Turntable upgrade recommendations: SME vs AMG vs Technics vs other

Dear @drbond  : I think you know about Allaerts LOMC cartridges. Well, those cartridges never had a review on TAS or STHP magasines and I asked MF why not a review of Allaerts cartridges and he told me that J.Allaerts refuse to gaves him one cartridge for review because he had and has a way long waiting list of customers that already made its in advanced payment for their samples.

Due to that fact I send to MF my sample of the MC2 Gold Finish for the review and my cartridge came back 2-3 months latter after the review.

In the case of FM Acoustics you don't find out a review because something quite simple: THEY DON'T NEED IT as Dartzeel, Ypsilon or CH  and the like.

Chips down there? well obviously that you don't know for now what you are talking about.

" active devices increasing noise ", as @terry9 you are wrong and both of you have to know that there are active phono preamps designs and there are PHONO PREAMPS designs and this fact makes a huge differences for the better or worst.

Other than live MUSIC we took FM Acoustics as an audio quality reference sound for our SS fully discrete active phonolinepreamp design and here exist an owner that can tell you is just dead silent.

Btw, high end FM Acoustics audio items in reality is a side line for this manufacturer. You can read here about:

https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/FM_Acoustics_of_Switzerland

http://www.charleskeng.com/fm.htm

http://www.element-acoustics.ca/audio_visits.php?aid=17

@billwojo , that would be a nice idea but they are all being cancelled. I tried to go to the NYC show but had to switch to David Byrne's American Utopia. It got canceled at the front door. We had a very nice dinner at Wolfgang's.

@drbond, terry nine waxes poetic about air bearing turntables but many thing the complexity far outweighs the benefits. The noise on the record far exceeds what any half decent turntable produces and an with modern machining bearing tolerances can be very close to perfect. With modern materials mechanical bearings can be virtually dead silent. 

The SME pays careful attention to their suspension. They are beautifully machined and finished. They will last a lifetime. There are very few tables that perform at their level.

@terry9 turntable bearing do not generate any high frequency noise. They spin too slowly. If anything is going to produce high frequency noise it would be air rushing around all over the place.

@terry9 , I do not think Raul is talking about the platter itself ringing. He is talking about the suspension resonance point, the platter resonating on the air just like an automobile suspension without shocks (dampers). The heavier the plater the higher the frequency the platter will bounce at. This is unusual as normally it is the other way around but as the plater gets heavier the spring rate increases, the air gets stiffer becoming a solid wall (the thrust bearing). Platters have become a male phallic symbol. There is no reason for a platter to be heavier than about 10 lb. Heavier than 20 lb is totally unnecessary with a normal bearing. Air bearing tables just need to get the resonance frequency out of the audio range or higher than the frequency response of the best cartridges, about 70 kHz. What weight that takes I have no idea. 

Dear @drbond  : In this link go to the end of the page and downland critical information about this phono stage:

https://www.fmacoustics.com/products/phono-linearizers/fm-223/

@mijostyn

"with modern machining bearing tolerances can be very close to perfect"

Agreed. It’s the "close to" that tells the story. In the old days, bearings were machined fairly closely, and then rotated against each other in situ, with fine grit, to smooth them. The finest bearings were done with the finest grit. That’s exactly how the glass-stoppered reagent flasks from the chemistry lab were made - and they were literally air tight.

That’s also similar to how the billion dollar telescopes are made today, so I doubt that the practice can be improved upon with machining. With an air cushion, however ...

Thanks for your explanation of Raul’s point - it was opaque to me. To that point, a platter bouncing on an air column is clearly visible and audible. It can be tuned away by changing the pressure by a few psi. Ask me how I know.

Heavier than 20 lb is absolutely useful for inertia when the stylus is dragged through the groove, producing a variable retarding torque. It is also useful for resisting the irregular pulses of an electric motor, and the bearing noise in that motor.

I have tested this - with a 45kg platter, the precision 2W electric motor, run from a quadrature power supply, generates enough noise from these sources to be repeatably audible, as a slight HF glare of the CD kind. Removing the belt tells the story.