Schroeder vs. Triplanar VII Sonic Differences

Raul, SirSpeedy,

Thanks for your feedback on the Kuzma linear tracking arm. This seems a little out of my budget anyway.

I thought your comment about sounding different, but not necessarily better, as well as pivot arms having more guts, interesting. Since the Schroeder is not a pivot in the sense of a Graham or Triplanar, but more of a "floating design" in the sense of an air bearing, does the Schroeder sound lean in the direction of an air bearing more than it does the traditional metal to metal contact pivot designs?

Raul,

By the way, my phono stage is the phono section of a CAT Ultimate MkII preamp (47dB of phono gain and 26 dB of line gain. The unit is pretty linear with good bass response).

Dear Andrew: The 73db of gain in your phonopreamp seems right for medium to high output cartridges. The low output ones and the very low output can't be handled with out noise/distortions.

Now the gain is only one of the characteristics in a good phonopreamp, noise/distortions is other one and the most important/critical is the accuracy of RIAA eq.. Per se, this inverse RIAA eq. is the reason why the phonopreamp exist, this inverse RIAA eq. ( in many ways ) define the quality sound reproduction of the phonopreamp against the recording process where was used the RIAA standard for any LP. So the Phonopreamp inverse RIAA eq. must to mimic the RIAA standards, any deviation in the inverse RIAA standard ( and we are talking here about fractions of decibel ) not only put colorations/distortions on the sound but more important give us a " phantom " from the original recording with additions/remove of " sounds " that were not or were in the original recording.
That deviation most be in the : +,- 0.05 db from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Where are your CAT? or yours?

Of course your phonopreamp or any other could or could not achieve that spec but as faraway it is the great that " degraded phantom " and as near it is as near you are from what is recorded on the LP, that is what we are looking for.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Hi Andrew,

In response to your question about any leanness in the Schröder due to its bearing design, I cannot answer directly, other than to point you to Doug's comments about the sonic differences between the Triplanar and the Schröder. I know that as an engineer, you are trying to correlate design and construction with sonic attributes, but you need to think about this like a MUSICIAN. At the end of the day, we're listening to music and NOT to a design.

Frank's design is much more complex than meets the eye. I've heard quite a few fixed bearing tonearms with less grunt than a Schröder for example. Compare the Schröder in all ways to a Triplanar. You'll have to really stretch yourself to characterize the differences between these two fine arms. We are at that "angels on the head of a pin" stage in trying to differentiate between these two world-class tonearms.

With respect to air bearing linear trackers, I can't comment on either the Air Tangent or the Kuzma, but I have lived with the ET-2 for about 10 months. I agree in principle with Raul's comments (they're different - not necessarily better). The ET-2 can be tuned to a very high level of performance, but at the end of the day it's just a bit too "wispy" for my tastes. No doubt, the Kuzma (which resembles an ET-2 placed on a steroid diet) improves on this.

To me, there are two far more important issues relating to air bearing linear trackers - one of which Sirspeedy alluded to - that of ergonomics, and what extreme you will go to in order to spin a disk.

At the end of the day, record playing has to be fun. For me, things like periphery clamps and air bearing linear trackers take the act of playing a record from ritual into sheer drudgery. Your mileage may vary, and I'm not about to dictate what extremes you are comfortable with.

As far as periphery clamps and air bearing linear trackers are concerned, there is an even more important issue - that of potential stylus or cantilever damage.

With respect to periphery clamps, the last thing I want to do is to worry about landing the precious stylus of my ZYX Universe between the knife edge of the clamp and the available section of the lead-in groove of the record - especially in a dimly lit room during late night listening when the last record side has taken me into one of those altered states we all get into.

Sorry ... not for me. Re-tipping a ZYX Universe or Dynavector XV-1s is NOT my idea of fun.

There's the further issue of an air bearing, linear tracking tonearm sticking on the bearing due to either pump failure or air line contamination and deposits. Now, these are remote possibilities, and I never experienced these with the ET-2, but they are very real possibilities.

Perhaps Kuzma, Air Tangent, et. al. have addressed these issues, but I have trouble believing that they are as failsafe as either a conventional bearing or Frank's frictionless bearing. Consider the effects of a 35-40 gram mass of tonearm / slider assembly (air bearing linear tracker) deciding to stop DEAD IN ITS TRACKS while the record grooves try to drag your cantilever across the record. Not for me, thank you. Again, maybe your risk tolerance is greater than mine.

I'd love to hear the comments of owners of both the Kuzma and the Air Tangent (as well as other air bearing linear trackers for that matter). The ergonomics, pump placement, and other related issues are fatal flaws for me, but the issue of cantilever safety and how they are addressed are design issues I'd love to see explored on this forum.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

Thomashesig:

Congrats on your acquisition of the Phantom tonearm

How do you like it so far?

George

I can appreciate the concerns expressed over the complex operation of the Kuzma arm. Long ago, I owned a Maplenoll table with an air bearing arm and air suspended platter. It came with a cheap aquarium piston pump and nothing else (no dehydrator, no surge tank, etc.). This is a far cry from the Kuzma arm I saw at CES which is beautifully built, comes with a very serious looking air pump, quality braided air lines, beautifully machined surge tanks, etc.

The Maplenoll was a nightmare. It wasn't a question of whether it might lose air pressure and cause the arm to seize, it was just a matter of WHEN that would happen (within five minutes? an hour?). But, when that did happen, the worst that I experienced was that the record would start to skip. I am sure the cantilever was deflected to a point where the needle would jump out of the groove and return to an earlier groove. I actually never experienced permanent damage to the cartridge (then again, it was not my current Lyra Titan) or to the record. The fear of a horrible catastrophe from the Kuzma arm binding might be a bit overstated. Then again, I could never relax while listening to the Maplenoll, just because I was alway anticipating trouble.