2008 RMAF – – – all things analog.

Every post here misses the most important and overlooked point in this discussion of speed accuracy. While it's a laudable and important goal, fetishing on speed perfection as the sole goal of turntable design misses that the eccentricity of virtually every record you own will produce greater effective speed error than any speed deviation found in a properly executed design, regardless of whether it's belt, direct drive, idler wheel or whatever. Records and record playback is a terribly imperfect technology. That it still sounds the best despite the imperfections is miraculous. If you want perfection get a CD player.

---Michael Fremer

Grooves, You make an excellent and valid point. So, what do you personally think accounts for the qualitative difference in sound between the best direct-drives and idler-drive tables on the one hand and belt-drive tables on the other? We all or most of us seem to agree that such a difference exists, except maybe as regards the very best belt-drive tables (not necessarily the most expensive). Couldn't it be that we are hearing an additive effect of speed instability due to the turntable on top of speed instability due to eccentrically cut records (i.e., nearly all of them)? What might be happening is that the brain learns to accept the sound from a given LP, good or bad, as a baseline for comparison of turntable performance. Most of us use LPs with which we are very familiar in the turntable comparison process.

I'm not sure anyone has said speed perfection is the sole goal. Obviously, taking that approach would lead to problems elsewhere, most of which would mask any benefit of perfect speed.

CD = perfection? That's a whole different topic itself, but I get your intent.

We have this tiny diamond, at times wiggly back and forth and up and down at some pretty high frequencies. Assuming that the cartridge is good enough to not skip even in the slightest, that has to have some effect on something, IMO. Those of us who use the mylar belts have heard remarkable improvements with different versions of the mylar streamers and, most notably, with Paul's latest trick of etching away the metal to expose the textured side of the mylar. Something is going on.

CD = Perfection... except for jitter. Timing errors seem to be an achillies heel for both analog an digital.

Dear grooves: IMHO I don't think that that poit was missed, things are that we were argue on TT speed accuracy and speed stability and what could alter the platter speed stability.
This subject beguin with a comment that Doug posted about stylus drag and its influence on that platter speed stability and that's why we don't go in deep to any other source ( other that the TT it sef ) that affect about.

We all know that the analog source is probably the most imperfect " world " to music reproduction but at the same time I know too that the ones in this forum agree that the analog source is the most beautiful and enjoyable one for a home muic reproduction other than a live event or a Studer one with original master recordings.

As always things are that everything has its own trade-offs, take the TX-1000 that fix the eccentricity of the LP, well it is not a perfect machine from the point of view about its tonearm or about its DD motor or suspention: anyway is worth to hear it only because its eccentricity fix function.

Now, IMHO the digital source is almost perfect but like Teres point out it is not " perfect ", btw nothing is.

All that analog imperfection world makes that any one of us ( including a pro-reviewer like you ) that cares about music and about music reproduction have to take extremely care on the right set up and right choice of hardware ( synergy, the real one not for compensate errors in the audio chain. ) at each link in the whole audio chain.

Some of us are truly " perfeccionist " about ( that's why we discuss about the relationship between stylus drag and platter spped un-stabilities. ), my point of view is that pro-reviewers must be ( at least ) in the same way and for what I read through your reviews and other people reviews some are far from there.

My thoughts about pro-reviewers is that al these very special people have a great responsability: help for the analog high-end grow up faster and with real quality improvements in any step that the analog industry take it.

It is sad for me to say that certainly ( today ) that is not what is happening from my point of view ( I could name it many examples of that ). This is not the time or the thread to analyze in deep about, I hope that over the time all us have the opportunity to return on the subject because we need to improve, we need to be better, we need to " dream " again.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.