Turnable database with TimeLine

Maybe I am pointing out the obvious here. Our ears don't care about average speed. Our ears hear the minute variations in speed.

Tony,
Maybe it isn't as obvious to some, but I hope our posts about cogging and other aspects of a turntable's design will be helpful, though. It's a lot to expect guys who aren't that interested in the mechanics of it all to understand why what they hear in a given turntable isn't exactly right, or is decidedly different from a very similar one. Hopefully, enough of the participants here are articulate enough to explain some of the things involved in ways that the casual onlooker can understand, though.

In any case, it isn't that easy to sort out all the nuances of what should be a very simple device that has the seemingly simple task of quietly spinning around.

@Lewm

In this entire thread "NOBODY" that used the timeline and "observed" the speed changes due to stylus drag came out and said they detected "ANY audible sonic changes!'

This whole tread is about drag measurements that are "NOT AUDiBLE" on well designed "high end" turntables set up with a strobe!

"Climb it and Rotate"

Don.
re your post to Lew. "Nobody has used the timeline.... and detected any audible sonic changes."
Firstly. The time line shows average speed per revolution. A TT that passes the timeline test has a "consistent average" correct speed, no more than this. We cannot see what is happening at a micro time interval level, but we can infer.
I would be surprised if anyone could detect the adjustment of this average speed back to say 33 1/3 if the TT in question showed slowing due to stylus drag. We are talking small changes in absolute frequency with this adjustment. The owners of these TT's cannot however adjust the TT's dynamic speed stability since this is intrinsic in how the TT was built and designed. This includes its power supply and controller. Of course there will be no audible changes since these owners are making no changes to the TT build, design itself.

However there is, I believe, at least one person posting here who has direct experience with the audible effects of an improvement in resistance to stylus drag and dynamic speed stability.

That poster is........you.
You reported a "huge" improvement in the VPI when using the SDS controller.
This device makes the motor run more consistently. What you heard was a platter rotating more accurately at a micro speed level. It is quite possible that its average speed with a load, did not change, so no difference would be seen with a Timeline. But you correctly reported the positive changes.
It would make logical sense that a motor which runs more consistently would be better able to respond to and minimise speed changes due to a dynamic load, such as that caused by stylus drag. So it would further be logical that the VPI would show greater resistance to speed sag when lowering the stylus (no load, with load) and we would likely see an improvement if this test was done with the Timeline.
So we can say that you are a champion of a design that reduces speed changes due to stylus drag.

Tony, This is an example of playing a very eccentric record:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_GG65tMxOs

You see the saddle swaying to and fro smoothly due to eccentricity. If you look closely enough (sorry my stone-aged video quality, well I´m not into videos really lol) you may notice the stylus stays perfectly stationary relative to the cartridge body. So the "wow" is practically caused only by the eccentricity of the record. The music sounds still very enjoyable. In this case the Salvation direct rim motor implementation works very nicely. If we have very sophisticated analog techniques, records can sound very nice despite of platter or/and record eccentricities... and slight warps.