Unipivot vs Linear Tracking

Wow! How could I miss this thread?

On LTT and Unipivots: my personal experience is the LTT has the advantage and it is audibly superior to pivoted arms in general.

The most obvious difference is the soundstage. LTT throw a huge and wide 3D stage extending both laterally and depthwise. The pivoted arm on the other hand, has a soundstage which is somewhat "curtailed/curved" at the back.

The 2nd difference is in the dreaded end-of-side distortion, which though some good pivoted designs are able to reduce significantly, they cannot completely be rid of some mistracking. The soundstage may sound a little smaller or confused with pivoted designs, but this does not happen with an LTT.

The issue with LTT is associated with the pump. I run mine 24/7 outside the listening room so as to not interfere with the music. It is audible, especially if your system is quiet. Setup of LTT will depend on the design of the arm. Once the armbase is set, lining up a cart on a LTT is much easier than a pivoted - its either ON or OFF.

As to whether it is worth going for a LTT, if your budget fits, absolutely. That is not to say that the good pivoted tonearms don't sound good, they do and I could live with my Schroeder even if I didn't have the Conductor.

James
With the Conductor, air pressure is not critical as much as volume of air flow since it is a low pressure design. There is some low level "hiss" from the air escaping the air beam, which is not audible from the listening position. Cleaning of the air beam should be using alcohol swipes, and avoid the small holes on the beam. There's also a dust filter on the air pump, which is a simple to maintain.

For high pressure designs - Air Tangent, Walker, Kuzma, ET, etc. the pressure, moisture/oil removal and the smoothing tanks are critical. I've only seen the Walker close up, and his latest design takes care of all these parameters for relatively trouble-free playback.

As to how pressure impacts on bass - my gut feeling is that this is rather a relationship between the air's mass and design, and the system's (tonearm/cart) resonant frequency, rather than the pressure. The LTTs I've heard have not lacked bass at all, in fact I think they reproduce bass more "accurately" since theoretically there's no bearing chatter. You'll be surprised how similar the Schroeder and Conductor sound, both carbon fibre arm tubes.