Ring Clamps. What do you think?

It's really interesting to see how all of us agree "in principle", yet we are in separate camps, in many ways, on "practice". I think I know what TT Doug uses, and I also know that it is made by a guy who probably did an excellent job in providing a platter that does just what Doug says it does, drains energy and dissipates it in the platter. Some other less well designed platters will instead store energy, as well as reflect energy back into the LP, and can possibly be set in some resonance mode by energy entering the platter via the LP, during play. In that case, clamping might not be a good idea. Factors such as this could account for our different opinions of ring and center weights.

+1 to Lewm

Not only my platter, but my bearing, plinth, armboard and TT supports were all designed and built to dissipate/dampen vibrations. Clamping on this table is beneficial.

My secondary TT is the just opposite, noisy motor and the platter rings like a bell. Clamping a record to that rig is a sonic disaster

My summary was:
Couple TO quiet materials, isolate FROM from noisy ones.

We're in complete agreement.

It's really interesting to see how all of us agree "in principle", yet we are in separate camps, in many ways, on "practice".

“In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.” - attributed to Albert Einstein, Yogi Berra!!!! and Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut.

One of the problems here is we have no universally accepted way of "measuring" or judging if we have achieved our objective, i.e., better sound. We can't even agree on what better sound is. That's OK. Better sound is, despite our best engineering and scientific efforts, a judgment call. Beauty is in the ear of the beholder. That's not to say that Doug's observations are incorrect (I think that they make a great deal of sense and explain very well why different people report different results) or that there are not certain principles, theories and practices that we can agree on. But when it comes down to whether or not a ring clamp is "better" on a particular TT/arm/Cart/RIAA/pre/amp/speaker system than a center clamp or a center clamp + ring, ultimately, you have to decide yourself whether the practice (what you hear) conforms to your theory. If not, then maybe your theory needs to be revised... or maybe your practice. No way for us to know in advance. I also think that part of the problem is our innate desire to oversimplify complex systems.

And yet, Swampwalker, if two of us were in the same room with the same system, I think there would be a lot of agreement about what sounded good and what did not, on that particular system.

By the way, Albert and Yogi had a contractual agreement. Yogi could get credit for any quote that was embarrassing to Albert. It was actually Albert who said, in regard to a restaurant in NYC, "Nobody goes there any more; it's too crowded."

Albert also said "Physics is 50% luck and 90% genius."

Lewm- Well that explains a lot ;-). It's kind of amazing when you do a little research and find so many quotes attributed to Albert and/or Yogi, that are largely unsubstantiated. Kind of like Fox News (rimshot!). On topic, I think w a particular analog front end there might be some agreement on what sounded good, w or w/o a ring clamp. How that would apply to another analog front end might or might not be predictable. OTOH, Based on the prices of some of the rigs I see demonstrated at shows (to the extent that price is dictated by the market which hopefully is correlated with what sounds good...I know, big leap of faith) I'm not sure that is a given.