Direct drive vs belt vs rim vs idler arm

Peter/Lewn

My apologies totally forgetting BASIS turntables and their very sophisticated suspension system. I couldn´t find more info of its functional mode online but if it is tuneable/adjustable for different weighting TA´s everything´s OK. Well the BASIS flagship, The Work of Art must be something very special in suspended turntables, probably the very best designed so far. A stunning machine anyway.

The SME seems also adjustable for certain TA´s so if it´s truly a balanced system it must sound good as well. A suspension hanging on rubber rings is an antithesis to metal springs. Likely both systems have a certain characteristic sound of their own, depending how effective the damping systems are.

Albert, thanks for letting us know your BASIS experiences.

To get the best out of a suspended deck its subchassis must be perfectly levelled, balanced & tuned for a certain arm/cart combination. When applied downward force on to spindle there should be only up and down movement of the subchassis, no wobbling sideways whatsoever. If not, the sound especially in lower frequencies is always smeared in some extend. A suspension must work mechanically perfect, this is the starting point.

The ORACLE´s 3 spring suspension consists of 8 different parts in each spring ass´y. The latest model has also fluid damping added. It´s fully balanceable & tuneable for different TA´s. Yes, one can actually tune to a certain sound if necessary. To finetune an ORACLE is never easy but if one is married to one (for decades like me) it comes a second nature LOL. An ingenious system, but its manufacturing tolerances must be very low.
In fact, I have owned 4 DELPHI´s, 2 MKII´s, MKIII and MKIV. The MK IV with hard mat was a mission impossible to finetune sonically, I didn´t like its stiffer spring ass´y at all. It sounded awful :/ And the MKIII was impossible to finetune mechanically due to a slightly wrong placing of the adjustment stems for the springs. But it didn´t sound so bad LOL.

Let me take this opportunity to introduce you the ORACLE MKII.7 suspension in action (the video is very old, sorry for bad sound quality):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Ql9Gq6ir7hA

"Other than that device the only serious attempt to elimate the off center LP problems was Nakamichi through its 1000 TT model and latter on with the Nakamichi TT Dragon.

I don't know how easy or hard is to the LP manufacturers to have their LPs with a " perfect " hole centered. Today we pay a lot of money for new LPs/reissues and the like but the LP manufacturers never fixed that problem and IMHO no one of them take care about."

Al the test records (vintage and new) I have tried have been also off-centered. One was 2 mm off-centered. I was forced to send it back to the seller because it was quite hard to test anything seriously LOL.

I don't know how easy or hard is to the LP manufacturers to have their LPs with a " perfect " hole centered. Today we pay a lot of money for new LPs/reissues and the like but the LP manufacturers never fixed that problem and IMHO no one of them take care about."

Here is a perfect opportunity for someone to create a press that punches out the center of an LP and provide an adjustable sleeve that allows for perfect centering of each LP.

Of course you could not sell the LP once this was done, unless the next buyer was another fan of this product.

Crazy idea? Hey, we had Audio Desk selling a rather expensive device to trip CD edge to make them perfect and by all accounts listeners got a nice upgrade after the tweak was applied.

I am not sure if anyone has touched upon it, but in absolute terms, virtually every review I've read on Direct Drives say that stage width has a tendency to being narrower. Is this due to the fact that the motor is directly beneath the platter, and the magnetism has an effect on the upward downward portion of the record groove (the Stereo bit)
Not only that but I am curious as to whether or not anyone has tried lifting and butchering a direct drive deck other than the Technics SL1200's - I say this because quite a few such as numark ttx's have really good specs

Lohanimal,
It is more a function of the error correction systems used in direct drive TT's. Like digital, they have inherent jitter that destroys the time and phase relationships of the music signal. This results in soundstage aberrations as well as a lack of resolution due to smearing.
The designers of the SP10mk3 & Kenwood L07D tried to minimise this by running higher mass platters, but it is still there.