$650K Turntable?

kach22i · Apr 22, 2011

tangential drive

I just had to look it up, and found this:...................(1981-1982) Stereo turntable

http://beocentral.com/beogram8000

The Beogram 8000 used a new system called “Tangential Drive”, a form of direct drive that used “linear motor” technology to give smooth, silent and controllable power to the turntable. In simple terms, the motor coils placed a magnetic field at a tangent to a metal drum under the platter. This had the effect of pulling the drum through the coils in a manner that was smooth and free of “cogging” and “stepping” effects. This layout was at odds white the techniques used in the typical Japanese direct drive turntable, which tended to use hall-effect motors based around rotating magnetic discs and multiple electronically-commutated coils in an arrangement that was fundamentally not “stepless”.

While B&O’s tangential drive could have been regulated by analogue means alone, the presence of the microcomputer presented an opportunity to control the process digitally and so add the precision of the microcomputer’s quartz crystal to the formula. By sensing the rotating speed of the platter with an encoding ring fitted to the turntable shaft, the microcomputer could be included in a “closed loop” system, permanently ensuring perfect speed accuracy. As B&O’s turntables were frequently bought by musicians, it was desirable to include a “pitch” adjustment. This was easily included in the Beogram 8000 and for the first time a speed display was fitted so that the amount of pitch correction could be recorded and easily returned to. The system allowed the speed to be adjusted in 0.05 RPM steps at 33 1/3 RPM and 0.07 RPM steps at 45 RPM. The display also showed when the speed control servo could not lock by flashing all the digits on and off.

A quirk of the tangential drive system was that when the driving coils were not energised the platter was left to turn freely. Because of the high quality bearings used, this would have meant that after the machine was stopped it would have taken a very long time (about half a minute) for the record to stop turning, making it difficult to remove. To counter this possible nuisance, an electronic brake was fitted that used the driving coils to bring the platter to a swift halt. The braking force was applied progressively to give smooth results and the overall effect was similar to that observed when a conventional belt-drive turntable is switched off.

Mike Lavigne · Apr 22, 2011

it appears to be a serious effort at a state of the art turntable. and as always, execution is the most significant issue to performance. OTOH it seems to be a step back from my perspective on the 'best practices' in terms of going beyond current efforts at top performance.

--corian is not a good choice for a plinth. typically i don't care for single material plinths. ideally they need to be constrained layered affairs to have the best energy and life.

--belt drive is a poor choice of drive systems. and based on the limited info and the look of the belt i'm skeptical of the result.

--no air bearing. not essential, but preferred.

--hard to say how good the arm might be without listening. Andy Payer built a number of linear trackers before he did the Sirius III arm....so if this is a first effort at a linear tracker unlikely to be superior to other efforts. there is no reason a linear tracker cannot be wonderful; although there are challenges to overcome.

who knows how it all works together. i'm skeptical of the benefit of the video system; more likely to compromise ultimate performance rather than improve it.

the best sounding turntables, arms and cartridges are the ones that are simple and elegant; which this is not.

audioguy · Apr 22, 2011

FrantzM said:
rave about the "dark"background and its "orgaanic" sound and its unmatched rsolution of fine details .. etc of course it is more dynamic than CS 24/96 or whatever digital they will come up with and SACD for good measure and ...

Wow! I don't know what you do for a living now but based on the above, I see High End Audio Reviewer in your future !!

Mike Lavigne · Apr 22, 2011

Phelonious Ponk said:
It appears that the line between what's best and what's ridiculous isn't fine; it is broad and indistinct. A turntable at more than half a million dollars found that line for most of this pretty elite crowd, but there are a couple of hold-outs. What would challenge their faith? The half-million dollar DAC perhaps? The half-million dollar power cable? I guess we'll know soon enough, as the high-end industry seems set on finding the pressure point of every last audiophile with that kind of money to spend.

Tim

to me price means absolutely nothing until value is established.

i don't see a $650,000 piece of gear when i read Amir's 1st post, i see an attempt at building a great turntable. but what is it really? do the parts equal something special?

the fact is that, as it appears to be put together, it's likely potential does not excite me. so who cares what sort of crazy price someone might assign to it? maybe if i heard it i would actually care about it's price.

an example is the 'Million Dollar' system put together at the 2002 CES. it was Wisdom speakers, Rowland Electronics, Synergistic cables, and an EMM Labs digital player. it was set up in an auditorium. it was mostly unlistenable, a small sound in a big space. who cares how much it costs? asking a 'Million Dollars' for it has no significance to anything....and is no sign that Armaggedeon is upon us.

i guess my point is that an asking price for anything is no reason to get your panties in a bunch. if a product does actually do something worth buying significantly better than anything else.....now it's price becomes an issue.

the other issue on price is how many are built. if it's a 'one-off' and there will never be another; then maybe it cost close to $650,000 to design and build. maybe if they sell 5 the price is $250,000 or if 10 then $175,000. i really have no idea whether this is a real world product or a one-off effort; but without knowing that it's hard to comment on the price. again....this does not address price-value, but may explain cost.

RogerD · Apr 22, 2011

I am sure this is a beautiful turntable but what bothers me and raises a red flag is the drive belt a buna o-ring material?

"belt drive is a poor choice of drive systems. and based on the limited info and the look of the belt i'm skeptical of the result."

As the gentleman pointed out above

That said I am glad to see the platter is made of solid gold weighing 250 ounces. When the piece of art is hung on the wall at least i can melt down the platter and recover half my purchase

LL21 · Apr 22, 2011

Mike Lavigne said:
to me price means absolutely nothing until value is established.

i guess my point is that an asking price for anything is no reason to get your panties in a bunch. if a product does actually do something worth buying significantly better than anything else.....now it's price becomes an issue.

Totally agree.

FrantzM · Apr 22, 2011

Hi

I would have expected a hearty good laugh and unanimity on the absurdity of this device price... Some of us are willing to take it seriously ... One has to wonder what can make a Turntable cost $650K when the lathes that cut the LP don't seem to cost that much .. Or do they? Seeing this I realize how naive I have been thinking that audiophiles would eventually find a gear whose price they deem, unanimously, absurd, nonsensical .. I have lowered my expectations and am waiting for the U$250 K TT.. (without arm) .. And please don't rain on my parade and tell me it already exists.

Do we want to run a poll?... I think it is this year.. No ? Next year for sure I will bet on it

microstrip · Apr 22, 2011

Mike Lavigne said:
to me price means absolutely nothing until value is established.
(...) i guess my point is that an asking price for anything is no reason to get your panties in a bunch. if a product does actually do something worth buying significantly better than anything else.....now it's price becomes an issue. (...)

I agree with you.
May be tomorrow Amir will tell us he made a mistake

and the real price is USD 65000.00. But it will not change a bit in our conclusions - the important think is "significantly better than anything else" for some people.

Mike Lavigne · Apr 22, 2011

FrantzM said:
Hi

I would have expected a hearty good laugh and unanimity on the absurdity of this device price... Some of us are willing to take it seriously ...

it seems to me that on What's Best Forum we should at least consider the performance merits of products that aspire to being the best....prior to jumping on the price issue. obviously; there is a wide disparity of levels of commitment to state of the art performance in fine audio on this forum; and it's logical that some will immediately jump on the price (that is all they will see) without considering the merits. i say that only as an acknowledgment of reality, not in a position of judgement.

i'm not defending this product and i agree the price is crazy. but i'm also interested in any technology which can move my reference......i am open to learning about and appreciating cutting edge stuff. in this case, this product does not appear to be cutting edge.

what about a $500 bottle of wine? $75k watches? $1m vintage Ferrari's? $2m sailboats? $5m personal jets? or other crazy stuff? why don't we call them absurd too? of course, the answer is that some do, and others respect those accepted icons of taste.

One has to wonder what can make a Turntable cost $650K when the lathes that cut the LP don't seem to cost that much .. Or do they? Seeing this I realize how naive I have been thinking that audiophiles would eventually find a gear whose price they deem, unanimously, absurd, nonsensical .. I have lowered my expectations and am waiting for the U$250 K TT.. (without arm) .. And please don't rain on my parade and tell me it already exists.

Do we want to run a poll?... I think it is this year.. No ? Next year for sure I will bet on it

Lee · Apr 22, 2011

Mike Lavigne said:
it appears to be a serious effort at a state of the art turntable. and as always, execution is the most significant issue to performance. OTOH it seems to be a step back from my perspective on the 'best practices' in terms of going beyond current efforts at top performance.

--corian is not a good choice for a plinth. typically i don't care for single material plinths. ideally they need to be constrained layered affairs to have the best energy and life.

--belt drive is a poor choice of drive systems. and based on the limited info and the look of the belt i'm skeptical of the result.

--no air bearing. not essential, but preferred.

--hard to say how good the arm might be without listening. Andy Payer built a number of linear trackers before he did the Sirius III arm....so if this is a first effort at a linear tracker unlikely to be superior to other efforts. there is no reason a linear tracker cannot be wonderful; although there are challenges to overcome.

who knows how it all works together. i'm skeptical of the benefit of the video system; more likely to compromise ultimate performance rather than improve it.

the best sounding turntables, arms and cartridges are the ones that are simple and elegant; which this is not.

Mike,

My experience with non-belt tables has not been great. Neither has my experience with air bearings. They are very fussy and don't sound great imho. Linear tracking also is one of those things that seems like a good idea but you get "spidering" as the arm move across the platter. This is no better than a well designed unipivot.

microstrip · Apr 22, 2011

FrantzM said:
Hi

I would have expected a hearty good laugh and unanimity on the absurdity of this device price... Some of us are willing to take it seriously ... (...) Or do they? Seeing this I realize how naive I have been thinking that audiophiles would eventually find a gear whose price they deem, unanimously, absurd, nonsensical ..

Frantz,

Unanimity, unanimously... In the WTB forum?

Phelonious Ponk · Apr 22, 2011

FrantzM said:
Hi

I would have expected a hearty good laugh and unanimity on the absurdity of this device price... Some of us are willing to take it seriously ... One has to wonder what can make a Turntable cost $650K when the lathes that cut the LP don't seem to cost that much .. Or do they? Seeing this I realize how naive I have been thinking that audiophiles would eventually find a gear whose price they deem, unanimously, absurd, nonsensical .. I have lowered my expectations and am waiting for the U$250 K TT.. (without arm) .. And please don't rain on my parade and tell me it already exists.

Do we want to run a poll?... I think it is this year.. No ? Next year for sure I will bet on it

Well, we didn't get all the way there, Frantz, but we came pretty close, closer than we have before. This is my point. I'm guessing that every audiophile, no matter how well-heeled, has his"please...." point. Is it the million dollar turntable? The 10 million dollar DAC? If you're making the Dubai oil man's $25 million a day is there, even then, a point at which you recognize that a specific category of device can only be worth so much, regardless of its "quality," or will you spend more just because you can? These are the questions I'm wondering about. I have no questions about the actual value of this turntable; it's worthless to me. But for $650,000 one should be able to commission a one-off design from the best turntable designer in the world, have the thing fabricated by hand in a machine shop, and then pay the designer a bonus large enough to compel him to destroy the designs so no one, no matter how wealthy, can ever have a turntable like yours. And this table may actually be very close to being that exclusive. Is it worth it? In the end, something is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. No more, no less.

What price, exclusivity?

Tim

Mike Lavigne · Apr 22, 2011

Lee said:
Mike,

My experience with non-belt tables has not been great. Neither has my experience with air bearings. They are very fussy and don't sound great imho. Linear tracking also is one of those things that seems like a good idea but you get "spidering" as the arm move across the platter. This is no better than a well designed unipivot.

Lee,

as i said, execution of design is always key.

there are many very good sounding belt driven turntables; all of which i think would sound better with a top level direct drive system. in fact; as i experience better and better (read lower distortion) tonearms, the technical limitations of belt drives is more and more evidant.

which direct drive turntables have you expereinced?

as far as air bearings; my experience is only with my Rockport. i've also heard the Walker at shows.

which air bearings have you noticed as 'very fussy'? my air bearing has never once had any issue in 11 years.

as far as linear tracking; some less 'heroic' versions do 'spider'. but with the proper air bearing design, that can be essentially eliminated. you should listen to a Rockport Sirius III linear tracker sometime; it has the most solid, spacious, three dimentional presentation you will ever hear. and it still retains it's advantage of perfect alignment all across the record. whereas the best designed pivoting tonearm is still only correctly aligned at 2 points.

which linear trackers have you heard?

mep · Apr 22, 2011

Mike-I'm curious as to what technical limitations of belt-drive tables you are hearing now with better tonearms. Thanks.

Mark

Mike Lavigne · Apr 22, 2011

mep said:
Mike-I'm curious as to what technical limitations of belt-drive tables you are hearing now with better tonearms. Thanks.

Mark

a friend has a high end belt driven turntable which i've heard many times. another local friend has been working on some prototype arms and has mounted them on this friend's turntable, as well as my direct drive 'The Beat' turntable. as i hear improvements in the arm design, i'm hearing more and more the rubber band effect of the belt drive system compared to the solidity of my 'Beat'. sustained notes are noticably 'waw-waw'ing' on the belt drive. previously arm distortion was covering that for the most part. other arms have hinted at this issue, but as one part of the chain approaches linearity any weak point gets exposed.

turntables are 'systems'. when you get it out of balance with one spectacular low distortion piece the illusion of reality actually gets farther away. sometimes distortion and noise is friendly in the sense that it covers design limitations.

a properly designed direct drive system is simply more linear. this is not to say that there are not belt drive systems that are better than the one on my friend's tt.

since i've observed my tt with the same arms and now with the same prototype, it's easy to hear that issue. it's never been as evidant as it now appears to be. the lesson really is how much distortion is in almost all tonearms.

amirm · Apr 22, 2011

Mike Lavigne said:
it seems to me that on What's Best Forum we should at least consider the performance merits of products that aspire to being the best....prior to jumping on the price issue.

Truth to be told, the reason I post the thread wasn't the price as much as whether its features do represent the state-of-the-art and once established, then figure out if it would up to that high retail cost.

Admittedly, I set it up wrong with the price in the title and everything went in that direction.

In that sense, I appreciated your explanations. Would love to know the best approaches for each area. You mentioned one but not the others. Is direct drive preferred to belt for example?

mep · Apr 22, 2011

One of the rags just had a last page interview with the princple behind Pink Triangle. He said tonearms have gone from having around 30dB of resonance down to 5dB. I am looking forward to getting my SP-10 MKII up and running, but I'm having terrible luck with getting a plinth built. I have detailed my woes with the first two jacklegs that were going to build a plinth for me. The third one just crashed and burned today so I'm back to square one. There is no shortage of people masquerading as woodworkers, but there is a shortage of real craftsmen.

I had a guy I know who has a giant woodworking shop and at least $100K of woodworking tools build just the plinth (no cutouts) out of solid planks of maple with the top being made of tiger maple and the four sides banded with tiger wood maple. The top and bottom were supposed to be planed so they would be perfectly flat. He didn't plane the top and bottom. He sanded them with a belt sander and they were far from flat. He only banded 3 sides and the plinth wasn't square. I took 4 hours off from work today to take the plinth to another woodworker to plane the top and bottom and cut off the banding and square the table. To make a long story short, he wouldn't run it through the planer because he thought it would take chunks out of the maple. He sanded it with a belt sander and made it better, but still not flat. He only squared 3 out of 4 sides. I now have an expensive chunk of maple that I have no use for. I think my next step is to buy a chunk of billet aluminum and have it machined.

Mark

mep · Apr 22, 2011

amirm said:
Truth to be told, the reason I post the thread wasn't the price as much as whether its features do represent the state-of-the-art and once established, then figure out if it would up to that high retail cost.

Admittedly, I set it up wrong with the price in the title and everything went in that direction.

In that sense, I appreciated your explanations. Would love to know the best approaches for each area. You mentioned one but not the others. Is direct drive preferred to belt for example?

Amir-You kind of did the same thing with the Boulder Amp thread you started before and I made a very similar comment then to what Mike made this time.

Mark

microstrip · Apr 22, 2011

amirm said:
Is direct drive preferred to belt for example?

The best source I own is direct drive and belt driven - it is a reel to reel Studer A80. The direct drive capstan drive is by Studer and the best belts are by the TapeProject.

I have no experience with the new high-end, high quality direct drives but I can guess that no technology should be considered better than the other - both have problems and it will be a matter of the whole turntable system and the compromises the designer is making. Final choice will also be an user preference.

My Forsell turntable has an huge air bearing flywheel and the type of belt I use affects the sound of the turntable. Some people prefer belts having some elasticity, others just want the extreme, like silk belts. I usually use a type of dental floss, with low elasticity.

Rim drive (a motor having a rubber pulley driving the platter directly from outwards or inwards) is also very fashionable these days.

Derainer · Apr 23, 2011

Dear friends of high end audio,

please let me explain something about this Phonomaschine and the price. I’m designing, developing and manufacturing this Phonomaschine (TT) all by myself!!!

I started more than7 years ago with researching and studying the market. Since 3 years I’m manufacturing and testing this TT.
I have taken the best parts, treat them and put together all the best components, what high tech industry offers today.
(Sorry, but my English is nor very good.)

I’m not a Company, like all the others. I have no employees, just two friends, who work with me.
They both work at a big electronic-company and they designed a totally new electronic-control-unit with special microcontrollers.

This company designed and developed special microchip-technology to run this machine. For example: the stepper-motor for the tangential unit does 800 steps/one turn.
The especially for me new developed microprocessors-chips now treat this motor with 256 micro steps.
So we are now able to move the tangential unit very smooth, with the smallest movement of 0,000024 mm !!!

The Platter has magnetic bearings and it has 20,5 kg of weight and underneath is a magnetic coded ring with 24.000 impulses.
This help us to get a speed tolerance of only 0,01 %
And, yes it works very smooth with the two frequency controlled motors and the drive belts.

That may be enough highlights for now.

Something to the costs: I spent about 180.000 $ for all that material and electronic developing.
And it took me more than 3.000 hrs work until today. More than 500 hrs we will need to complete this machine.
If you now count all this together, you will understand, why this TT will cost that much.

And this is also important to know: It is just a study, only this one exist, and perhaps it will be manufactured, only by order, and only one per year.

But maybe, I will keep this Phonomachine VPM2010-1 only for myself.
Because this project is the only one and the greatest target of my life.
If you now call me a crazy fool, I agree with you.
But please be patient with me and my English, until this machine is completed.

With my best regards
Rainer

P.S. don't bother about the actually cartridge, it is just for testing.
I don't now jet, what cartridge I will use in the future.
If you have some suggestions for me...

$650K Turntable?

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