Ok I have to add that all these drive systems are "a little bit off all the time." just with different characteristics of deviance. The thread drive proponents usually depend on high platter mass to mitigate slippage and motor-derived speed instability, and this can produce a very quiet result and a certain relaxedness at the expense of vivid presence available from other drives. The Acoustic Solid thread-drive turntables are very good and sound beautiful, for example. Artemis achieved an admirable balance of characteristics with tape drive, including a reel-to-reel deck's tensioner. Tape drive applied to a wider range of choices in materials for platter, plinth, arm mount, and footer schemes could prove capable of reconciling drive differences better than most.
Drive transmission elasticity, servos, pulley eccentricities, LP eccentricities, warp wow, idler eccentricities, power anomalies, stylus drag, bearing friction, platter or sub-platter eccentricities all contribute to all drive systems being "a little bit off all the time."
Meanwhile, the drive system is just one influencer. How your turntable is deployed -- what it sits on, its footing scheme, its plinth and platter composition, whether it's coupled to or isolated from its resting surface -- can exceed the sonic differences between some of these drive schemes.
Listen to several if you can, and decide which drive's and implementation's imperfections least distract you from what's good about them in service of convincing musicality.
Phil
