Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm


I am trying to do my due diligence about this arm. I am just having a hard time getting my head around this idea of zero overhang and no offset. Does this arm really work the way it is reported to do?

neonknight

The hardness of the metal in the bearing is not the only issue. The fineness of the machining is fundamental.

@clearthinker 

Yes. The bearings in the Triplanar are tiny.

The problem you have with any arm with a short arm section is any record warp will be audible as a speed variation and will affect the bass impact since the tracking force changes with warp and bass modulation. To get around that the bearing must be in the plane of the LP. Think about two people carrying a couch upstairs. Who is carrying the most weight?

@mijostyn   The tracking error of the Viv varies as the effective length chosen. I f I wanted the Viv I would instinctively go for the 9 inch version, although quite a number of commentators have said they prefer the 7 inch (6 inch anyone?).  But whichever you choose I rather doubt the tracking error would be as gross as the 5 degrees you postulate.  Nevertheless I am curious that a quite a number of listeners say they cannot hear the resultant distortion on the 7 inch Viv.  I think it would be interesting to play sine waves on that and a conventional 9 inch arm using a line contact or similarly radical stylus and see if there is audible distortion.  It may be easier to perceive it on a steady state signal than with music.

To more realistically mimic the tracking geometry of the Viv, you would also have set your cartridge to the correct underhang.  Might actually be a fun experiment...

@mijostyn   Warped records are a menace.  I have very few as I have rejected them unless the programme is very desirable and the disc very rare.  But in fact the Aeroarm plays severely warped records better than bigger and heavier arms.  Typically a bad warp throws the pickup into the air, particularly on 45 or 78 rpm.  Because its moving mass is around a quarter of a light 9 inch arm and the moment of inertia much less because the effective length is only one third, every warped record I have stays in contact with the record.  I concede it doesn't sound very nice, but it does keep playing!  Not really a virtue I am inclined to crow about.

As to carrying a couch upstairs, indeed.  Although that is much less of a strain than a heavy large speaker, such as my ML CLX Anniversaries that I recently had re-furbished and where at 72 years of age I had to help the carrier at the low end; we had one corner each.  The guy at the high end had a much easier time.  There was no room on the stair to fit more than two at the bottom.

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.