I’m a bit frustrated with where this discussion is going.
Christian, weren’t you one of the big proponents of active under tts in those initial Herzan threads in 2012-2013?
I believe these very criticisms or objections were put then, but there was a certain railroading of the view that Herzan was so uber comprehensive in its effects that a moving platter was dismissed as not an issue.
Indeed I put some of these reservations fwd myself, but the consensus soon formed amongst you and Mike especially, that if it’s good enough for electron scanning microscopes, it’s good enough for top tts.
Maybe those who now have moved on from active need to re read their posts from that period.
Marc, respectfully, if you're frustrated maybe it is because you are, I think, mistating the evolution of that thread and that analysis. Christian and Mike are not the only audiophiles to use active isolation platforms under their turntables. I think it is quite common to see active isolation platforms under suspension-less turntables. I have seen several Brinkmann Balances on Herzans, for example. There also are OEM solutions where a turntable is integrated with an isolation device (e.g., Doehmann Helix 1 integrated with Minus K).
I think Step One was that it makes sense to place suspension-less turntables on some sort of active isolation or pneumatic isolation platform. The question then became whether it makes sense to do so with turntables which have suspensions of some kind.
PeterA and you and others raised many times the Step Two concern that the motion of the suspension of the turntable would "fight" with the active isolation mechanism of the Herzan and create some sort of feedback loop.
I had a very long and detailed conversation with the CEO of Herzan, in which I explained the operation of a turntable with a suspension and described in detail the concerns expressed about the active isolation fighting with the turntable's suspension. She said she understood everything I was saying, and that the active isolation function of the Herzan operates so quickly that there would be no "fighting" and no feedback loop.
So, to me, that conversation dispatched the
theoretical objections to placing a turntable with a suspension on an active isolation platform.
Step 3 was -- and still is -- the actual experimentation with turntables with and without suspensions on active isolation platforms. That is where we are now.
Christian decided ultimately that the TechDAS did not sound good on the Herzan. Just because many people put Brinkmann Balances on active isolation platforms doesn't mean that every turntable without a suspension will sound better on an active isolation platform. The American Sound turntable is an example of a turntable without a suspension which does not sound better when placed on an active isolation platform. (As we know Mike is trying to establish whether the American Sound turntable sounds less good when placed on a Herzan because of design elements specific to the Herzan which might not apply to a more highly-evolved active isolation product, like the Taiko.)
As is usually the case in this hobby it is difficult to make generalisations which will attract majority support. There are too many individual set-ups and individual preferences and unique combinations of components.
What I don't understand, Marc, is why you are trying to establish a dogmatic view that active isolation does not work under turntables. It is as though -- now that you have concluded for yourself, in your idiosyncratic situation, that the Stacore outperforms active isolation -- you feel some need to secure a consensus that your preference is correct as a matter of general applicability. I don't understand why you feel compelled to vanquish the proposition that active isolation might be the right solution for some turntables.
