What Does It Take To Surpass A SME V?

There’s a first time for everything. After all these years of reading and appreciating Atmasphere’s excellent and very informative posts it happened: disagreement.

**** Back in the old days when the SME5 was first made, there were only three top arms; the SME5, the Graham unipivot and the Triplanar. ****

The mighty ET2 was left out of that exclusive club. Never owned the Triplanar, but have owned the SME5 and the Graham and still own the ET2. In the ways that matter to me, and with the many cartridges of both the MC and MM variety that I have used, the ET2 comes out on top. Still available and still beats the SME5.

Atmasphere, thanks for your response.  Dover does a much better job than I could explaining the technical details and reasons why I hear what I hear. What I hear is always the bottom line for me and the ET2 has shown itself to be a fantastic arm. Clearly superior to both the SME and Graham as concerns tonal naturalness, sound staging and bass accuracy, if not power. With the possible exception of a Decca London, never had any issues with cartridge compatibility.

Mijostyn, as far as I can tell, you have not missed one single opportunity to bash the ET2 in the various discussions here; and, by extension, suggest that I (and others) can’t possibly be hearing what we hear. Yet, as far as I can tell, there has not been one single indication from you that you have ever owned one, or even heard one. You seem to base your very strong opinions on theoretical considerations. If I am mistaken about this, please correct me.

I know what I hear and am confident in what I hear. For reasons that I don’t need to get into here, I also have a pretty darn good handle on how close (or not) the sound that I hear gets to the sound of the real thing. My system is not SOTA, but it is more than good enough to let me know that the sound that the ET2 produces is superior to that of the SME5 (and the Graham). That is the basis of the OP’s question. So from that standpoint it’s end of story. Moreover, I have heard both the SME5 and the ET2 in enough other good systems to be able to confirm that what I hear in my own is not the result of, as you suggest:

**** Anyone who thinks these arms sound good has work to do on their system and needs more experience listening to reference systems. ****

I would never suggest that the ET2 is the world’s greatest tonearm. However, there is no question that it is a good sounding arm….at least. Otherwise, neither are the SME, Graham and others that I have owned “good sounding arms”. Really?

You clearly use very lofty standards to judge the quality of sound and that’s great, but those standards seem to me to rely much more on technical and theoretical considerations than anything else. Not my idea of fun (and truth). I suppose that is one of the great things about this hobby. Different approaches with different goals.

Good listening and Happy New Year!

Still waiting to know if mijostyn has actually spent any time with a properly set up ET2, or any other linear tracker for that matter.  Hope you feel better mijo, some nasty bugs out there,  

@neonknight, don’t be too quick to deem your thread “useless”. Putting aside the responses that you feel have strayed too far from your original question, you have received at least half a dozen opinions on arms that others feel “surpass the SME5”. Others have opined that not only is the SME5 a fine arm (I agree), that it is not easily surpassed. So, not sure why you feel there is no value to you in the responses to your thread. Having said all that, and putting aside my own recommendation, a sure fire way to surpass your SME5 and not take a chance on taking a sonic step backwards, is to heed Raul’s recommendation to have your existing arm rewired with AudioNote silver wire (or similar) in a continuous run to your preamp. The elimination of all those solder joints and dissimilar wire in your phono interconnect will most likely be a revelation. It was for me. Good luck.

Thank you, Dover.  Reading recent posts I have been mystified by the suggestion that the RB300 could be considered to offer performance on a par with, or even close to that of the SME 5  I have owned both and the Rega, while offering good performance for the money (as you state) is not in the same league.  The one area where I think some might argue that the Rega is “better” is bass performance.  In spite of its generally excellent performance, my experience with the SME in my system and the several systems that I have heard it in has been of an overblown bass frequency range.  According to my tastes and my idea of accurate, of course.  More bass is not necessarily better bass.