Tables That Feature Bearing Friction

To fix standards on the audio industry can help to the " new " people in our high-end world while they achieve experience with.

That " standards " does not have to be " extremes " one but only at " minimum ", so the toy-play will be " respected ". The record perfect-center hole can't go against almost no one but persons that can say: " hey I want to fix it ( toy-play ) please leave in that way... ".
The whole idea on the standards subject is for more positive, serious and open mind in favor of our hobby.

Other desirable subject on the high-end industry could be " quality standards " where an audio item/device must pass some test steps where it show that meets ( or not ) those " quality standards " and when achieve it then that audio item will show a official certification about, something like the ISO standards. This could help that we can buy better products with better quality and stop to find out that " three " days from the day we buy and audio item it has some failure: this happen every day even products that goes to a reviewer comes with defects in its operation.

IMHO if we want to be better ( overall ) we have to ask for be better, don't you think?

Oh yes we can enjoy music through a walkman either, but this is not the issue.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear Ebm, it depends - bearing friction doesn't necessarily means increased noise. In some of the smarter designs bearing friction is introduced by oil bath, eddy current and the like to increase speed stability and damping of platter. But some of the other semi-pro's here on Audiogon will (and have already during this thread) tell you more about this. If bearing friction goes with increased noise (= low quality bearing) however I do agree with you - thats a bad design.

I think the correct term is "bearing drag", not bearing "friction". Friction would implicate 2 surfaces contacting each other and if that was the case there would be no place for oil, and as such, you would have a very noisy bearing.
Furthermore, a well made bearing would have a hardened shaft, be cylinderically ground, and the bearing housing would be honed to accept the rotating shaft with perhaps 0.0001"-0.0002" clearance at most.

Dear Frank_sm, if you look real close, you will find that almost ALL bearings in turntables ( not just the old Well Tempered Turntable ...) AND gimbal bearing tonearms as well as ALL pivot tonearms do indeed consist of two surfaces contacting each other. Most of these do feature oil to lubricate the bearing and to decrease wear and noise - but in the end (aside from magnet bearings, pure air pressure and oil pressure bearings ( and all of these have to be horizontal AND vertical )) almost all (NOT all.....) bearings in use in audio components do indeed feature surfaces ( 2 or more..) contacting each other.

Dertonarm, magnet and air bearings also have their own drawbacks. Magnet bearing a'la Verdier bears the platter weight with no friction but features conventinal journal bearing, which is more loaded, and most importantly less evenly loaded due to inherent instability of magnetic repulsion system: magnets are trying to slip sideways with the side force increasing as the deviation from perfect concentricity of the two toroidal magnetic fields increases. I'm not familiar with any other magnets arrangement addressing lateral instability, do you?
High pressure double air bearing (vertical and lateral) is near close to perfection, providing compressor noise, water condensation, air contaminations and pressure fluctuations problems solved. In addition, it shall provide possibility to safely "land" the platter in case of sudden pressure loss, otherwise axial bearing may be easily ruined. This is the first rate engineering problem by itself, bearing in mind very small air gap.
What do you think about hybrid bearing: magnet axial bearing combined with air journal bearing for lateral stability? Sounds crazy complicated, but who cares?