Interesting overview by Jonathan.
Touches a few sensitive points.
I’ll let you watch and comment
.
Touches a few sensitive points.
I’ll let you watch and comment
.
Turntable history by OMA’s Jonathan Weiss
- Thread starter iaxel
- Start date
I believe that he's correct, but I would not want one of his cast iron plinths!
Clearly good and bad examples of turntables exist, whichever drive system they might have, so it's not good to generalise. But, he put his finger on it when he spoke about the minute and rapid speed changes that can occur with a turntable that does not have a pretty solid drive characteristic. The human brain (the real organ of hearing) is relatively insensitive to slow changes in pitch, but very sensitive to rapid changes in pitch and phase, which is an evolutionary thing that enables us to hear and locate tiny sounds around us - a matter of survival in times gone by when we were stalked by bears and wolves. Some direct drive turntables introduced just these sorts of rapid pitch changes (unmeasurable with standard W&F tests) which were musically disturbing, so we do have to be careful about sweeping generalisations. Direct drive is often better, but only when well implemented. The latest Technics direct drive designs are truly excellent, but older Technics decks are (in my opinion) flawed because of their discrete coil motor topology which even Technics admitted introduced 'cogging', a simple term to describe small and rapid variations in torque and rotational speed. Technics have now replaced that old motor design with one having exactly the same sort of overlapping flat wound coils as Trio/Kenwood used 40 years ago in such wonders as the L-07D! I treasure a 30 year old Kenwood KD-990 turntable, which in musical terms is a bit like a top-end Nottingham Analogue deck, but with more of a sense of 'drive' and 'propulsion' - exactly what this OMA chap alludes to in the video.
Over the years it has been cheaper and easier to design and build good belt drive turntables, and the resulting quiet drive made idlers obsolete. But, now we have plenty of people who can improve classic old idlers like Thorens, Garrard, Commonwealth etc and make them run pretty quietly, but in truth they are never as quiet as a good direct drive turntable. A good, well-serviced idler can be entirely on par with a good direct drive deck, but it takes effort, expenditure and much patience to get to that point. My old Kenwood KD-990 is rather like a really good idler deck, but with added silence.
Clearly, there are belt drive turntables that can match or better top-flight direct and idler driven decks, but they do tend to be massive, and massively expensive. I'm not in a position, domestically or financially, to try any Techdas designs, but I'd love to hear one, and to pitch it against a new Technics SP-10R in a decent plinth, with a decent arm.
Clearly good and bad examples of turntables exist, whichever drive system they might have, so it's not good to generalise. But, he put his finger on it when he spoke about the minute and rapid speed changes that can occur with a turntable that does not have a pretty solid drive characteristic. The human brain (the real organ of hearing) is relatively insensitive to slow changes in pitch, but very sensitive to rapid changes in pitch and phase, which is an evolutionary thing that enables us to hear and locate tiny sounds around us - a matter of survival in times gone by when we were stalked by bears and wolves. Some direct drive turntables introduced just these sorts of rapid pitch changes (unmeasurable with standard W&F tests) which were musically disturbing, so we do have to be careful about sweeping generalisations. Direct drive is often better, but only when well implemented. The latest Technics direct drive designs are truly excellent, but older Technics decks are (in my opinion) flawed because of their discrete coil motor topology which even Technics admitted introduced 'cogging', a simple term to describe small and rapid variations in torque and rotational speed. Technics have now replaced that old motor design with one having exactly the same sort of overlapping flat wound coils as Trio/Kenwood used 40 years ago in such wonders as the L-07D! I treasure a 30 year old Kenwood KD-990 turntable, which in musical terms is a bit like a top-end Nottingham Analogue deck, but with more of a sense of 'drive' and 'propulsion' - exactly what this OMA chap alludes to in the video.
Over the years it has been cheaper and easier to design and build good belt drive turntables, and the resulting quiet drive made idlers obsolete. But, now we have plenty of people who can improve classic old idlers like Thorens, Garrard, Commonwealth etc and make them run pretty quietly, but in truth they are never as quiet as a good direct drive turntable. A good, well-serviced idler can be entirely on par with a good direct drive deck, but it takes effort, expenditure and much patience to get to that point. My old Kenwood KD-990 is rather like a really good idler deck, but with added silence.
Clearly, there are belt drive turntables that can match or better top-flight direct and idler driven decks, but they do tend to be massive, and massively expensive. I'm not in a position, domestically or financially, to try any Techdas designs, but I'd love to hear one, and to pitch it against a new Technics SP-10R in a decent plinth, with a decent arm.
Because I don't believe that you need that much mass in any plinth; and there are much cheaper materials that also deal with vibration and noise in an acoustically benign and ordered manner. Also, I don't like the look of the OMA plinth.
Given that my DIY Lenco plinth weighs about 70 lbs and the OMA grey iron damped plinth is about 90 lbs the OMA weight doesn't concern me (plus I'm a fan of mass damping for machine tools and turntables). I can appreciate you're not a fan of the cast iron. I kinda like it, but for that much money appearance definitely matters.
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Yeah I think so. Seems pretty high. I think it would do quite well in a contrained layer damped plinth for a lot less money. OMA's market seems to be people that want turn-key good sounding systems--source, amps, horns that are complementary. Cost seems to be less of a concern.
Plinth is $11k IIRC, and the SP10R is another $11k, for a total of $22k w/o the tonearm.
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