GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Analog Playback
In the Thread: Ultimate Turntable

Post Subject: A complicated subjectPosted by Romy the Cat on: 5/4/2014

I need to note that MicroTTs, American Sound and a few other TTs with very heavy palter are complicated subjects. From one perspective a heavy platter is the key. I remember years back a few years Lechintsky published mathematical equivalents of TT with all time of drives. According to his concussions (that in my view was biased toward to his own madness) if TT has platter the mass of which has the torque from motor and mass of belt/motor become negligible then all calculation and all theories are goes to toilet and TT acts as “perfect” TT, at least from rotational perspective. Sure, the heavier mass of planter is unbeatable argument and it is why the American Sound reportedly sounds “better”. (I do not have my own experience to confirm it which would be not a statement about the given TT but about the theories of high palter mass)

Still, there is gimmick on here. High mass is presumably good but how to use that high mass, or what bearing to use? It is no problem with horizontal bearing; with the moment of inertia those types of TTs have the horizontal bearing is irrelevant. The vertical bearing is the bitch however. You can’t spread vertical bearing across multiple bearing as the relationship of bearing and total mass will make the bearing not negligible. So we need to put all the mass atop one ball. That itself is perfectly manageable task but as you putt let say 120 pounds atop of a few fraction of mm surface the question is how long will it live even with best materials and best lubrication.

The answer looks like reasonable: use air or magnets and they ended are very good solution. Still I have a feeling that air or magnet suspended TT do not sound as good as in very lower bass as they could because they have no “reference to ground”. The reasonable answer would be to have a heavy platter with conventional bearing that would take care of let say 10% of platter mass and the rest to be handled by air. No one makes the TT like this unfortunately.

About the new Micro TT, I do think that this is essentially the Micro 8000 with contemporary face lift and it shall sound like Micro 8000. It might be a little better or little worse, no one knows and frankly no one would/should care. I do not know the price of this TT, It looks like $95K in Poland and I anticipate $30-$40K street price in Japan. Considering the crap that the idiots sell to each other for no leas then $100K and that sound like $160 used Thorens turntable I would put my bet to new Micro. I still feel that the price is very exuberant and might be tolerable ONLY in High End audio lunacy. The price of High End audio TT shall be no more than $5K and it is the best of them. A TT as a functional entity has no higher value and if you look at engendering efforts to make such of devise and pretend that it would be done in any other industry then it would not cost more than $5K.

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