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Belt drive vs. Direct Drive

Posted by morricab (S) on April 23, 2007 at 16:27:09

Not to stir up too much controversy but I will soon be engaging in a comparison between these two types of TTs. Now I have to qualify this by pointing out that the two TTs involved are anything but conventional.

In the Belt drive corner I have a Voyd "The Voyd" with Helius Cyalene arm. For those not familiar with this TT it is a lightweight platter, spring suspended, THREE motor, belt drive TT. The bearing is pretty conventional (ie. not inverted or exotic like ruby, magnetic or air). What is mostly special about this TT is that the three motors are those wonderful external rotor motors from Papst. They are driven by a pretty big power supply that synthesizes its own frequency. A belt goes around all three motors thus touching the platter at 3 points. The Helius arm is 10" long and has extremely low friction bearings. This is a great arm.

I have had this table for a while now and the dynamics are shocking. It is the most dynamic sounding TT I know of so far, period (with the exception of the Reference version of this same TT). Now I have not heard a lot of the great direct drive TTs (although I have heard the EMT 948 numerous times and while it is very good it is not explosive in dynamics like the Voyd). The downside of the Voyd is that it sometimes sounds a little bit "dirty" and I think this is due to the extra noise imparted by three motors. Vibration isolation from airborne or footfalls is excellent despite the very simple looking suspension. As a result the absolute "see through" factor is perhaps missing (my Benz Micro H2O, which is old, could be to blame as well so I will try a new cart for the comparison).

The direct drive contender will be the Yamaha GT-2000. This was Yamaha's all out assault on TT design (like the Kenwood L07, Denon DP-100, EMT 950, Nakamichi TX-1000, Goldmund Studio etc.). It has a massive plinth (like 30kg), a 6kg oversized platter (better inertia the reason for the oversizing?), a fully adjustable 12" arm (with VTA and azimuth fully and repeatably adjustable), and a huge DC motor with outboard power supply. Also, it has vacuum hold down.

According to information I have found the noise/rumble is better than -85db, which is extremely low. Also, apparently it can get the platter up to the right speed in about 1 second, meaning the motor has a very high torque. The only question will be, how smooth is this torque delivery as this motor is core to the performance of the table.

I am hopeful that it will have similar dynamic delivery to the Voyd but with a cleaner presentation (ie. more transparent) due to the much lower noise. We shall see.

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