Nude Turntable Project

Dear Raul,
What mat? What tonearm? How was the tonearm mounted? What cartridge? What music?
Let's see: you pulled two turntables out of storage, set them up without a plinth and they sound "great". (I'll take your word for that.) And this proves something about whether or not a plinth can be used to good advantage with a direct-drive turntable? You are too smart to believe that this is good science.
Anyway, very glad to hear from you. As you know, I am very fond of my DP80, as well. On its excellence, we can agree.

Apologies to Raul, I think I am guilty of asking Raul to prove a negative, which cannot be done. Anyway, more data would be nice. Particularly I would like to know what mat was in use on each turntable (75 vs 80).

So far as I know there is very little if any difference between the DP80 and DP75; I think the DP75 was essentially a DP80 motor supplied with a plinth and tonearm, usually the Denon DA307. T_bone would be the authority on this. If you hear a difference between the two tables, I would first suspect that the inferior sounding one might have a problem. Carry on, Raul.

Dear Halcro: Agree with you and IMHO the naked fashion in many ways has lower distortions. The footers here play an important role and the AT pneumatic ones works splendid. No, I'm not saying that's a must to have, I understand there are other alternatives and like almost all things in audio we have to test and compare.
I never tryed with tip toes like footers like you, maybe in the future.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R

Dear Lewm: First I don't took the TT and decided to go naked as first option. I check both with three different plints before naked: my custom made and beautiful 40kg green marble one alond the 40kg beige onyx one and the own Denon hard wood.

Both custom made plynts were over four of my AT pneumatic footers and both " sounds " the same and outperform the Denon one.
After that I tested in naked fashion and decided that nake/nude is the way to go, differences are important it were not tiny ones.

In all cases I use it my LOMC reference cartridge and ADC Astrion, Sonus Dimension 5 and AT ML180 OCC.
I used two identical tonearms ( our prototype design. ) and two identical arm pods ( more on this latter. ) and same cartridge to phono stage wiring. I tested too with my AT 1503-3.

Obviously that I tested through my own test procedure ( that continue the same with the same recording tracks. ) as always.

No, both TT Denons are in perfect condition and as similar as they are are not the same. The measure rumble figure in the DP-75 was measured by a friend that own a DP-75 and he found out was/is: -88db at the same standards that Denon took it. Even on brochure the DP-75 has better specs than the DP-80. Other difference is that the DP-80 has higher motor's torque that means in some ways higher energy to dissipate or latent.

I use our self TT mat design that I'm using for last 2-3 years and that through my experiences with other mats is unbeatable.

Arm pod: I'm still using an Acoustic Signature one. If you take a look to my virtual system you will see where the tonearms are " seated ", well I took the whole AS arm board that is screwed at the TT plinth at the bottom. Well this was to compare against the AS ones and with the stone's plinths the tonearm were surface mount ( mine not the AT. ).

As you can see I took things seriously about or: could you think for a moment that I come here to make such statement with out real facts and real foundation?, a mistake from your part if thinked that way.

You can take a look to the MM thread and you will find that in the last times there are almost no posts from me. I took almost three weeks only in this comparison.

Maybe in the nears future I will make a better arm pods but right now is fine with me and I have no time to change.

Yes, both Denons are great and IMHO better than the SP-10s, at least in my system.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Raul,
Yes, i did notice your absence from these fora, and I was hoping that you had not left us and that you were not ill or something bad like that.
Also, I did not think you were not cognizant of the importance of the turntable mat, and it interests me to know that you guys have developed your own. Is it available "to the public"?

I always felt, and said so, that the DP80 gives away nothing to the SP10 Mk2, but to say that it is superior to the SP10 Mk3 means to me only that you need to re-acquire a Mk3 that is in bona fide good electrical condition and listen to it again using your acquired knowledge. Contrary to what you once told me, I hear a big difference between Mk2 and Mk3.

Since you are not shy about stating your negative opinions, please I ask you not to be insulted when I say that marble is not good material for a plinth (don't know about onyx) and that the stock Denon plinth, even the best one that came with my DP80, pales in comparison to slate. The Denon wood plinth imparts a dead/dull sound. (Yes, plinths can do harm,and I am not surprised that naked beats Denon wood plinth.) And I now know that slate can be made better by CLD'ing it with a hardwood base, as I have done for my SP10 Mk3. I am going to do the same for the DP80 plinth. These sentiments are all "IMHO", of course.

The differences between the spec sheets for the DP75 vs DP80 don't mean "spit" (American idiom for "nothing"). I even think the two tt's were measured by Denon back around 1979-1980 when the standards for measurement changed, and all tt's suddenly became 2-3 db quieter, just due to the new method of weighting. Example of that is the Exclusive P3 vs P3a, which looks quieter on paper but was subject to a different method of measurement vs P3. If you hear a diff between those two motors, it is not due to stuff you can find on the spec sheets.