Dear @melm : You are rigth, I as any one else are listening to many different levels of any kind of distortions developed at each one system link and each one of us #" like " the kind of distortions that let to enjoy the MUSIC the nearer it can to what comes in the recording grooves and nearer to live event.
When I said that that tonearm is " wrong " that certainly does not says sounds bad. As a fact several times with out know about we are listening to " wrong " things that sounds really good. So wrong is not sinonimous of bad.
Many years ago I had an experience with my SAEC straigth WE 8000 tonearm and my Dynavector XV-1, let me explain you: I try to listen this tonearm/cartridge combination using the SAEC protractor and due to the unique aligment characteristics determined by SAEC was almost imposible to align perfectly because the Dyna must be all the way back in the ceramic small headshell and the cartridge/tonearm wires " impeded " to mount it at satisfactory mind of. So I decided to use the SAEC 506 tonearm straigth ceramic headshell, no offset. Was aligned " a la VIV " and the result was that sounds very good but after a couple of hours i change it and mount it in the 506 and then in the 8000 again and even that sounds good what I detected was a " trouble " with the tonal balance that I try to fix it but with out success. The cartridge return to the 506. I don’t own those SAEC arms that are beautiful made with very high quality bu overall are bad performers ( no pun intented. )
In many threads many times I posted that: differences between any price level room/system quality level performanc e belongs to its higher or lower kind of distortions, so is clear for me what you stated.
From some time now my common sense takes my audio decisions and if something is wrong as the VIV I don't care that could sounds good I don't want it. I already posted: why should I have something that I already know is wrong?.
R.