New Transrotor TRA9 tonearm coming soon

@audioquest4life , THAT is a really nice arm! I love the tonearm lock on the rest. I hate tonearms floating around while I'm trying to work on them. It is neutral balance and the vertical bearing is down low where it should be. It has frictionless antiskating and all the right adjustments. If I were on the market for an arm it would definitely be on my list.

That arm belongs on an Oracle turntable!

@lewm , It is either because they have not edited their catalog yet or perhaps they had a few leftovers.

SME is most definitely out of the tonearm market, for now at least. I am betting they will reverse that in the future. Their tables have too much competition in the US market. They are too expensive here. But they did sell an awful lot of arms. That is a lot of money to loose. I have not heard of anyone buying one of their tables just to get the arm. 

I'm not sure the Opus would be any better than the Hyperion. Air Tight has another middle man in the way, the Hyperion has a lower effective mass and as good a stylus as it gets. My own  experience with Soundsmith cartridges indicates that they are very well balanced performers with exceptional bass and tracking. Detail is not lacking either. Differences with other good cartridges will be minor at best. If I were going to spend that kind of money on a cartridge it would be for a low output Atlas. 

I think you will find that on your most difficult records the Hyperion will sail through were the Opus crashes. The Koetsu is worse. The only MC cartridges that will track with the Hyperion are the Lyras and maybe and Ortofon or two. IMHO, if a cartridge can not track everything I throw at it, I'm not interested. This says nothing about the sound quality but with all the best cartridges it is all subjective even on your own system. But, that is why Howard Johnson made 28 flavors.