Upgrade from TW Acustic Raven AC-3 to what?

Hey Syntax, poor man ..... "born to suffer" ...... or just enjoying it.....?
Cheers,
D.

has anyone here compared the Raven One to the Raven AC-3 ?
I know that AC-3 is miles better, but is the Raven One about 80% of its sound ?
Would appreciate some comments on the Raven One..on ease of set-up, etc....

Dear Dertonearm,

understanding you correctly we have to stop exchanging opinions. But what are we doing here and you too? Of course there are some very experienced opinion leaders and we like to listen to those guys. Nevertheless you cannot compare a consulting approach (done by human beings) with a technical and fully logical decision-finding process.
We are in no way logical bust most people would like to be!! Maybe some audiophiles adopt a somehow logical approach, some other will never do.

Therefore the best approach in the case of Alectioning is to put questions (what he did) and assess all our answers on our experience background and what might match to his taste and pocket. He draw a very good conclusion when stating the Black Knight could be a step forward but will never be the giant leap.

I have heard 5000 and 8000 Micros with air suspension and without. I would not prefer the non vaccuum versions. You do this. What is the reason for your position?

Well - Solong can provide an astonishing amount of insight into the setting up of the AC-1 and AC-2 respectively.
The AC-3 adds a 3rd motor - that is miles more expensive, but won't alter the performance.
The AC-2 already - if properly set-up... - does provide an AC with force-free horizontal bearing. This is the real advantage - not having a 2nd or 3rd motor, but eliminating a dreadful force vector in the horizontal plane. Thus considerably lessen the sound and the wear in the bearing axis.
It works with the Raven, it works with the Micro Seiki (their engineers put this in action with the inertia units HS-series back in the early 1980ies....), it works with every TT......
In the standard set-up of a Raven AC-2 the bearing most likely is not vector free - see Solongs set-up for illustration and inspiration and how it should be done.
Hey Solong - give us some nice pictures of your Raven AC-2 !
Its not a tweak - its applied basic physics.

Cheers,
D.

Dertonearm,
In the spirit of this discourse, you wrote "all great turntables able to provide those lowest 2 registers (and by doing so donating to the listener all the upper registers with increased ease and transparency as well...) will feature a platter weight of at least 30 lbs and way up. Regardless of bearing type or drive mechanism. It is a game of amplitude of energy implied versus mass."

Can you cite the math and/or physics that support this statement? I don't find it intuitively obvious that your generalization holds true for all turntable types. (But I will say that those who have heard both say that the SP10 Mk2 [8-lb platter] differs from the Mk3 [22-lb platter] mainly in the superior low bass response of the latter table, which is consistent with what you wrote.) Anyway, the Saskia would still qualify for your list on the basis of platter mass.