DT, I was joking of course. This discourse was getting entirely too serious. For any one of us to elevate it to the level of the concepts brought forth by Copernicus or Galileo is ludicrous. Socrates, maybe.... |
DT, I was joking of course. This discourse was getting entirely too serious. For any one of us to elevate it to the level of the concepts brought forth by Copernicus or Galileo is ludicrous. Socrates, maybe.... |
Dear Henry, your remark above to Thuchan re the SX8000 is in contradistinction to your original theory in all its specifics, as is the SX8000 itself. The SX8000 and the lesser M-S tts in its family, all use massively heavy plinths and an iron grip (literally) between the tonearm mount/tonearm and the chassis. I agree with it. But "motor separated from plinth/platter" leaves us only with belt-drive turntables. I thought you were enjoying your Victor. |
Ummm.... First you posit a "new" way of looking at the interaction of cartridge, tonearm, and turntable which I think is leading to a defense of outboard tonearm pods. But at the last second, you swerve away from that issue and seem to posit that your Copernican view of the LP playback system somehow leads to the conclusion that a plinth is superfluous. As Archimedes might have said to his plumber, "It does not hold water".
As I have said before, the plinth issue and the arm pod issue are two entirely separate ones, except whereas the lack of a plinth makes it easy for you to get a bunch of tonearm pods nearer to the platter, so they can all be aligned properly. I don't think there is any argument that can lead to the universal conclusion that a plinth is never a good idea or never leads to a perceived improvement in LP reproduction. It is even conceivable that a good plinth can be more than just transparent; it can make the turntable (idler or direct drive) sound "better" than it does with no plinth. (Before I abandoned the belt-drive notion, I had come to the conclusion that for belt-drive, a big heavy plinth was superfluous and usually not a good thing. Most of the top end modern belt-drive tts seem to be built in accordance with that idea.)
I do think there are good arguments as regards independent tonearm pods, pro and con. I have stated my argument against them elsewhere, more than once. Here you have an interesting argument for. |
Copernicus was a twit anyway. |
Dear Bjesien, Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
And a tonearm is just a tonearm. |
Raul, For me digital is an alternative reserved for when I want to read a book or when we are having a party, and I want background music. However I freely admit that, though my cdp is quite tweaked, it is hardly state of the art. Besides that, surely you don't mean to imply that we have "solved" the mysteries of LP reproduction, except to discover that a bunch of well meaning perfectionists living all over the earth have very different opinions on every aspect of the subject. Have you abandoned the LP odyssey? Your absence would be a loss to this discourse. |
Bjesien, I think it would be more revealing to look to see who has a 16-inch tonearm.
The remark about cigars is credited to Freud himself, who was a devotee'.
Dertonearm, I like what you said, that there really is no such thing as "no plinth". That's a good way to put the same argument I was trying to make with Halcro et al. |
and Steve Dobbins, whom I wish would comment more often.
Tim, You are saying what I have said a couple of times over the past week or two. There is little doubt in my mind that a "bad" plinth can make things worse. This does not prove that a good plinth (by anyone's definition) is necessarily inferior to what its aficionados refer to as "no plinth". Also, the optimal solution is likely different for different direct-drive turnables. (I don't think anyone challenges the notion that one needs a good plinth for an idler or that no plinth is quite a good solution for a belt-drive tt.)
We plinthophiles can always take refuge in saying that the plinth which was found wanting in comparison to no plinth was of an inferior design or construction. No-plinthers can in turn say that poor performance is due to failure to use the correct footers or to dampen the shelving, etc. So, we can all rest assured that each of us has the right idea. |
Puh-leeze. There is NO ad hoc argument that wins this debate. The Clearaudio Statement looks like an over-sized, over-priced turdball to me. But in any case, magnetically levitated platters in belt drive turntables are irrelevant to this discussion. I will agree any time that in my experience, plinthless is the way to go for belt drive. But that is beside the point. "Every time I think I'm out [of this discussion], they pull me back in." (M Corleone, Godfather III) |
DT, Sometimes, I don't get it. Show us how to derive a force vector diagram for a turntable. Then we will believe. I think the crux of the matter is that there are subtle forces, apart from the obvious ones, that make a critical difference. And for any specific example, those small forces will be different. |
Dear DT, All I'm saying is can you direct us to such a diagram or help us understand how you would go about constructing it? One major force, for sure, is the torque of the motor, which is angular by the definition of "torque". And we all know that the torque of the motor trying to compel the platter to revolve in a clockwise direction will in equal measure compel the chassis to revolve in the counter-clockwise direction (which is one reason, IMO, why there MUST be at least a certain minimum mass to the chassis of a direct-drive turntable, where the motor is firmly a part of the chassis, lets say it needs to be much higher than the mass of the platter). Apparently the no-plinthers have observed that Newton's Third Law is not much of a problem in this regard. What next, I mean what other major forces are in play? VTF, skating, gravity.....? |
Dear Ct0157,
Maybe some day I will find time to test the Denon without its plinth. Right now there are at least 3 major home audio projects that come first. I am a DIYer, and I have been extensively revising the circuits in my huge Atma-sphere monoblocks. This has already taken months, since I am very anal about making the necessary decisions. It will take at least 2 months more. Then I intend to install a new attenuator in my MP1 preamp. Then I may build an LCR phono stage dedicated to MM cartridges that we have been discussing. In the spaces of time between these projects, I have all those MM and MI cartridges to evaluate in all those tonearms I now own. Once I have a handle on that, THEN I might even think about trying the no-plinth idea, but I have no clue how I would mount the Denon in space, and to make an arm pod....sheesh! I am just as smug as you no-plinthers; I like what I have, and while I enjoy this discussion, I really don't buy any of the arguments thus far put forward in favor of no plinth and especially in favor of independently mounted outboard arm pods. (And as either Syntax or DT wrote, no one is really talking about no plinth, because absence of a surround still leaves you with a casing or something around the motor and drive assembly.) The only thing I WILL say, and I am rather tired of repeating it, is that obviously there are such things as "bad" plinths. I have heard two such. I can readily believe that no plinth may sound better than a bad plinth. But I think possibly the attraction of no plinth is primarily that it may introduce euphonic colorations that are ablated with a really good plinth that can render the turntable "neutral". (Of course, one man's neutral is another man's "lifeless".) And the beat goes on.
By the way, I certainly don't think I have "vast experience". Thanks for the compliment (assuming it was not facetious), but for most of my 35-year audiophile career, I owned only one tt, one tonearm, one cartridge at any one time. I am into this multi-everything craziness for only 2-3 years. Audiogon has been my undoing. |
Dear Halcro, In response to your consternation about my statement, I guess I should not have used the word "introduced". Better to say that with no plinth, some resonances are or might be left undamped that might more often than not be pleasing, to a given listener. In other words, an error of omission, not commission. Nothing wrong with that, it's just a thought.
Dertonearm, As I told you privately, I take your point(s). I cannot think of that massive piece of metal that comprises the base of each of the big M-S turntables as an example of "no plinth". To me, that's a bloody good plinth. And those are belt-drives. Their more feeble efforts at direct-drive, the DDX- and DQX1000, which do have essentially no plinth are not so highly regarded. (Never heard either.) |
|
Dear Raul, I am saying NOTHING, nada, about the Raven in any way, shape or form. The Raven is a belt-drive turntable with no formal "plinth" but does have a massive metal base to which tonearms and bearing are rigidly attached, and a massive platter. That would seem to me to be a good design; I have never ever heard one. I have repeatedly maintained that large formal wooden plinths as we used to know them are probably passe' for belt-drive.
Also, I think you can't have it both ways. In other instances you have frequently maintained that those who disagree with you are hearing euphonic distortions, but distortions nevertheless, and that the goal should be to reduce all distortions of any kind. Once you take that view, can you really say that if an outboard arm pod induces pleasing distortions, that is OK?
Sorry also, Halcro and Chris are great guys. I am pleased to feel like I know them. But neither of them did a "test", if a test is to be taken as a synonym for a valid experiment, and they both admit that. |
Dear Halcro, In reference to your remark above, last month I finally bit the bullet and bought a Parasound amplifier (after much research and hand-wringing) just to have music while I play with my "real" OTL tube amplifiers. The Parasound does an OK job in the meantime on my Sound Labs. |
Well it would be most interesting to hear from Mr. Panzer plinth. I assume its made of hard wood, not from a 20-ton armored tank.
Did I actually write "bronze"? I meant "brass". I have already bought some brass pieces from that company, in order to make subweights to go below the bases of tonearms, and to make an energy sink to go in the plinth for my SP10 Mk3, with a threaded brass bolt pushing up gently on the bearing housing, a la Albert Porter. They also sold me the treaded brass rod from which I and my friend made the needed bolt. |
At this point, I think this thread needs to sink slowly down the list of threads in the Analog section, like the sun slowly setting in the West. |
Dear Thuchan, Not sure I understand just what it is that I might disagree about. I don't feel very contrary about anything except maybe outboard tonearms.
As far as mounting two (or more) arms, it's just a matter of allocating enough space surrounding the actual chassis on the surface of the (slate, in this case) plinth. I designed mine with a lot of flat surface area and no traditional "hole" over which to place a tonearm mounting board, so I am restricted to using surface mount tonearms. (Tonearms that do not have a vertical shaft that needs to reside below the level of an armboard, e.g., Triplanar, Reed, Grandezza[?], Dynavector DV505, RS Labs RS-A1.) So the tonearms are mated firmly to the entire mass of the slate with bolts that go all the way thru the thickness of the slate, which I think is a very good thing for sound quality. If I were to start over, and I may in fact do so, I would re-design my slate plinths along the lines of Steve Dobbins' plinths and also the Saskia. If you look at those, the discrete tonearm board is held firmly to the main plinth by a single large bolt, so it is well anchored but can rotate in space outside the confines of the plinth surface entirely and therefore has a wide range of adjustment to accommodate various sizes and lengths of tonearm. The Dobbins plinth for his new direct-drive turntable, The Beat, is very well thought out for two tonearms. Beautiful and beautiful sounding, in fact. (Heard it at RMAF.) |
Talea, too, I think would work on my plinths. |
Pity we did not know enough to find each other at RMAF. Next year all of us need to do a better job of making plans in advance of the event. I went to the Mexican restaurant for the vinylphile meeting on Friday but could not identify anyone to talk to except Win Tinnon, with whom I had made prior arrangements.
Funny that altho I have strongly rejected the idea of an outboard tonearm pod, I have involuntarily been dreaming up a way to make a really heavy one using a cylinder made of bronze that can be purchased direct from a metals company here in the US, in a wide range of diameters and almost any reasonable height. The mind cannot rest. |
Dgob, I went to your "system" to take a look at the photo of the AT feet. I see you have 3 different kinds of AT feet. Which are you using under your SP10? I am guessing it is the largest set, at the rear of the photo. Those smallest AT feet in the foreground - I used to have a set myself. I have no idea where those disappeared to, or when they disappeared.
Off-topic: How do you wire up your DD12s with respect to the Talon Hawks? Do you use a hi-pass filter on the amp that drives the Hawks? Thx. |
Dear Banquo et al, Of course there will be an "improvement" when you go to the bigger feet. This stuff has become so subjective and so uncontrolled (in the scientific sense) that there is a huge placebo effect. If you are prepared to like it, and if your turntable does not actually fall to the ground, then you will like it. This is in no way meant as an insult to you personally. It's just a part of this crazy hobby.
Conversely, by the very fact that I am not prepared to like it, I probably would not like it. It cuts both ways. Now I will retreat to my bomb-proof shelter. |
Banquo, I have nothing to say about Copernicus, but did you ever get your SP10 squared away by Berdan or Thalmann? If not, and if it's still unreliable, IMO you should reconsider it. |
Dgob, Do you have your arm pod on the spikes and your tt on AT feet? If so.... |
Dear Henry, We agree on something! That's exactly what I was trying to imply to Dgob without being annoying. |
Dgob, Decouple all that you want. My point was or would have been that it is perhaps not wise to use very different mounting systems for the tt and arm pod, e.g., spikes on one and AT feet on the other. In that situation, the two separate devices are almost sure to have a different response to external sources of vibration, and, in keeping with my private belief system, we do not want the arm/cartridge and the groove on the LP to be moving in different directions, whilst the stylus tries to do its work. Surely you can see that this might not be a good idea. This reminds me of the old SNL commercial spoof, where the rabbi tries to perform a circumcision in a car driving over a rough road. |
Of course, to chauffeur Garrett Morris' and the baby's relief, the rabbi was successful. I guess I will go back to maintaining radio silence. We now return you to our regular programming. |
By the way, in the real world there is no such thing as "complete (mechanical) isolation", which is why I take the position that I take. |
OK. Here's the other one that my friend Rosina told me on the same day.
The Captain says to the crew, "I have good news and bad news.
The good news is that you guys are going to get a change of underwear.
(Big cheer goes up.)
The bad news is: Jose', you change with Pedro. Pedro, you change with Ramon..."
The galleon slave was generally chained to his oar until he died of starvation, physical exertion, etc. Then they would install another to take his place. None of these guys would think of mounting his tonearm on one galleon and his turntable on another. (So this is not OT.) |
Whenever I feel a bit viscoelastic, I visit my chiropractor.
Have any of you guys heard of or tried the Wave Kinetics footers? I am thinking of trying some under my Slate Plinths. |
Dertonearm, Will Apolyt be pulling water-skiers on the lake in addition to spinning an 88 lb platter? (Thank you for the metric conversion, by the way.)
Joke told to me by Barcelonian in Barcelona at the Maritime Museum:
The galleon captain says to his slave crew, "I have good news and bad news.
"The good news is that King Philip himself is going to visit the ship tomorrow.
The bad news is he wants to go water skiing." |
But Nandric, you did like the water skiing joke, I hope. My friend in Barcelona is one of my favorite people on earth. We will visit her this summer, I think, even though she does not have an outboard arm pod. (Nice chassis, though.) |
Dear Dgob, Where? I went to that page. Raul alludes to the tonearm in his text but there is no photo I can find. There is or was no photo on Raul's "system" site, either. Or are you saying that he just recently posted one there? (But I looked two days ago... nada.)
Dear Nandric, I am trying to be serious again so as not to offend the Copernicans. Clearly, King Philip would bring the arm pod along with him wherever he went water skiing. |
Looks like adjustable headshell offset angle. Nice to have but dangerous in the wrong hands. Strictly for the cognoscenti. |
Dgob, You might try a laser-type device for assuring that the table and arm mount are plane parallel. I believe such things are now commercially available. I would not completely trust a small spirit level; a large long carpenter's level would be better. That's what I use to make sure that platters and plinths are perpendicular to the force of gravity and parallel to each other. |
Dear Nandric, For what it's worth, there is no argument (because I have stopped arguing), and there is no winner (because the outcome is subjective). If you've noticed, I am not posting here as regards my opinion on outboard tonearms and plinth-less SP10s. (The SP10 and Henry's Victor seem to be the two tables for which there are subjective data, plus Nicola's Kuzma.) Further, I will keep my mouth shut until I try it myself.
BUT, what tonearms are you guys using? Given the rather large square "skirt" that surrounds the platter of the SP10 and the space needed for an outboard arm pod, it would seem to me that this can only be done with tonearms that are at least 10-inchers and longer, pivot to stylus. Yes?
Dgob, I wish I could see a photo of your set-up. |
Raul, From where you are, I would go on-line at Sears or Home Depot or even eBay, and just order by mail. If that's not possible, let me know. |
Chris, FYI a Triplanar, and probably other 9-inch tonearms where the pivot is offset to the right of the vertical mounting shaft (e.g., 9-inch Reed or Talea), is virtually unusable with SP10 due to that "skirt", unless you can tolerate a really weird angle when the tonearm is at rest such that it extends over the right front corner of the chassis. Yes, a straight-line tonearm like yours does work fine with SP10, plinth or no plinth.
Raul, for the heck of it I went to the Home Depot website. There I searched under "laser level" and found 5 pages of choices at prices ranging from less than $20 (per Pryso) to more than $1000! |
In the US there is an on-line business that can sell you a solid brass, bronze, stainless steel, or alu cylinder in your choice of diameters and pre-cut to your desired length (=height). Here is one page of their website that I have been looking at for armboard material:
http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cfm?id=809&step=2&top_cat=79
Nandric, if you want me to buy a brass cylinder for you and ship it to you, I will be happy to do that. Or perhaps they will ship to you direct. |
..."in normal careful use, the great mass of the armpod impedes any disposition and restrains it to a soft activity." Geoch, that is beautiful English, worthy of an erudite 19th century scientific journal entry. But what is "soft activity"? Any activity, if activity means movement or motion, is a bad thing if the platter does not move precisely in concert. |
Geoch and Nandric, Despite whatever you both may think, my remark about Geoch's phraseology was totally sincere. I really did think it was beautiful prose, but I needed that clarification provided later by Geoch.
I cannot help but note that this discussion is evolving in a direction with which I can agree. Notice that you guys are talking about ever heavier and more stable arm pods that do not move with respect to the tt. This is beginning to be OK with me and to be consonant with my galleon analogy, which Nandric continues to throw back at me. If you take the two boats out of the water (the net effect of putting both the tonearm and the turntable on very sturdy supports and subject to the same forces), then there is no problem. There is even some coupling going on, whether you like it or not. |
To paraphrase the bandit in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", you don' need no stinkin' viscoelastic support.
(He said, "Badg-es? We don' need no stinkin' badg-es.")
This is only my opinion, of course.
At least try it both ways, turntable and armpod both mounted on the same inert STABLE shelf with no viscoelastic mounts vs with viscoelastic mounts. |
Corby, That's quite beautiful work. Do you mean to imply that you adjust azimuth by tilting the whole apparatus via the screw-threaded spikes at the base? Don't you think it's important to have the arm base (=the outboard pod) in a plane parallel to the platter? |
Dear Corby, I did not at all mean to imply that you cannot adjust azimuth in the manner you have chosen, using the Foz or any other method. But if you do it that way, leaving aside the argument about whether or not the base of the tonearm should ideally be in a plane parallel with the platter, at least you need to position the inner one of those thumb screws very carefully so that it lies in a straight line drawn from the pivot to the spindle (I think). Then, you could adjust that one thumb screw to tilt the top of the cartridge toward or away from the spindle, i.e., to adjust azimuth. (It's still imperfect because of the offset angle of the headshell, but many tonearms with adjustable azimuth live with the same source of error. Changing azimuth with Triplanar and Talea, for example, has a slight effect on VTA.) It seems to me that the location of the adjusting thumbscrew is critical in your system, otherwise the 3-dimensional location of the cartridge body wrt the LP (azimuth, VTA, possibly VTF, etc.) will be inconstant as the stylus traverses the LP, even moreso than with Triplanar, Talea, etc.
Also, I have to disagree with your argument about the primacy of removing "resonances" via the arm pod. True, the cartridge puts out some mechanical energy into the tonearm. In the best case, this energy is transmitted via the headshell and arm wand into the tonearm base, into the mounting board, into the chassis of a conventional turntable. But do you really think the energy is of such a magnitude that it is not dissipated in all these structures long before it could disturb the bearing and platter in any way? I think it is the job of the tonearm/headshell to take away the mechanical energy from the cartridge and that this energy is probably completely dissipated as heat before it even gets into the plinth. If the tonearm does not do that job, if the energy of the cartridge is reflected back to the cartridge rather than transmitted, then you do have problems with mechanical resonance, etc.
I don't mean to sound critical. These are just armchair discussions, as far as I am concerned. If it sounds good, it is good. |
Sometimes we have a good and interesting result and an attractive explanation for it, but they don't always really go together. This happens all the time in science. |
Thuchan, I assume you know this, but in case not, thread size is M5. What material(s) are you using to build your plinth? |
Dear Thuchan, If you find that you enjoy the SP10 MkII but would like to get more out of it, you might consider the Panzerholz plinth made by Albert Porter, the Steve Dobbins treatment (removes the motor assembly from the chassis, etc) or a slate plinth. All 3 are above the rest of the plinth crowd, apart from some homebrews possibly. And then too, since you posted here on this thread, there is the no-plinth option. |
No matter how you set it up, it will be of great interest to me to learn what you think of the SP10, in light of the pantheon of great turntables you have at your disposal. |
