A Copernican View of the Turntable System

Interesting thoughts. First, though, a question: How did you end up getting the long post accepted after first having had it rejected?

Ummm.... First you posit a "new" way of looking at the interaction of cartridge, tonearm, and turntable which I think is leading to a defense of outboard tonearm pods. But at the last second, you swerve away from that issue and seem to posit that your Copernican view of the LP playback system somehow leads to the conclusion that a plinth is superfluous. As Archimedes might have said to his plumber, "It does not hold water".

As I have said before, the plinth issue and the arm pod issue are two entirely separate ones, except whereas the lack of a plinth makes it easy for you to get a bunch of tonearm pods nearer to the platter, so they can all be aligned properly. I don't think there is any argument that can lead to the universal conclusion that a plinth is never a good idea or never leads to a perceived improvement in LP reproduction. It is even conceivable that a good plinth can be more than just transparent; it can make the turntable (idler or direct drive) sound "better" than it does with no plinth. (Before I abandoned the belt-drive notion, I had come to the conclusion that for belt-drive, a big heavy plinth was superfluous and usually not a good thing. Most of the top end modern belt-drive tts seem to be built in accordance with that idea.)

I do think there are good arguments as regards independent tonearm pods, pro and con. I have stated my argument against them elsewhere, more than once. Here you have an interesting argument for.

Dear Halcro: When I " arrived " to this forum ( 6-7 years ago ) I posted several times the main and critical importance that the tonearm/cartridge had in an analog playback system and several times too from everyone I received the same answer: wrong the more important link is the TT.

Over the years and through my ( and other ones. ) " insistence " on the subject today almost all agree on the main importance of the tonearm /cartridge in that analog system.

You can see/read that I'm not speaking on tonearm alone but in tonearm/cartridge as a UNIT.

Then for me the centre of an analog system is not the tonearm but the cartridge/tonearm UNIT that between other things represent the source that IMHO is the more important ( the source ) audio link in any audio system: the centre of an audio system.

The source is IMHO the " King " in an audio system chain where all the other audio links ( including our each one skills for right system overall set up. ) are " only " subjects/slaves at King's service.

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.

Thanks Hodu,
After the initial thread was started (with the link to my system's page), I was then able to post the long statement on this thread.
I wrote to Audiogon but have received no answer as to why this might be?

Dear Lew,
My thesis is that once the immovable and isolated base has been established for the tonearm, the method of drive for the turntable will make no difference to the sound retrieved by the cartridge as long as perfectly correct and stable speed is achieved without any resonances transmitted via the platter.

If this is the case and I am correct (two big 'ifs'), any 'plinth' is superfluous?
If an added plinth around the turntable alters the sound in any way, then it cannot be correct.
It may be preferred by certain listeners but must by definition, be a tone control either adding or subtracting information.
As Atmasphere correctly said about outboard phono stages.......if a change of interconnects changes the sound, the phono stage is flawed.