[BC] Turntables (WAS:Achieving good S/N)

[Robert Orban]

At 10:00 PM 1/1/2006, you wrote:
>From: WFIFeng at aol.com
>Subject: Re: [BC] Turntables (WAS:Achieving good S/N)
>To: broadcast at radiolists.net
>Message-ID: <158.5e8dbfd9.30e9e74b at aol.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
>In a message dated 01/01/2006 6:58:57 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>rorban at earthlink.net writes:
>
> > If you are doing a lot of vinyl archiving, you could do a lot better than
> >  the Garrard. I would recommend a belt-drive table and a reasonably
>high-end
> >  arm. The main goals are to avoid rumble and resonances, both from the arm
> >  and the turntable platter.
>
>Curious... what about direct-drive turntables? I thought they were supposed
>to be the best.

Belt driven TTs are likely to have lower rumble and less flutter. Direct 
drive TTs can suffer from "cogging" (which results in flutter) and a 
belt-driven TT allows the motor to be mechanically isolated from the 
platter and arm better than any other design. However, belt driven TTs were 
never popular in broadcast and D.J. circles because, compared to direct 
drive (whether gear-driven, idler wheel driven, or Technics 
SP-10-style),  they generally don't start up as fast and have more of a 
tendency to slow down when one was slip-cueing. For home use (or 
archiving), neither of these considerations is at all important.

Here is an assortment of audiophile TTs. I didn't check each one, but I 
suspect that all of these are belt-driven.

http://store.acousticsounds.com/category.cfm?section=equipment&id=111

Bob Orban