Is Direct Drive Really Better?

Back in the day,Audio magazine regularly performed Speed stability specifications for their reviews-

Belt drives-

Linn LP12 : ±0,385
Maplenoll Ariadne : ± 0,20%
Michell Gyrodec : ±0,12 %
Oracle : ± 0,213%
SOTA Sapphire : ±0,18%
Thorens TD115 : ±0,27%

Direct drives-

Nakamichi Dragon : ±0,13%
Goldmund ST4 : ±0,317%
Technics SP-10 : ±0,19%

Raul: I think your focus on speed-accuracy may be overstated. IMO speed-stability is the more important factor, beyond a certain point of competence concerning accuracy. Accuracy isn't that hard to achieve, stability is.

Caterham1700: Those figures would appear to confirm that implementation is a lot more important than classification, but it would be nice to know exactly what those numbers represent of terms of how the test was made and the data assessed. I continue to strongly suspect that the *nature* of a TT's speed distortion has got to be at least as important as its overall percentage level, just as in amplifier harmonic distortion. And that beyond some minimum level of speed-stability competence, resonant behavior might be more sonically significant.

Teres' last post prompted a thought: In theory, shouldn't the ultimate goal for transcribing what's on a record be to duplicate whatever speed distortions are inscribed in the grooves by the cutting lathe? If a TT slows a bit when it encounters increased stylus drag, then a lathe must also slow when it cuts more highly modulated passages into the blank lacquer. To read the information as accurately as possible, the playback should read those grooves with speed distortions that correlate with how it was cut. This would seem to be argument in favor of regarding dynamic stylus drag in TT's as being more benign than is usually supposed, perhaps even beneficial in the right porportion.

Isn't that backwards? If the lathe slows and the playback turntable also slows, aren't you re-doubling the problem rather than adapting to it?

No. Think about it again :-)

Direct drivers - like Psychic animal - continue to declare DD the best, in the absence of having heard idler-wheel drives, though they feel free to make use of my findings and reasoning, to defend their own system, which they have invested in.

Johnmathias,

My first TT was an idler wheel drive.

So much for trying to be a *psychic*.

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