Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

@intactaudio Your statement certainly was attuned to endeavours I have been loyal to.

A Long response, I know, but not too long for a 30 year summary. 

It could have easily been a Calendar that was required to time the read 😂.  

@atmasphere 

The metric that needs to be discussed here is the lesser of the two evils which makes us wander into the land where ears become the ultimate arbiter.  At that point individuals are allowed to have differing opinions and the vast majority here are respectful of others who have taken parallel paths.

Any offset is picked up by the cartridge as noise or coloration depending on the motion involved.

I see two possible situations here.  Lets assume a 3° Zenith error at a given point on record.  In the case of a traditional tonearm rigidly fixed in all but the lateral and vertical planes, the misalignment will cause a force in a direction that the tonearm is prevented from moving so it will need to be transferred to a direction that movement is possible which will come at some sonic penalty.  Now consider the same situation with a tonearm that allows 'some' movement in a third direction.  I'll agree that this will also add some sonic penalty as you describe but also see the possibility that it could be a much more benign penalty than in the first situation.   Now take this a bit further to the extreme of a severely misaligned cartridge and we have the discussion at hand.  The idea of mistracking reminds me of the mike tyson quote “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”  Thinking you are going to have a setup that won't mistrack is akin to planning on getting into the ring and not getting hit.

I suspect the longer arm, like any other longer arm, suffers the issue of greater mass. You may well need a cartridge of lower compliance. 

Oh boy.... there is another can of worms in audio that needs to be re-examined.   I presume you are referring to the tonearm resonance.  Everyone here should go ahead and add weight to the headshell to double the effective mass of their tonearm and see if their resonant frequency changes by the predicted factor of 1.4.  

@rauliruegas 

Do You think that an observer with good equilibrium objective/subjective can in any way trust on that even after " thousands of observations?, makes no sense at least to me.

Can you give me one "objective fact" in audio that is not firmly based on a solid foundation of subjective experiences?

dave

Thinking you are going to have a setup that won't mistrack is akin to planning on getting into the ring and not getting hit.

You expect trouble when designed analog equipment! It is for that reason- vibration (whether from the LP, airborne or otherwise) that you want the rigid coupling I mentioned, as well as preventing any play in the arm bearings or platter bearings- otherwise that play will result in the arm not being where its supposed to be: directly over the cartridge.

The rigid coupling, ie, Tonearm and Chassis rigidly fastened and connected via precise Geometry, using a coupling material that has exceptional damping / dissipation property is very advantageous.

To have a Platter and Tonearm interfaced and functioning with the tightest mechanical tolerances in place for the critical interfaces and offering a friction free operation is also very advantageous.

Combine the above two advantageous conditions together and the outcome is a mechanical interface that is close to being absolute in optimisation for the function. 

When the advantageous conditions are present, it enables other concerns to be considered, of which some are taken quite serious and others not too much.

Concerns such as:

Is the Mounting of the Assembly fit for the role, where minimal environmental impacts are controled to the point of not being detrimental.

Is the Eccentricity of the LP able to produce Wow that has a detectable presence and is a detriment to the signal being produced, as the result.

Then there are the micro issues, such as the impact of drag.

Is the Wow able to cause friction/drag, that is detrimental to the signal produced. .

Is the styli not being at the same height/plane as the Vertical Pivot Bearings Axis, able to produce drag/friction that is detrimental to the signal produced.

Is the condition of the styli, (not ultra polished) able to introduce friction/drag, to the point it is able to impact on the function of the armature and even worse tonearm, producing a condition that is detrimental to the signal .      

Mijostyn, You wrote, "You have to be kidding me Lew. After all I have said about measurement microphones, digital signal processing, and crazy microscopes? I measure everything that affects the performance of my system. If you don’t you are out to sea without a compass." And then in a later post you intimated I must be getting senile because I "forgot" you own the above gear. I forgot nothing; none of that stuff is useful for measuring IM or Harmonic or other kinds of distortion, which is what I specified in my prior statement. What you measure is frequency response curves (or rather your hoping for a flat line). All I am saying is that you (and me too) don’t really know how our gear is performing in our home systems, with regard to that kind of analysis of distortion in the electrical sense of the word.

Earlier also you fretted that the TAE created with an underhung tonearm will cause phase anomalies. What about the phase anomalies you and I happily live with, caused by dipole speakers where the rear radiation is 180 degrees out of phase with the front? What about phase anomalies possibly generated by the very steep slope hi- and low pass filters you told me you use at the crossover point between your subwoofers and your Sound Lab panels? (I believe you mentioned 80db/octave, done in the digital domain.) And finally, phase differences between the two channels, one vs the other, such as that theoretically caused by high TAE in a tonearm, ought to be much less audible or troublesome to the listener, compared to  phase anomalies within one channel, because the content of the L vs the R channel signals is always different anyway. The brain is taking in two complementary but distinct sonic signatures and melding them into a stereo image. This is also not to mention that studio recordings were seldom done in such a way as to preserve phase, top to bottom, anyway. So I would blow off phase anomalies as a major "problem" arising from TAE.

One of the Viv owners who commented in this thread, pointed out that the base of the tonearm is drilled out such that it can in fact be anchored to a plinth. Even if one doesn’t use those mounting points, the Viv sits on an arm board which is part of the plinth and is at least tenuously moving in unison with any perturbation to the bearing/spindle/platter assembly. So, worst case scenario, the coupling would be superior to using an outboard arm pod. (No offense meant to anyone who uses an outboard pod; I sure don’t want to open that can of worms again.) If it were me, I would bolt the base to the arm board and forgeddaboudit.