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

@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.

Raul, when you align an OVERhung tonearm and set headshell offset angle to zero, as you did out of necessity, that is the worst possible scenario, so it’s no wonder the SQ was poor. For an overhung tonearm, there can be no null points on the surface of an LP unless the headshell is offset at an angle, as determined from any of the standard algorithms. You can prove this with reference to the Pythagorean Theorem that we all learned in high school. That situation is not comparable to using an UNDERhung tonearm and zero headshell offset angle. I seem to be coming off as a defender of the Viv; I am not necessarily taking that position. I only have concluded there may be some good things about underhang and zero headshell offset and the resulting pattern of the skating force. I am urging an open mind. Even the "distortions" that you consistently preach against may be worse with the standard pivoted tonearms than with an underhung tonearm assuming the latter is properly set up. I only wish there was an underhung tonearm that does not also have other unusual features. For example, my RS Labs has many issues that may affect its SQ and have nothing to do with its being underhung (raised unipivot way above the LP surface, dangling counterweight that is free to swing back and forth, decoupled headshell). The Viv has its pivot floating in an oil bath and an arm wand that looks prone to resonate, albeit the oil bath might provide some damping. I have never heard the Viv, but I can report that despite its craziness, the RS Labs can sound very colorless.

Yamaha has recently introduced a new turntable, built to look like the GT2000 but with belt drive, I think. It comes standard with an underhung tonearm with a zero offset headshell. From photos, this appears to be a nicely built tonearm that is otherwise in keeping with modern concepts of tonearm design (i.e., lacking other features of questionable merit). If Yamaha would market that tonearm as a separate product, I would be most interested,

By the way, Neon, your fears of using the MC2000 in your DV tonearm are groundless.  I've mounted the MC2000 in my DV505, and the results were excellent.  Right now, it is mounted on my Triplanar, but not because I was unhappy with the DV505. 

@lewm , you are talking about the GT5000 for $8K. It has a straight underhung arm, a 10 lb platter and a 2 phase AC synchronous motor. They brag about no feedback control but do not mention what the motor is driven with. The arm looks very stiff but it's vertical bearing in above the record surface and it is stable balance. No suspension. Not my cup of tea.

@clearthinker, OK, 3 degrees then. The problem is with signal imaged to the center. One channel becomes out of phase with the other at high frequencies which will hinder the formation of the image. The higher the frequency the worse this gets. It is even worse with modern line contact styluses. I am sure you could see this with synchronized sine waves and a scope.

Then problem with warps is the pitch variation that they cause. Any good modern arm should be able to track most warped records fine. I will never use a turntable w/o vacuum clamping. The lack of pitch variation gives the music a solidity of presentation and makes the effect more realistic. With a clean record one could easily confuse it with a digital file.

IMHO the CLXs are the best speaker ML ever produced. 

Mijo, I am talking about underhung tonearms as a separate subject relative to the Viv tonearm.  Whether the GT5000 is totally to your liking or not is not the point, but I did notice that the tonearm design on the GT5000 does have the technical flaws you mention.  As previously discussed, the placing of the pivot at the level of the LP surface, or lack thereof in this case, has relevance only with warped LPs.  To which you may reply all LPs are warped to one degree or another.  To which I would reply that really tiny or minimal warps are also really tiny and minimal problems in terms of altering VTF.  Anyway, neither of us is going to buy the whole turntable just to get an underhung tonearm.  All that said, I would be very curious to hear the GT5000 in a good system.