Wooden or acrylic?

For someone who's had turntables forever, I seem to know very little about them. When a company makes an acrylic TT, generally speaking, and it gets five stars, they bring out a wooden version - Roksan Radius in particular - that makes four stars. I wouldn't of thought the materials they're made from could make much difference? Why is this the case?
 
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Turntables can be quiet resonant, (motor, quality of bearing, and a rotating platter) a stylus in contact with a record is also resonant. You have to remove the unwanted resonance from the equation to get good, accurate replay. The materials you use and how you use them are going to effect this. Turntables don't seem to be an exact science that will produce a nice flat response if you dial in a certain set of properties, there are a lot of variables. Platter A works well with chassis material B but not so well with C, and so on...
 
If you look at the Linn forum, PP, you will see they debate the sound of different plinth woods.

For Regas, several people sell metal subplatters to replace the plastic ones.

Pro-Ject use acrylic quite a lot, but I believe the platters are MDF on the budget models (or am I thinking of the Rega RP1?).

Michell use a acrylic/vinyl mix for their platters, claiming it matches a record's 'impedance'. Seems fairly plausible to me, though cannot say I understand the science.

Given that many musical instruments are made of wood, and none (I think!?) is made of acrylic, I think perhaps acrylic is more inert and therefore lends itself to production of a neutral sounding item. I think the WHF fave, the Clearaudio Innovation, is made of both wood and acrylic, so maybe that is an ideal solution?
 
Funny that isn't it. I think much is down to perceived appearance rather than any changes in sound quality.
Prior to my current setup I had a Roksan Radius, still got it in fact as they are not selling very well, this is the 'wooden' variety. I auditioned both and could hear no difference between them. Bought the 'wooden' one as it was cheaper!
 

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