Direct drive/rim drive/idler drive vs. belt drive?

Albertporter
thanks for at least questioning, that dynamics are not quite the same a colouration.
I yet have to hear a system sounding more on-the-point/dynamic as is with a 'harder' connected drive, by simply using a different platter or platter-mat.
That's wishful thinking to me.
It can sound 'cleaner' and may leave this impression? But lack of 'slam' and 'drive' is more related to the drive then a platter-mat, in my current experience.

"But lack of 'slam' and 'drive' is more related to the drive then a platter-mat, in my current experience."

Totally agree.

I can't seem to understand how a platter mat can improve dynamics, slam, and "drive". No matter what mat I put on my Empire or other belt-drive systems, it aint sounding like my Technics SP10. I have smoother sounding DD tables than the Technics but none can surpass the bass dynamic and slam of the SP10 due its powerful motor. I also played with an idler table with an Ashland motor and it has huge dynamic. Again, the motor. From my experience is that small motor small dynamic and if it's a belt-drive even worse, the Nottingham is one example. I do believe changing mats can change the sound and the extra mass sometimes helps smoother rotation but the sonic benefit, if any, is more of a tonal one and signal to noise issue. Again, that's just my current experience. I would love to try some TTWeight mats.

I am, I guess, a "Technics guy" for 20 years. Briefly, I circumstantially became an Empire guy. I missed direct-drive so now I am back to be a Technics guy again, with a vengeance and end up with dozen other direct-drive tables. It's been fun.

While it has been several years I do remember hearing a demo of the prototype Teres Certus. I recall that there was/is a difference between the Certus platter and that used on the non-DD Teres tables. One of the differences was the use of a significant amount of brass. This was on my mind during that demo. How much of the presentation was due to the drive and how much was due to the difference in platter material? I suspect a bit of both, and I do believe that there were differences in arm/carts. To Ralph's point, the surfaces were the same as far as I know.

I don't know if the present Certus controller offers the torque adjust feature that was on the proto. That adjustment did make for an effective demonstration of the effect of torque on the sound. At one point the torque was turned up such that the sound changed immediately from analog to digital.

Since that time I've never stopped wondering if the transient sounds I'm hearing are real or not when I am experimenting with speed. I posted earlier about my experiments with really taught mylar and a more robust controller. At present I am drawn to the sound, but my mind still asks if it sounds real.

As interesting as this all is, I feel the need to remind myself that not everyone agrees with what I think LP playback should sound like. There are many people in this hobby that prefer what I would call sluggish and syrupy presentation.

One other thing I wanted to add was with respect to what can perceived as a cartridge alignment issue, which in reality is actually a micro-dynamic speed issue. I don't know what other term to use to refer to this, hopefully you guys can get a hint of what I'm on about. I would guess this is probably more prevalent with belt drives.

Hiho,
you reflect my own listening experience and thank you for sharing your own findings on that.

Even with quite, or REALLY powerful motors like I've heard on an Transrotor Z3 or on a Thorens 2010 (motors where modified, with beefed-up controller power-supplies), due to the long thin belts they remained still more laid-back then e.g. my SME, even though one could notice some improvement in the dynamics department. Two motor yet did a little more but still just don't seem to get there.

Problem with a lot (more affordable?) DD's is the 'affordable' motor/controller as I understand it. It seems VERY difficult to get this completely right, because of the DD's 'unforgiving' 1:1 coupling.
Despite some of the ~ strange Linn 'behaviours' (some love it some don't), I think they got the motor to platter coupling just right I.E. sub-platter, short belt, powerful enough motor.
SME I think went a step further, smallish as the Papast-motor is, it pulls like a train, has a lot of torque --- BUT they had to spend some time and money on a very good motor-controller without it, it would NOT work.

The spec.: Reference oscillator is a 10Mhz quartz crystal, multiplied by 4 to obtain 40Mhz microprocessor clock speed. Driver stage has CMOS buffers/MosFet drivers with 1.2 Amp peak drive capability.
Power output stage is six high power complimentary MosFets in a 3 Phase Bridge Driver configuration.
Close loop speed control is implemented using pseudo sine wave commutation sequence and a proportional-plus-integral (PI) algorithm.

So, there you go. This is not some wall-wart using the power-line cycle for speed control. With a long 'forgiving' belt it will work fine, but the closer you get to 1:1 drive-line coupling the more need to have a close to cog-free drive with torque to boot.
Greetings,