Suspended vs. nonsuspended TT?

Excellent question but I think if you are willing to spend the dough on one of these tables then an active siesmic sink or other solution may make sense.I have a an Aries extended and 12.5 but was thinking of downsizing and pocketing a few bucks (which probably is nonsensical considerting how much)but thought of a nonspring suspended tabel only because I don't want the Linn tweak it every month hassle.You din't mention if you had a wall mount option.Also a hard tabel can transmit vibration both ways as fremmer pointed out in a mini review of my table and this can be good and bad.Bad in if have the wrong material that will send vibrations from motor to arm etc but good in that you can experiment with materials.Also put an SME on your list for non-sprung and those german final Analogue Productions look like excellent values.Email me and I can give you a german manufacturers link to get to them.Lastly also think Basis.But remeber that within a line their are big differnces to wit: Aries hard points vs. TNT air towers.

TNT HR gives you the damping and isolation with the air towers resulting in incredible resolution. 12.5 arm gets alot of info out of the groove into your ears and body! Bottom line is all you need is a good solid and level area for a TNT HR, it does the rest.

if you are considering spending that kind of dough on a turntable, do investigate the basis debut. it is a real turntable, not an erector set. it is flawlessly reliable, is not tweaky, and requires no maintenance. furthermore, the debut fulfills your criteria of great bass extension better than the tables you are considering and maybe better than any other table.

going the debut route enables using the money that you would otherwise spend on isolation devices on LPs!! consider that a friend purchased a basis ovation a long time ago. no longer in production, that table had a suspension similar to the debuts. as the ovation's footprint was bigger than the vpi it replaced, there was no room to locate it where the vpi was positioned. the dealer's solution was to place the ovation on top of the subwoofer where it remained for a year. my friend listens to lots of classical with fair amounts of low end. the ovation had no problem tracking his albums. footfalls? you got to be kidding! dynamics? no problem.

i own a debut and highly recommend it! i do not have any tracking problems due to footfalls or airborn vibrations from my speakers.

Cost of suspension :
1 concrete slab (or marble cutting block for higher WAF)
1 wad of soft foam (or bicycle inner tube, or sorbothane)
Can't cost more than $50 ... even to make it pretty.

Personally I have never found that the lack of suspension on my Rega Planar 3 to be a problem. I have used concrete and soft foam and marble block with soft foam and both worked perfectly fine. I was in the same situation ... spiked speakers (big floorstanders), turntable on a rack, all on a suspended wooden floor. I have no experience with suspension tables (I've only used Rega) so I can't say if they'd be better. But I cannot see that they would isolate better than a bloody great big slab of concrete sat on top of foam.

So in conclusion I'd get whichever TT sounds best in the audition and worry about building an isolation platform if you pick the non-suspended one.

Sean, how would one go about leveling something like that ? Some tables have both great mass and weight that is not equally divided amongst the footers. I can see the potential for GREAT problems using that method due to all of the variables involved. Sean
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