Upgrade from TW Acustic Raven AC-3 to what?

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.

Dear Lewm, I am not familiar with the Saskia. There will be a mathematical term possible to give figures of the platter mass in relation to the energy level emitted by the stylus while extracting the information from the groove. This is of course depending on the compliance of the suspension of a given cartridge.

If you can do in the interim with some empirical research I have done in the early 1990ies, I can assure you that the 1st critical point is around 12-13 kg. The 2nd and last "barrier" (sonically...) falls around 35 kg. Above that you are in calm waters and can rest assured that even the most stiffest carts can no longer emit enough energy into the platter so to provoke any vibration of the platter which in return does alter the extract information.

It is a very similar effect as the one in billiard tables.
The picture is as follows:
- a machine kicks off a billiard ball on 2 tables covered with the same fabric and in the same room - both leveled perfectly.
On the table with the thicker stone platter underneath the fabric, the ball will run much longer.
The ball retains more of its rotating energy as the mass underneath is so much larger, that it does not deduct that energy - result: longer run.
That proven and common knowledge.
Same applies to turntables.
Put a given cartridge/tonearm combo on a TT with a platter of say 70+ lbs and you will notice while comparing to a TT with a 20 lbs platter less background noise, much more airy and authoritative bass and - surprise ... - a slightly louder playback level.
All these effects can be linked back to the fact that the cartridge/tonearm combination can do its work more undisturbed and do retain their energy.

Any math term explaining this relation must include compliance, stylus contact area, VTF, effective moving real mass, record net weight, platter net weight, contact area record to platter and - last not least.. - platter weight.

I am sure someone will help us with a formula....

Cheers,
D.