Dear @herman : No one can't argue almost nothing against an audiophile subjectivity and I respect a lot your opinion as the opinion of other gentlemans.
I have " thousands " of first hand experiences ( I could think similar to you. ) and longer tonearms always looks so fine against the shorter ones and along that many listening sessions could tell us the longer tonearms makes a better quality performances with any cartridge but through the years I learned that that " dream " is not totally true and for very good reasons ( not subjective ones. ).
Even that some people as fsmith does not like but SAT designer is rigth on this regards, please read carefully here:
https://swedishat.com/SAT%209%22%20vs%2012%22%20paper.pdf
Additional to all those in a longer tonearm its effective mass/inertia moment is higher too than in a shorter one and that mass goes from static to Dynamic mass during playback and the whole cartridge is " seen " that more heavy mass ( from counterweigth to headshell) in dettriment not only of the quality of sound but against the cartridge it self.
Now, the in theory advantage of lower tracking error could be not a truly advantage against all those but by numbers not you not @karl_desch or any one else including me can't really be aware of it due to its very low differences after calculations.
Here using LÖfgren A alignment numbers says:
Average %distortion: 9" = 0.43% 11" = 0.34%
Max Error° : 9" = 1.9 11" = 1.5
Max distortion% between null point: 9" = 0.64 11" = 0.51
Groove after groove the distortion level is changing and from one groove to the next the differences are only 0.03%: no one but a bat can heard it so we can't be aware of it groove after groove no matters what. Nera the null points that differences of distortion goes down to 0.00...%
So from where comes that " subjectivity " advantages of the longer tonearms? from the higher developed distortions ( any kind. ) generated by the longer tonearms.
Yes, this is a different point of view but we have to stay conscious of what really is happening down there.
Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.
I have " thousands " of first hand experiences ( I could think similar to you. ) and longer tonearms always looks so fine against the shorter ones and along that many listening sessions could tell us the longer tonearms makes a better quality performances with any cartridge but through the years I learned that that " dream " is not totally true and for very good reasons ( not subjective ones. ).
Even that some people as fsmith does not like but SAT designer is rigth on this regards, please read carefully here:
https://swedishat.com/SAT%209%22%20vs%2012%22%20paper.pdf
Additional to all those in a longer tonearm its effective mass/inertia moment is higher too than in a shorter one and that mass goes from static to Dynamic mass during playback and the whole cartridge is " seen " that more heavy mass ( from counterweigth to headshell) in dettriment not only of the quality of sound but against the cartridge it self.
Now, the in theory advantage of lower tracking error could be not a truly advantage against all those but by numbers not you not @karl_desch or any one else including me can't really be aware of it due to its very low differences after calculations.
Here using LÖfgren A alignment numbers says:
Average %distortion: 9" = 0.43% 11" = 0.34%
Max Error° : 9" = 1.9 11" = 1.5
Max distortion% between null point: 9" = 0.64 11" = 0.51
Groove after groove the distortion level is changing and from one groove to the next the differences are only 0.03%: no one but a bat can heard it so we can't be aware of it groove after groove no matters what. Nera the null points that differences of distortion goes down to 0.00...%
So from where comes that " subjectivity " advantages of the longer tonearms? from the higher developed distortions ( any kind. ) generated by the longer tonearms.
Yes, this is a different point of view but we have to stay conscious of what really is happening down there.
Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.