actually, the basic guts (of vintage tables)...with a modern arm, improved plinth, and LOMC cartridge can compete on the highest level of tt performance. I agree with you, Mike. By now, the idler-drive genre has enough ink on them without me adding anything new to the topic. What is little talked about is the "guts" of direct-drive tables. Many vintage DD units suffered from bad plinth design with inadequate solidity (often mounted to crappy plastic or flimsy particle-board), and isolation from resonance and interference of electronics. I like the bare bone approach, that is, to take the motor out of the chassis/plinth/enclosure and mount it to a something solid, material of your own choice, and extend the cable by at least couple feet to the stock chassis or an enclosure that contains the electronics/motor-drive/control-console/power-supply. In fact, the Monaco Grand-Prix, Teres Certus, or early Micro-Seiki DDX/DQX-1000 takes the same approach. Almost ALL DD tables can be improved this way. Mike have done that with your Technics SP-10Mk3 with the slate plinth, same concept. There are many other brands of superb DD tables with great potential out there can be had for very reasonable price and can be converted this way with good result. I no longer have any Technics tables but I still got great results with many mid-priced JVC, Pioneer, Kenwood, Yamaha, etc... I haven't tried it on Sony and Denon tables yet because they require mounted a tapehead to check platter speed so the mounting is tricky. Modern belt-drive turntables have been doing similar things by separating the motor from the main plinth. Once again, Micro-Seiki was ahead of their time with their RX-1500 and beyond. It's only logical DD will go that direction. The days of having everything in a box for DD tables seems less attractive to me now. Once again, I went off topic from tonearm discuss so I guess I should really create a new thread. Anyway, just a thought. _________ |
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I haven't gone through and read all the posts so I might have missed some similar thoughts and sounding repetitive. In theory a linear tracker simulate the tangency of the record cutter but one must remember a cutter is an ACTIVE device, it forces a straight line across the record in order to cut a record but a linear tracking arm is a PASSIVE device that is tracking in the mercy of the record groove with its angles and turns! In real world tracking, most center holes on records are not absolutely centered, very often few millimeters off! Bam, there goes tangency out the window.
As one commenter points out tangency is based on the cantilever - shape of the stylus tip too if you want to be anal about it - in relation to the groove NOT the arm. Bear in mind the cantilever is attached to rubber, hence a compliant system! So imagine the cantilever is constantly navigating with side force of the off center record thrusting it laterally banging on left and right and you tell me if that's perfect tangency or not! Of course the perfect table for a linear tracking arm to work on would be something like the Nakamichi Dragon or TX1000 that self corrects off center record hole but how many people have a table like that?
I think the reason people prefer the sound of linear tracker over pivot arm is that tracking error is still lower than many pivot arms, especially the shorter one that's not optimized in overhang and anti-skating adjustment. I don't have problem with people preferring linear tracker over pivot but just don't be so militant about it and keep insist on telling me linear trackers have perfect tangency! It does not! It's still a compromise and so is life. To me all the fiddling is distracting me from playing record but your mileage may vary of course.
I mean, just think about it, a stylus is attached to a cantilever and then attached to rubber and then attach to an arm and then attach to a counterweight all the way at the end and you expect the geometry to be perfectly tangent through out playing one side of a record for 20 minutes straight? We know how dramatic the overhang is off by one millimeter can sound with pivot arms so imagine a record with a one millimeter off-centered hole, not uncommon, played with a linear tracker. Perfect tangency? NOT!
Anyway, I used to have problem with servo pseuso-linear tracking arms because the obvious objection to the constant self correcting nature of its design but crabbing across the record with tiny arcs but I have since come to appreciate it more because it's much less stressful on the cantilever and stylus and navigate the groove much easier in REAL WORLD situation. It's really a pivot arm with a uni-directional gliding base, if that helps the mental picture. (uni-direction in typical designs not counting Pioneer's PL-L1000 bi-directional arm) The problem with the sound of many servo design is not the concept but the execution and many don't use good bearings and if look at it as a pivot arm it's no where near the quality of top notch arms like the Graham, Triaplanar, SME V, etc... I have a Yamaha PX-2 and it works wonderfully and it's better than many servo arm in its mechanical quality. Of course not in the league of top notch pivot arms but the lessening of tracking error (not perfect tangency) does pay dividend. So I hope in the future, someone can design a "servo tonearm mounting base" that allows one to mount any pivot arm that can servo control the base's lateral movement to lessen tracking distortion (lessen not eliminate) Wouldn't that be something cool? Hell, if I mount a 12" arm on such device the tracking error would be so low to not even worry about such a thing!
I forgot the mention another solution such as the Thales arm that is a combination of pivot and linear tracker by self adjust to tangency in a PASSIVE system. Very clever indeed. But the only problem I can think of is that by adding another pivot right above the cartridge might affect the structural integral of the arm and having extra linkage might hinder its fluid movement. Again, nothing is perfect but I can at least appreciate the innovation. Bravo!
Speaking of 12", I honestly thing a 12" arm makes sense unless you are in the rigidity is everything crowd. There's no perfect arm and I can accept that just like life and a well desing 12" seems to be a good compromise.
At the end of the day, I just want to play some tunes and not worry about whether the damn needle is tangent or not. That's it for now.
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Deronarm: "Cutting lathe/cutting head can not be compared to a linear tonearm at all. A cutting head is not tracking a groove. It is engraving it into a virgin vinyl. That's why it's active. It doesn't care for the groove margin - it literally creates it."
That's exactly the point!!
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By the way, I just read through more posts by Dertonarm and really appreciate your insight from the point of view of both design and operation. It's refreshing to read pieces that are not constantly going back to the same old pornographic sonic analysis like audio magazines. Hats off to you.
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The effective mass is 11g, which is not that high and similar to a Rega. Notice the actual Magnesium arm is less than 7 inches. And there's a counterweight to offset the weight of the guiding arm. There's an Thales AV arm, which I think means Aluminum Version, that has a higher effective mass of 20g, perhaps more suitable for heavier cartridges. http://www.tonarm.ch/index.php?page=productThe soon to be released "Simplicity" arm is indeed very elegant as opposed to the awkward looking Thales. It's the modern answer to the Garrard Zero-100 with better build quality and precision. Simpler and cheaper but elegant. I am waiting for someone to come up with a clever headshell mechanism that's adaptable to arms with detachable headshell. And I am not talking about the RS Lab headshell but one that has self adjusting tangency mechanism. I await future innovations. _______ |
Well said, Dertonarm. Well said.
A tonearm is a mechanical device, let's stick to talking about its mechanical operation and design issues, regardless of one's sonic impression either pro or con. Unless someone can articulate well enough to relate the sound to the tonearm's physical attribute, it's still mostly a bunch of impressionistic ramblings. I am sure many people just can't wait to jump on talking about how wide the "soundstage" or "PRaT" or other pornographic details. Spare me.
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Dertonarm wrote, "The day a linear tracker shows up which does address the obvious issues of the mechanical model, I am in the first group to buy it. And I will do so before any "sound report" or sonic description by anybody."
Bravo! I will join you if I can afford this potential design, surely will be expensive! Thanks for sticking to mechanic discussion. No, you did not spoil the party. In fact, you have lively up the party. The great filmmaker John Cassavetes once wrote to a writer friend, Energy bursts out of your writing. I've been thinking about you. The unknown adventurer. Blasting forth through concrete. Blast them. Then love them. Then blast them again... You see, the blasting and loving is the same thing. Your passion for audio and science is applauded.
The Thales arm and the new sibling Simplicity arm look to have this potential but I do have concern about its extra bearings for the guiding motions to achieve geometric accuracy and hopefully not in the classic case of when the cure is worse than the disease. Regardless, I applaud innovative thinking.
Personally I have given up on the perfect tonearm. I like both genres, as long as people don't tell me their only reason for not liking pivot arm is because a linear tracker tracks more like the cutter head. Maybe I should just go digital. :-)
Just kidding!
This has been an exhilarating thread!
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If we read Dertonarm's full quote or at least the line before that then it's really not disturbing at all. He wrote:
"My sonic descriptions were done to "illustrate" the sonic results of the bearing rigidity and the mechanical problems in linear trackers. Otherwise you will find very few sonic statements in any of my posts."
I very much appreciate him for not getting into prose of sonic pornography of typical magazine writings. The cause and effect in the design and execution of an audio product are rarely discussed and often veered off into the writer's neurosis. Overall I've been really enjoying this thread from users of all genres of tonearm with their valuable experiences and "sonic results."
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Darkmoebius "Seems to me that the highest end has gotten more expensive, larger, and not much easier to use. Some of the components at the link above don't seem too easy to setup or use."
Agreed. I used to enjoy ogling ultra expensive gears, much like pornography to audiophiles. But I no longer get that kind of pleasure anymore and much of what I see is vulgar and decadent. If a piece of gear is art, I still see it as functional art that should still serve a purpose, much like a well designed architecture. But I am seeing less of the functional part and much like a jumble of expensive parts put together to impress than to express. Very soon we will have a paper plate manufactured by Tiffany.
I don't have problem with people enjoying them much like people looking at luxury car magazines. And once a while there are few products that are innovative and really have something to say and keep my interest. For the most part, I don't even have the urge to go to a dealer to check it out in person. And not to mention confronting the snobbery of most dealers. Again, it's just me. Maybe I am getting old...
Sorry to be so off topic. My apologies.
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We as audiophiles can only control what we can reproduce in what is captured, that is, we didn't record the damn sound. Since we have no control over the recording, the absolute sound is unobtainable. However, it is possible to get close to what the source is, that is, master-tape quality. What good is absolute sound when we cannot feed the reproduction chain with absolute sound? Besides, a lot of recordings are far from absolute and very often terrible sounding. I rather listen to a crude recording of Charlie Parker than a pristine recording of a Sheffield Lab record. How many times do I have to suffer through the recording of bats flying out of a cave?! Sometimes it's not a question of "does it sound like you are there" but "do you want to be there." Some audiophile recordings have music so bad that I wouldn't want to be there even if you pay me. Unless someone who can control every step of the chain from the microphone to the speaker end, the absolute sound is not possible. You can, however, get the absolutely toe tapping sound.
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I love cilantro. I usually make soup out of it with left over rotisserie chicken. I wish I can get that kind of flavor in audio. |
