Is Direct Drive Really Better?

Dan_ed, We have an early prototype now and hope to have a better version in time for the open house.

Jejune, Not even close to the 1200. The Teres DD table will be flagship offering. It's both difficult and expensive to do DD right.

Is there a paper anywhere that has measured the effects of stylus drag on a turntable with a massive platter ? It seems almost infeasible that a 2gram tracking stylus would have any perceptible effect on 10+lbs of spinning platter.

For that question to be meaningful one would also have to know what the threshold of perception is for this phenomena. Measuring something is often easy. Correlating that measurement to perceived differences is often fraught with difficulty.

Mr. Chris Brady, you are obviously free to develop and produce any type of table you wish (I am all for research and development), and you may not know the answer to this question, but do you know how the owners of your current belt drive tables feel about the development of a direct drive table as your top-o-the-line model (assuming that means it’ll be the BEST table you'll make)? I only ask because I know from experience on this and other boards that many of the Teres owners are some of the most ardent supporters regarding the superiority of belt drives, in general, and of Teres tables as a leading example of same, in particular.

"For that question to be meaningful one would also have to know what the threshold of perception is for this phenomena. Measuring something is often easy. Correlating that measurement to perceived differences is often fraught with difficulty."

True, and not true. It is still a valid question, because I hear many people refer to stylus drag, but nobody offering proof that is it
a) Occuring measurably
b) Occuring at a level that we might expect the ear to be able to resolve.

Digital jitter has been accurately measured, and then somewhat correlated with audible effects. It's not too unreasonable to expect turntable manufacturers to do the same ?