laps. but music is more than hot laps to me.

as far as my turntable that absolutely does sustain most beautifully; that is the CS Port LFT1; which uses a non feedback motor, driving a aramid thread ’belt’, with a 100 pound granite plinth, a 60 pound stainless platter, with low flow, low pressure air bearing, air float platter and air bearing arm. it’s magical with delicacy and nuance, yet boggies and does scale and beautiful bass impact and textures. very micro-dynamically ’alive’....but always human sounding. the Saskia model two idler also is no slouch at sustain, and once i added the active isolation to the NVS it’s sustain improved.

i like all my turntables plenty, and sustain is not everything. but my choice of listening does seem to be drawn to it.

an aspect of music that is essential to me is a liquid, grainless, continuousness. a humanity if you will. sustain is a part of that idea.

best-groove, For what it's worth, I referenced MF's review in my response to Mijostyn only with respect to MF's description of the construction and how dampening (or damping, if you prefer) was achieved.  I made no mention of MF's opinions about anything.
Mike, Thanks for your candid response.  I am totally unfamiliar with the CS Port turntable, except to know it is very expensive.  I will do some research on it, only to satisfy my curiosity; I am not a candidate to buy one.  Each of us, or at least many of us, have in mind a particular quality that catches our attention immediately, with any new turntable as with any of several other choices we make in life.  If the thing lacks that triggering emotional quality, what comes next in terms of a general impression is usually not enough.  For me, with turntables, I want to hear a "big", room-filling sound.  I have the general impression that turntables with conventional plinth designs that afford a broad rectangular flat deck surrounding the platter are less likely to sound big than are turntables where the plinth is circular with borders that extend not very far from the circumference of the platter.  I think that may mean that the conventional rectangular plinths reflect spurious sonic energy generated as the stylus traces the groove, and that this may have a deleterious effect on the apparent expansiveness of the sound stage.  On the other hand, the word "sustain" means very little to me; I ascribe that quality to the cartridge/tonearm and the LP, I guess.  Never thought much about it in detail.

Lew; of course, this is exactly why we own multiple turntables, or move from one to another. it’s to find the exact musical equation that brings us the most listening pleasure. or maybe some just like collecting?

plinth shape in and of itself a dominant indication of presentation? never considered it before. OTOH a plinth plays a huge role in performance i agree.

certainly the Rockport, NVS and CS Port all have a big sound, the NVS and Rockport being more ultra dynamic in degrees, plus big and bold. unlimited really. but my room now is more supportive of that than when i had the Rockport......so hard to know exactly between those 2.

the Rockport has a 200 pound air suspended plinth made of a lead/steel carbon fibre encased sandwich. the NVS a cast aluminum skeleton. the CS Port and small square hunk of granite.

none large and square. but all very ’engineered’.

the Saskia idler is more focused and less expansive than these others, but that plays wonderfully to the forward lean to the bass, and tonal density that works for my favorite jazz pressings. is this related to the plinth shape? i tend to see the 180 pound slate Saskia plinth as adding heft and solidity, and the Pabst motor idler mechanical’s more scale related than the plinth.

The question in my mind is where on the scale of importance is exact speed control vs. other issues that a turntable has to address. For example, does the ability to deal with spurious sonic energy matter more, or less? Certainly all parameters matter, particularly when you are taking such small signals and the ability to reproduce same, but what is the order of significance?
This seems to be something that turntable designers have yet to come to full agreement on.
OTOH, the cost to address some of these issues seems to be greater with ultra precise speed control than some of the other variables. Do we agree on that, and more importantly, do we agree that this is where the money should be spent firstly?

@chakster 
A friend pointed me to this thread. I don’t know how I missed it
re your comment about me posting details on K3’s design and development here… I don’t think that it would be appropriate, as it would effectively be a marketing exercise. Not what A’gon is for.
That said, if anyone wants to pm me with questions, I would be be happy to reply privately. Cheers