CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2019 12:45 am Post subject: Mag Lev Turntable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUlPN2A_r-g

https://www.maglevaudio.com/

gjaky · Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Posts: 2802 Location: Budapest, Hungary

Interesting, although the plate was waggling all the time, that is not so good...

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2019 8:39 am Post subject:

gjaky · Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Posts: 2802 Location: Budapest, Hungary

It is interesting as a concept, but for sound this does not do much I think. Being mag lev makes the plate friction nonexistent, so eliminating the rumble of the plate bearing -which is good. But this is a direct drive plate after all, which on the other hand has some sort of unevenness in the angular velocity since the drive electronics have finite pole number -which is bad.
All the high-end turntables use heavy plates with belt drive to overcome the later problem. Manufacturer Clearaudio (and others probably too) has a good compromise, as they also using magnetically levitating plate, but they are still using a ceramic axle as a guide for the plate, so they can use belt drive. One can argue that the belt drive still cause friction even with the ceramic axle drive but then you can use multiple motors (symmetrically positioned) to even out the belt’s side deflection force, or even better use magnetical coupling for the main plate underneath...