Dear Halcro,
"No voodoo is any turntable rest assured! plain facts. EMT927 was designed and built with no shortcuts, power/torque & size of motor, serious bearing, platter height, distance of motor fixation to arm, the list is long....just well done and that gives us what? Well? all we need! indeed stable speed, no rumble or wow, isolation...etc. In fact if you look at the claims marketed by TT marker of this day they are just telling us that EMT had nailed them all. Simple! EMT 927 & R80 users tend to listen to their records, keep quiet and enjoy, full stop. But to really get a grasp on what it is worth? You have to get one....and in that lies the issue no doubt?.
One has to accept the limitations of any choice and EMT is no exception! With the 927 forget the "playing with arm and carts game", you don't have to change any parameters when using the excellent TSD Tondosen. Or if you have the 139st onboard forget the "matching the impedance and dishing out big bucks on phono-stages" that both come sometimes with more questions than they answer? so "idler-drive distinctiveness or something else"....no idea, I just play that deck more and more and as this community knows I have no shortage of TT's...is that an answer?