19-Nov-2016, 11:03
I don't see any advantage in this design.
It may appear to the non-technically minded to have advantages for the TT not to be in direct physical contact with something, but there will be forces needed to support the weight, magnetic in this case, air pressure in others, and these forces are no more or less susceptible to vibration transmission than a properly engineered spring based isolation system.
All record players pick up spurious vibration at the cartridge. Since the cartridge picks up a difference between the generator movement (connected by a long thin rod to the stylus) and the cartridge body (bolted to a long resonant tubular structure mounted onto a plinth of some sort).
The spurious vibration can come from the plinth along the arm to the cartridge body and through the platter bearing, mat and disc to the stylus. Acoustic coupling is possible to the any part of the record player, but particularly the arm.
When I was doing research on record player design in the 70s we only looked at the cartridge output as a measure of how effective the design was, since anything which did not effect that was considered irrelevant.
It was interesting how many things had some sort of effect on the cartridge output!
Nothing has changed since then in the basic requirements of a record player and the means of achieving it. All designs produce spurious output, and fixing one limitation exacerbates another. My conclusion in the end was to just "tune to taste" such that the colourations added are the ones personally enjoyed.
Modern TTs tend to be more taking advantage of modern manufacturing than improving anything fundamentally IMO, and are stupendously expensive, possibly because they are in fashion with the richest branch of the hobby.
A Garrard 401 cost £72 made in pro+ quantities in the mid 70s, which equates to around £300 to £550 in today's money depending on whether one uses US or UK inflation since then...
It had no arm or plinth but motor units today rarely perform any better than it did.
It may appear to the non-technically minded to have advantages for the TT not to be in direct physical contact with something, but there will be forces needed to support the weight, magnetic in this case, air pressure in others, and these forces are no more or less susceptible to vibration transmission than a properly engineered spring based isolation system.
All record players pick up spurious vibration at the cartridge. Since the cartridge picks up a difference between the generator movement (connected by a long thin rod to the stylus) and the cartridge body (bolted to a long resonant tubular structure mounted onto a plinth of some sort).
The spurious vibration can come from the plinth along the arm to the cartridge body and through the platter bearing, mat and disc to the stylus. Acoustic coupling is possible to the any part of the record player, but particularly the arm.
When I was doing research on record player design in the 70s we only looked at the cartridge output as a measure of how effective the design was, since anything which did not effect that was considered irrelevant.
It was interesting how many things had some sort of effect on the cartridge output!
Nothing has changed since then in the basic requirements of a record player and the means of achieving it. All designs produce spurious output, and fixing one limitation exacerbates another. My conclusion in the end was to just "tune to taste" such that the colourations added are the ones personally enjoyed.
Modern TTs tend to be more taking advantage of modern manufacturing than improving anything fundamentally IMO, and are stupendously expensive, possibly because they are in fashion with the richest branch of the hobby.
A Garrard 401 cost £72 made in pro+ quantities in the mid 70s, which equates to around £300 to £550 in today's money depending on whether one uses US or UK inflation since then...
It had no arm or plinth but motor units today rarely perform any better than it did.
Devialet Original d'Atelier 44 Core, Job Pre/225, Goldmund PH2, Goldmund Reference/T3f /Ortofon A90, Goldmund Mimesis 36+ & Chord Blu, iMac/Air, Lynx Theta, Tune Audio Anima, Goldmund Epilog 1&2, REL Studio. Dialog, Silver Phantoms, Branch stands, copper cables (mainly).
Oxfordshire
