Is it worth this tonearm?

Peter,

You've already gotten many insightful responses. I do know one UNIverse owner who upgraded from DP-6 to TriPlanar. He was frankly astonished by the improvement wrought by the TriPlanar. My experience with the Atmos suggests it is worth having a very good arm, so if the budget allows...

Based on your musical priorities and your desire to set/forget when feasible, you chose well getting the Atmos rather than the UNIverse. While both cartridges respond to very fine tuning, the Atmos is more forgiving of small inaccuracies. That's a nice way of saying it's less resolving than a UNIverse, but for many listeners and many records that is probably just fine. We get extraordinary musical results from the top model, even more since some recent changes I'll be posting about, but that extraordinary resolution demands extraordinary attention to every variable. You can't get one without the other.

Best,
Doug

Peter,

Good move on the tonearm. If you haven't already, search for the thread titled "TriPlanar Tips". There are many fine-tuning tweaks and even one or two safe usage tips that aren't mentioned in the manual. Most of them are discussed there. The TriPlanar page on Thom Mackris' web site is also very helpful.

Don't let the TriP's in-your-face complexity put you off playing around with all the adjustments. However much or little your ears decide to make use of them, you'll be more comfortable with the arm if you're confident of how everything works. Having all those doo-dads visible and touchable actually makes it easier.

Sonic differences between tables? Oh yes. Often more so than between tonearms IME.

I'll strongly second Audiotomb's recommendation of the Loricraft RCM. It's been discussed many times here and on Vinyl Asylum, there's really no comparison with a VPI or any similar machine. The Loricraft (and one or two others) employ an entirely different method for applying vacuum to the record surface. It's much quieter, provides a stronger vacuum, produces less static buildup and eliminates cross-contamination via the vacuum wand and felts - because it doesn't have any. It's expensive, naturally, but I wouldn't trade mine away.

Once a record is truly clean, there should be no need to wet clean it again. A simple dry brush before/after each side should suffice. The trick, however, is getting it truly clean with NOTHING left behind. There've been some excellent threads here by Justin Time discussing the challenges of achieving that.

We're in the midst of trying some new cleaning fluids. Our previous standard is being challenged by the new formulas recently introduced by AIVS. In our tests so far, going on two weeks, Jim Pendleton's formulations are doing a better job in a couple of areas. I'll post separately when we're done testing different combos, but so far we're pretty happy.

Swampwalker's system provides an integrated, you-are-there sensation for the music he listens to that's really satisfying. Paul and I both have pretty high sensitivities to certain artficial flavors and colors. His setup has none of those. It might not do large scale classical or big rock quite as convincingly, but for his music it performs beautifully. I could listen to it for hours and hours, and I did!