Tables That Feature Bearing Friction


I recently had the opportunity to audition the DPS turntable which, unlike most tables, has a certain amount of friction designed into the bearing. This, when paired with a high quality/high torque motor, is said to allow for greater speed stability--sort of like shifting to a lower gear when driving down a steep hill and allowing the engine to provide some breaking effect and thus greater vehicular stability. I am intrigued by this idea and was wondering what other people thought about this design approach. Are there other tables which use this bearing principal? One concern I have is that by introducing friction you may also be introducing noise. Comments?
dodgealum
Dear Raul, yes - a different room is the one and only way to isolate any turntable effective from SPL radiated by the speakers. No doubt. However - this has nothing to do with the turntable design itself. It is a matter of the enviroment/position. Put the turntable in the next room and drill a hole through the wall to allow exit of the tonearm cable or the NF-cable(s) from preamplifier to poweramplifier(s) - รจ voila!
But - a turntable can be designed to "near perfection".
"Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth " (William Blake , end of 18th century).
Its a matter of consequence, effort and energy put into the task.
However - a "near perfect" turntable can NEVER be a commercial design.
A space shuttle will never be a commercial product either (not as comparism here, but to clarify the point...).
Neither can the "near perfect speaker" and its cousins the "near perfect preamplifier, poweramplifier (always in close relation to the crossover and efficiency of the speaker) etc "(well, the pivot tonearm and the cartridge - that could work in the narrow frame of market-conformity). Any other commercial audio product will be - and was so far - always a (often more and rarely less) dreadful bundle of compromises (god - I hate that word since childhood!!).

To come anywhere close to the "near perfect" in audio components means in plain simply words:
- leave commerical audio products and the idea to bring that "near perfect" designed audio component to a "market" behind.
It will not work.
You have to do compromises to bring ANY product on a "market".
There is no free lunch in high-end audio neither.
Well - theres an old saying: nature knows no compromise.
Compromise may be indispensable to keep our past zenith society working as long as possible.
If we accept all too easy compromise in the development of audio components we will always get what we deserve and have gotten so far:

.....mediocrity......
Here is one of these 15 units, a pic from a High End Show, it was bought right away, when I remember right.
Probably to a Single :)

WAF free Zone
Ghosts of the past.........that particular unit is from 1993.
The base plates are corian on dural with polyurethane layer.
80% of the technical periphery is inside the integrated "stands" of turntable and motor unit (including active air suspension, surge tanks, automatic leveling.
Dimensions were 4 feet wide x 2.2 feet deep and 4 feet high. Total weight approx. 580 lbs.
Every wife's nightmare.
The motor unit does feature selective air supply for up to 3 airborne tangential tonearms (adjustable pressure and amount of air - these were the days of Air Tangent and ET 2 back then.....), adustable air supply for active suspension and radial / lateral air-bearing. All speeds 33, 45 and 78 are precisely tuneable.
And this was 1993........
Dear Dertonarm,
My compliments.
Being the son of an architect has certainly paid off with a design that even the Bauhaus would be proud of?......but I know that only the laws of physics determined its appearance? :-)
The string "belt" on the mammoth turntable in the photo is WAY too long for optimum control of platter rotation, even if the string has no stretch at all, but I guess the inertia of the humongous platter mass compensates for this problem to a degree. I am also guessing that the very long distance between motor and platter is an exteme attempt to isolate the platter from motor vibration, a la the Verdier on a grand scale. Nevertheless, it is a "compromise". IMO, it is impossible to avoid all compromises in any design and in any other human endeavor. Wherever there is a choice between two options that each has its own justification, there will have to be a "compromise" with respect to some feature of the desired outcome of the project. God help the perfectionist.