In all fairness, there are great DD and great belt drives. But the Technics example given is going to be substantially superior to most belt drives around the same price range. You have to scale the price ladder a bit before you start to find belt drives with the general range of speed accuracy. Even then, the Technics mentioned here is better than most belt drives even in the $1k range. Remember, most of these lower end 'audiophile' decks are nothing more than a 3/4" or 1" piece of chipboard painted and mated with a low quality motor with substantial speed drift/error. Compared to the Technics SL1200, which is a heavy cast aluminum chassis with heavy dampeniong components to prevent resonance, and it has a top notch motor with quartz locked speed controls - providing for incredible speed stability. The Technics weak point is the resonant arm it uses. But you can swap out that arm for a better one, and have a 1st rate turntable pretty easily. However, very high quality arms with low resonance/coloration and full selection of adjustments and top quality bearings, are usually quite expensive.....
Personally, I use a belt drive, but it's a rather incredible quality one. In fact, it is that high end Marantz that was linked in this thread by Zumbo earlier. It has a superb quality motor with dead on speed accuracy, an incredibly low resonance chassis and platter, top notch main bearing system, and the tone arm is an extremely high grade one, with very low resonance, jeweled bearings with tungsten set points, and every part of this table and arm are machined to the finest level of quality by Clearaudio(it's not really a Marantz - it's a high end table made by Clearaudio in Germany and distributed by Marantz with a Marantz badge on it. Despite what Marantz's page might say - they did not design the first mechanical thing on this unit - they may have specced the shape of the table top and that's about it - every part on there is a known Clearaudio component from the tone arm to the motor to bearing set on the platter). I don't usually go for this type of gear anymore(I used to use high end amps, pre-amps, etc.), but a vinyl system is completey mechanical, and I searched down the best value/quality mechanical system I could find the for dollar, and that Marantz was it, I believe, in the range I searched. Many may consider that too much for a tt, many might consider it too cheap, but it fit my needs perfectly and it has no readily discernible coloration(s) that I can easily detect.
-Chris
