Suspended vs. nonsuspended TT?

Sayas, the Rega is a fine table as used one recently in Austin at the Texas Audio Society meeting with one of our preamps and wires.....Active air suspension is fine, but your TNT merely uses air springs with no correction. Think I would rather have a Rega on a Machina Dynamica Nimbus active air base than the TNT.....See www.machinadynamica.com for the Nimbus base as well as what I use here at CTC Builders under installations of note......

haven't heard the rega with the goo you describe...i am sure it sounds wonderful. my point was and still is that a rega table has very little to seperate it from vibrations and consequnelty it has very poor bass response, less air than many tables and consequently less resolution. Too much outside vibrations getting into the play back is my experience. i have owned a number of rega 3's ranging from luster arms to rb300's in 50 and 60 hz motors, different colors, with and without dust covers with grace f9e's, f9rubies, koetsu rosewood and i can't remember what else. additionally, one wall mount attempt, been on cement floors, wood floors, cement walls, wood walls, drywall with metal studs and wood studs.

one set up did a particularily good job of resolution and it was a lustre arm on an older table with a koetsu rosewood in a cement room using the long wall with monitors on stands. that was the best and it still didn't give up the resolution of other tables i have listened to playing music.

if i ever get the opportunity i would like to listen to a isolation table like you are describing. i know that there are some tables designed for neutron microscopes that could do a very good job of isolation. maybe spending a few grand on something like that will get a rega floating some sound and providing more resolution than the average rig in the real world.

Sayas, the Rega isn't quite like my Rockport, but using it with the $900 Machina Dynamica Nimbus active air base makes for a heck of a bargain....The Rega I heard in Austin sure didn't look like much, but on a wall shelf it was very very musical....I was so impressed that I am planning on buying one to use at the CES this next January as we'll be sharing with Parasound, Greybeard, ACME Audio and Machina Dynamica....I won't drag 550 pounds of Rockport to the show and the Nimbus air base under the Rega will allow more information through.....Ten years ago just after I bought the Rockport I bought one of those Radio Shack portable CD players and found that it sounded so much better when placed on the Rockport with the active air suspension working....There was so much more low level detail....I recall telling Andy Payor of Rockport this and he said it must be hard to change CDs with the player spinning around on the platter :-) There is nothing like an active air suspension in retrieving low level information....I asked Geoff Kait of Machina Dynamica to join us in our room in 2001 and he said I would like the Nimbus under my transport and I was so impressed I took it home after the show....Looks more than strange with the gravity servo being barbell weights, but it works.....Guess I was a little hard on your table, but was delivered an Aries with a bad bearing for the CES in 1999....You weren't very nice to the Rega either I suppose......

Bob Crump
TG Audio/CTC Builders/DDR Mfg

I find the direction this thread is going,to be ridiculous. How can anyone compare a $300-$600 Rega to these Rockports, Clearaudios,TNT's, etc? The Rega is a very good table in it's price category. They are not competition to Rockport or TNT in any way, including price. They are totally different market targets. If you want to discuss suspension vs non-supension, then pick two tables at a similar price range. What's next, NAD receiver vs Tenor OTL?

TWL, that question is not out of line. The NAD products are quite musical and reliably built, especially for their price range. As such, i can see them being compared to the musicality of the Tenor's, etc...

Hahahaahah. Obviously, i was joking on that one folks. I think that sometimes we get carried away in wanting to believe that we can find phenomenal bang for the buck products and then hold them up to others that are SOTA ( State of the Art ) no-holds barred products.

While i agree that there is an obvious point of diminishing returns, the fact remains that some products do compete with more expensive stuff and do it quite well. This is either due to the excellent design work of a company that knows what they are doing and wants to sell a lot of product or a company that simply overcharges for a product that costs little to manufacture. A perfect example of this is the Shelter phono cartridges and the "has-been" that was retagging them and selling them for 3 - 4 times the price.

While a good product is a good product at any price, obviously, some ARE "bargains" considering what they do and how little they cost. For sake of clarity, i'm not specifically talking about the Rega TT's although many seem to feel that way about them. Sean
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