Direct Drive Rumble

Isn't rumble referring to the bearing effects (the quality of the bearing design and manufacture)? Wow and flutter are the primary parameters affected by belt vs DD.

Thank you, gentleman. The bearing issue had never before come to my attention. It would seem, from what you are saying, that direct drive has the greatest upside potential since it will experience less rumble effect and no worse than equal wow and flutter.
I started another thread a while ago about the suspected superiority of DD and the arguments surged back and forth for weeks resulting in nothing conclusive.
Near the end of that period, I had occassion to visit Chris Brady of Teres turntables at his home and witness the unveiling of his new DD table. It was clearly superior to his best BD which was used for comparison. There was more of a sense of drive and attack in the DD. The BD by comparison sounded "lazy". Chris is now convinced that DD has a greater potential for playback. And so am I.

I hope there will be a new generation of DDs in the future. It would be interesting to see them made with an inverted platter bearing. Is the Teres made that way?

Direct drive or die.

If you have been following the threads over on Vinyl Asylum regarding idler-wheel turntables you will know that the next few months should see a new DC motor drop-in replacement for many of the idler-wheel tables of yesteryear. Removing the motor vibration from idler-wheel tables will give those TTs a major sonic improvement. And could spur the development of totally new idler-wheel tables.

Teres is just one of several companies coming out with new DD turntables. It looks like belt drive TTs are going to be caught between an upsurgence of direct drive and idler-wheel tables. That has got to be good for vinyl lovers.