Pheonix Engineering Road Runner


This product was very popular when produced by Phoenix Engineering before they went out of business and seems to be even more popular after. My question is why hasn't some other manufacturer made something similar? The demand seems to be there.
sgunther
Lew

All the Denon DD’s I work on have Adjustable speed - however as you mention this disengage the servo control. What Im talking about above is the internal oscillator from which the speed control is derived, only the DP7000 allows for adjusting the clock speed (with a small adjustable capacitor) which for the DP7000 is 300kHz.

Good Listening

Peter


IMO a Roadrunner type device alone is a non-starter.  If you keep it visible it will drive you nuts.  For if you have a belt drive you will probably see it vary over time especially as the bearing warms up.  Either it will give you agita over differences you cannot hear or you will jump up and down to correct the speed continually.

The Roadrunner-Eagle/Falcon combination, on the other hand, is a genius combination letting you forget completely about turntable speed and concentrate on everything else.

While I understand there may have been reasons, VPI made a big mistake in not licensing all of this when they may have had the chance.
melm,

:-) Which is why I prefer DD tables. We developed the Tachometer because Phoenix  Engineering closed shop and we use quite a few of these in our Turntables.

I got an email form Sota - they are indeed re introducing the Roadrunner and the Falcon they are planning on starting shipping late next month.

For those whom want to see a preliminary photo of the Tachometer Im posting a picture on my Virtual page system.

https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/4923#&gid=1&pid=15

Still need to get the Smoke Gray Plexiglass front panels done - this will tame down the brightness of the LED Display.

Good Listening


Peter

@pbnaudio

You may like DD turntables. Many people do, and they certainly have their conveniences. My own opinion is that for a DD turntable to provide the same quality sound as a good belt-drive TT it has to be very expensive. Like the forthcoming VPI DD which will be a relative bargain at $15,000. We have yet to see if it performs as well as its predecessor at $30,000 (?).

IMO the cheaper Japanese models like the Denons you write about have a distortion, hard to measure but easier to hear. It’s kind of a micro-flutter caused by the tiny, but constant, speed corrections. Michael Fremer described it as, "ultra-high-speed hunting and pecking as it over- and undercompensates in the attempt to produce a consistent speed can create a jitter effect in the mid-treble to which the human ear is particularly sensitive, adding a hard, brittle texture to music." I agree.

Beyond that I fail to understand why anyone with a DD turntable and its automatic speed control would want to have a Roadrunner type device. In effect the Roadrunner/Falcon functionality is already built in.