Tables That Feature Bearing Friction

Dear Raul - I do agree with you 100%. We - the customers - are indeed responsible for the products we get. Unfortunately we are a very small group inside the whole market for audio playback. As our buying power is way too small for the (global players..) industry to focus on, we do only get attention from companies which are small enough to be able (and are forced to...) to focus on a small niche of the market: - us, the audiophiles willing to spend fairly large amount of money to get satisfaction for their endless task for perfection and beauty in musical reproduction. And another "yes" - we will get mediocrity a plenty as long as we continue to buy it.
Only market behaviour will change the quality of the product. Nowhere as true as here in "our" market.

Dear Halcro,******......."Surely Dertonarm, if pure physics made it all 'black and white' and "I have yet to see a turntable design done right."?.......why have you not yet......done it!? "******

I did.
Almost 20 years back. Together with 2 collegues I have designed and built (and they have been sold) 15 units and it did costs me alone approx. 230 000 US$ back then.
However - it was a turntable you simply could NOT sell through any High-End store due to size, weight and technical periphery needed.
The infamous WAF was way below zero. The technical features - brief summarize: a 100 lbs (very complex design internally) compund platter with a still unique approach of clamping the LP - suspended on radial AND lateral air bearing with 4 bar pressure. Whole 400 lbs turntable suspended by active air springs with 0.5 Hz resonance frequency. The motor drive - in the last incarnation without any force vectors on the bearing!! - was the big capstan from the professional Studer tape-machines. This design was backed up in the research and the tests by a division of a technical university.
Believe me - I have done it the hard way. For several years. There are good reason why my former remarks were the way they are.

As for stylus drag: - stylus drag is mainly the result of the downforce on the groove (vertical vector on the groove wall). That downforce is a result of the size of the polished area of the stylus and the VTF. Frequency modulation does vary that force only ever so lighhtly. So there is a varaition in that force, but only very faintly. AS the majority of the force is constant, it does add to the "friction" - however, it does not require correction during operation (which is impossible anyway ..... as you would create an error-correction-loop resulting in anything but certainly not constant speed).

Dear Halcro, I am familiar with all the above mentioned turntables. All those people need to SELL their turntables. Thier turntables need to fit into the living rooms of fairly well doing customers (at least if bought new in the store...) with some taste and expectations in design and a better half which sometimes does have a vote too. Furthermore their is an importer (sometimes) and a dealer (soemtimes) who need their part of the financial cake too.
In the very first all these turntables were designed and built for 2 purposes:

** unique selling proposition (by design or unique technical feature) to support the 2nd purpose:
** to make money....

A turntable "done right" will be huge, very expensive, extremely heavy and will feature some technical periphery aside the turntable itself. Imagine the working bench of a large electron microscope....... then you get an idea.

Well, I didn't read every post, but I agree, that Turntable construction is pure Physics. And like in school, not everyone is good in this, there are differences.
I am very careful with those arguments, that this and that Designer is godlike, because he is doing this "job" (whatever it is).
I heard in the last 15 years more average sounding units than I wanted to. Some are good looking, some are heavy, some are extremely expensive but at the end of day, well you know...average. Unfortunately.
Marketing can replace knowledge and when I read such stories "... sleepless nights the last 10 years because I never had a turntable here which met my expectations .... so I tried it .... and I got it ...."
A.J.Conti is one of those who do a better job, Verdier was one of those guys, too and a few others
But not everyone.

I heard in the last 15 years more average sounding units than I wanted to. Some are good looking, some are heavy, some are extremely expensive but at the end of day, well you know...average.

Couldn't have said it better myself. And I think that one of the reasons why the audio community tends to make deities and martyrs out of certain designers is because their dream of making i.e. the ultimate turntable is something we can all respect, love, and identify with. And yes, the story behind a product is a very powerful (and legitimate) incentive to buy . . . but whether or not the dreams have actually been realized in the product is of course another question entirely.

And there's also the question of what are exactly the objectives of a turntable "done right"? The story that Dertonarm tells of his ultimate turntable pursuit would be a frustrating one for me, because after that amount of work . . . I would personally want to see more than 15 people able to enjoy the pleasure of owning one. I think a truly successful product should put just as much innovation and excellence into the effecient use of materials and resources, and the financial model that allows it to be produced, purchased, and enjoyed to a significant degree.

But anyway, I'd like to steer the discussion more toward what we think are the biggest weaknesses in most current high-end turntables, in a general sense across the industry. Personally, I feel that the suspension/isolation systems are the huge weak spot, along with the proper control and dissipation of resonant energy between the platter and tonearm mount.

Dear Kirkus, indeed. Suspension of ANY turntable from vibration (if possible from air vibration = sound pressure too........ but that is another story...) is elementary. It is not a question of idea, philosophy or sound preference. It is vital to isolate the turntable from any seismic vibration. That implies that the suspension should go as low as 0.5 Hz to ensure isolation from building resonance. ANY vibration will falsify the groove modulation and alter its amplitude.

Again - we have the picture of the active or passive (if possible... air) isolated work bench for electron microscope. The working conditions for that electron-microscope are almost identical to the ideal working conditions of a turntable (at least of a turntable trying to go for anything near maximal possible performance). Both dealing in similar dimensions too.
Every owner of a decent turntable - already with built in spring suspension or not - can easily check this for himself. But a Vibraplane or a Minus-K or similar benchtop platform underneath any given turntable of at least some merit. You will notice the difference right away (no - I do not hold any shares from either company mentioned....). These platforms were designed for small elctron microscopes and vibration sensitive measurement equipment. No high-end nonsense, but straight industrial devices.
Well worth a try before you spend the next grand on a 3 feet NF-cable.....

There is one other vital aspect I want to point out: energy transfer between two masses. One mass in active movement - the other serving as the (static) floor. Picture a billiard table and the ball in motion. Ever wondered why the billiard ball does roll longer on certain tables? Because there is a direct relation between the mass (= thickness of stone platter underneath the green wool) and the energy transmission between the ball and the table. The ball stops earlier on the cheap (= rather thin marble stone platter) and lighter table. Energy transfer. More of the energy of the ball rotation is transfered into the mass of the table. If the differences between the 2 masses is increased, the ( unwnated !!) energy transmission gets less and less. The ball has a longer run - it can use more of the energy given by the qeue's poke for its motion.
There is a very similar relation between the stylus and the platter.