Why will no other turntable beat the EMT 927?

Dkarmeli,

Thanks for the kind words, but I think you have me confused with someone else because I don't have a website, yet. I am proud of my work, though. I suppose I should stop stalling on that the website. For me, the presentation of my work online is more daunting than actually building it.

"Solid engineering is the foundation the rest of creation is all art."

You are right about this. Many of us are wired that way, probably almost everyone who tries to reach the limits of our craft. At some point, the designer's personality enters the mix, even if it is unintentional. Maybe that is what constitutes the signature that I was talking about.

Mosin is too modest to say so, but I will wager that the Saskia outperforms the EMT927, in front of an impartial audience (either blinded or free of anyone with a preconceived notion of the supremacy of the 927). Now THAT would be an interesting side by side comparison.

Dover, it must be nice to be so certain in your audio beliefs.

Dear Mosin, isn't Oswald Mills yours?
david

Dkarmeli
I use the Micro as a reference simply because more people are familiar with these. I personally use the original Final Audio Parthenon VTT1/VSM2 with VDS17 Stabiliser & VM7 Mat which as you mention has a focus on unwanted energy dissipation from the record groove in its design goals along with a high inertia solution for speed stability. What differentiates it from the top Micro's and is clearly audible is the more sophisticated speed control which utilises sine & cosine wave generators for stability with the huge AC motor, variable torque to minimise motor noise, an inverted bearing design and the energy control paths are quite sophisticated even by todays standards, culminating in the stabiliser/mat/platter/bearing assembly and arm pod both terminated into a slab of SPZ ( superplastic zinc alloy ) that when excited grain slides at a molecular level. This results in an extremely rigid closed loop system between arm and platter but ensures energy is not transmitted from one to the other.

The Parthenon was an assault but didn't get all the way there, too many gimmicks. Its not only mass here, ...

Which version are you referring to here. The later version - see pic here http://www.damoka.net/product_pages/analog/ as used by Lamm in one of their shows did not use the SPZ base and has a smaller and less substantial bearing pillar & subplatter assembly and is not as good as the original.

Raul- Not to be a nit-picker, but it seems to me that your accuracy analogy to the earth;s rotation is counter to your arguement. Unless I am mistaken, the earth's rotation is not "accurate" if by that you w/o variation. For example earth wobble a bit on it's axis and it's rotation is gradually slowing due to predictable tidal effects and unpredictable or stochastic effects, such as massive earthquakes. As Wikipedia notes"

The Earth's rotation axis moves with respect to the fixed stars (inertial space); the components of this motion are precession and nutation. The Earth's rotation axis also moves with respect to the Earth's crust; this is called polar motion.

Precession is a rotation of the Earth's rotation axis, caused primarily by external torques from the gravity of the Sun, Moon and other bodies. The polar motion is primarily due to free core nutation and the Chandler wobble.

Over millions of years, the rotation is significantly slowed by gravitational interactions with the Moon; both rotational energy and angular momentum are being slowly transferred to the Moon: see tidal acceleration. However some large scale events, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, have caused the rotation to speed up by around 3 microseconds by affecting the Earth's moment of inertia.[21] Post-glacial rebound, ongoing since the last Ice age, is also changing the distribution of the Earth's mass thus affecting the moment of inertia of the Earth and, by the conservation of angular momentum, the Earth's rotation period.

Beethoven is different from Bach. Was Heifetz better than Perelman? Which conductor led the best performance of [insert symphony of your choice here]. Was Pavarotti "better" than Caruso. Are we talking about precision or accuracy? Obviously, these are rhetorical questions. Obviously there are some basic accuracy parameters that must be met, esp for a mechanical system like a TT/tonearm/cart.

My purpose is not to argue about your specific analogy but to point out that the use of objective criteria to define what is essentially a subjective experience may, ultimately, be futile. Reproduced music is not the same as the original performance. Never was and never will be.