Raul, I agree that a strain gauge used without any correction would not conform well to RIAA, because it would not be correct in the region 500Hz to about 2kHz, where the RIAA curve has a plateau. But like you said, because we don't know the identity of the cartridge, or even if it is a strain gauge for sure, I felt that no further comment was justified.
Showing 50 responses by lewm
Pindac, in your recent very long post, I am not quite sure what you wanted to say, but I take it that you believe the pleasure of good music enjoyed in the company of good friends is the highest goal of our hobby, and who could possibly disgree with that? And I see your point that this is true even if and when cartridge set-up is less than perfect. So maybe this leaves us with the question how much accuracy in cartridge set-up is "good enough". I have long characterized myself as an alignment nihilist; I certainly used and still use one of two good protractors (Feickert and Smartractor), but I gotta admit I did not sweat too much over exactitude. +/-0.5mm was good enough for me, if that. Now this business of zenith blows up all my earlier comfort with approximations. Dave and others have shown that if the stylus in your cartridge was mounted with an error of even 1 degree, and if you are ignorant of that defect or ignore it, then despite all your efforts at exact alignment, you may very well wind up with very large amounts of TAE and zero null points on the surface of the LP. I think that is something we need to care about. This has me thinking about my ZYX UNIverse cartridge. I bought it because my neighbor had one, and on his system, it blew me away with its imaging and clarity and sense of space. I’ve owned my own sample for several years, and it has never performed up to the standards of my neighbor’s sample. I’ve had it mounted in a 10.5-inch Reed tonearm on a tweaked Technics SP10 Mk3 (Krebs mod and JP Jones chip upgrade in a slate and hardwood plinth). Several months ago, I became aware of the zenith issue. Subsequent examination of my UNIverse using my microscope reveals its stylus was mounted with an extreme error in zenith angle, at least 4-5 degrees. I have to think this may account for the underwhelming performance. I am now thinking of having my UNI re-tipped, not because of stylus wear but in order to fix zenith. Twisting the cartridge in the headshell is one way to compensate for a zenith error, but my sample would need an extreme twist, and that puts aberrant forces on the cantilever which could also compromise performance. Yes, this has nothing to do with the Viv tonearm. |
Just to note that Tom uses the term zenith and the term headshell offset angle as if they were synonymous. For me, and in all my comments above, the term Zenith is used to refer only to the angle of the mounting of the stylus tip in the cantilever in the horizontal plane and has nothing to do with headshell offset. Certainly head shell offset angle and zenith, as I use the term, are interrelated, but the difference in the definition is also important if you want to understand some of the points that I and dave slagle were trying to make. You can optimize the headshell offset angle for a particular geometry, but all is for naught, if the zenith angle of the stylus tip is not 90°, or such that the two contact patches of the stylus tip are perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the cantilever. |
It would seem to me that the skating force does much more to prevent the stylus from being “centered in the groove” than TAE. AS is all we have to counter skating but AS can only be correct at one or two moments of play, because it’s constant in magnitude and direction whereas skating is inconstant and variable in direction. Plus it’s applied near the pivot, whereas skating occurs at the stylus. This puts a twist force on the cantilever. But you know all this already. |
This morning being a leisurely Sunday morning, I re-read the entirety of this thread from beginning to end, although I admit I skipped through some of those from naysayers that I already knew by heart. What struck me is that each of the major protagonists (or should I call us "antagonists"), myself included, wrote the same thing, over and over again, sometimes using different words but not much different logic. Around page 5, I bought the Viv 9HA (9-inch, aluminum tube) and started reporting on that. That was about a year ago this month. I remain very pleased with this tonearm. If anything, I have understated the degree to which I enjoy it so as to avoid the predictable backlash. Suffice to say, I agree with the other guys who are also owners and who posted one or two very positive comments and then left this thread, wisely. Raul, why is it that my ideas about why the Viv sounds so good are just "blah, blah, blah", whereas your constant parroting of your belief system over and over again is not also "blah"? (I’m giving you only one "blah", because it’s so boring.) Is it just because the overhung tonearm is received wisdom? AS does NOT "control" the skating force, by any means, by the way. One could make an argument that AS makes things worse by putting a torque on the cantilever, which is already under horizontal duress due to skating. AS is like a stopped clock; it is correct (i.e., it equals the skating force in magnitude) at two short moments during the 20 minutes duration of an LP side. And even then it is combining with the skating force to put a twist on the cantilever, because it is applied near the pivot. |
"I had to change to pivot alternative to reach the rigth bass range and to do this the second best alternative was and is use the Löfgreen alignments that puts that stylus tip nearer to what the LT does: NO MATTER WHAT. .." That depends, doesn't it, on what a LT tonearm "does". In your opinion, it's the elimination of TAE. But the virtue of an LT tonearm could just as well be the elimination of the skating force. If you think the goal above all else is to keep TAE as low as possible, even if it means a significant increase in the skating force, then an overhung tonearm is just the ticket. If the goal is minimizing the skating force, then an underhung tonearm is preferable, when choosing among pivoted tonearms. Also, one could argue that the overhung tonearm does not come closest to an LT tonearm at any point in its arc; only the underhung tonearm achieves zero TAE and zero skating force, at its single null point. The overhung tonearm never gets near to the latter goal. Anyway, I apologize to anyone reading this thread. I hope I and some others who appreciate the Viv have convinced at least a few of us to approach the issue with an open mind. |
I’ll drink to that. But I will add that it does or did make a positive difference when I carefully aligned the cartridge using the L-shaped template, vs when the same cartridge was out of alignment by several mm using the same template, due to my own carelessness. So I use the template each time I change cartridges. So far, I have auditioned about four different cartridges in the Viv, all of which were familiar to me based on prior listening in overhung tonearms. In each case, the Viv excelled, with characteristics as Reimac described. (This is another important point; if you look at reviews on the internet, the positive comments of disparate listeners using a wide variety of audio systems hang together.) |
Raul, Please convey my apologies to the Lofgren family for any perceived but unintended insult, but I also do not think it is insulting to Lofgren to point out that his work was primarily aimed at solving the geometry problem of how to minimize TAE while using a pivoted tonearm of manageable length. His solution is to offset the headshell at an angle. Is it not otherwise accurate to say that he did not envision modern stereo LPs nor modern exotic stylus shapes? Lofgren was working with the technology he had in front of him in 1939 or thereabouts. No sin in that. Puh-leeze! It's rather ironic that you take offense on behalf of Lofgren, considering that you have insulted so many living, breathing audiophiles on these forums, intentionally or not. (I love you anyway, but be real.) |
Dear Reimarc, Thank you for this report. You or a member of your family must speak Japanese, because in my indirect dealings with Akimoto-san, I learned that he does not communicate well in English. Nevertheless, I too bought my Viv directly from Akimoto-san under the auspices of my son, who has lived in Tokyo for about 18 years and is fluent in all aspects of the Japanese language. Like you, my son also found Akimoto-san to be a very nice, soft-spoken, and humble man. His character also came through to me in the context of short emails he and I were able to exchange directly. Apart from our shared appreciation of the Viv tonearm, we have in common the fact that I too am a (retired) scientist (in my case an MD molecular biologist/virologist), and I too have my Viv mounted on the deck of a Lenco. Mine is an OEM Lenco except I threw away the plinth, the bearing, and the tonearm and mounted the remaining parts in slate (which was in vogue at the time among gurus on Lenco Heaven). I also use a PTP top plate and a huge aftermarket bearing made in England (by a guy I only remember as "Jeremy"). I drive the motor with a Phoenix Engineering power supply controlled by the PE Roadrunner tachometer. The platter has been painted externally with vibration-reducing paint and further damped by O-rings around its perimeter. (The idea for that came direct from the late, great Win Tinnon.) One virtue of the tonearm is the very functional cue-ing device, about as good as any I have ever experienced. Also, I have never had a problem with setting VTF. I wonder what model of Viv you chose. I have the aluminum 9-incher, aka the "9HA". I have never been a fan of carbon fiber in audio, with the exception of carbon fiber headshells. For several cartridges, I use Yamamoto or Oyaide carbon fiber headshells in lieu of the Viv Nelson Hold headshell. The Lenco ensemble drives a Manley Steelhead which drives the built in direct-drive amplifiers of Beveridge 2SW speakers supplemented below 80Hz with a pair of Transmission Line woofers. |
Dogberry, a warp, or any other change in stylus velocity which is actually happening throughout the course of replay, has no effect on the friction force. The equation for that force is simply the coefficient of friction for the two materials that are in contact multiplied by the normal force that is causing the contact. “Normal” here means the perpendicular component of that force. While I completely agree that one who purchases an underhung tonearm will have a certain “expectation bias” toward forming a positive opinion, it seems a little far fetched to conclude that all the positive reviews, even from reviewers who haven’t bought the tonearm, could be fairly attributable to expectation bias. |
Will I be burned at the stake for witchcraft? I am going to buy some asbestos pants. I do own and regularly use 5 other tonearms, all of which are conventional pivoted overhung types, some that you like and some that you dislike. Your vitriol is precisely why I have kept quiet about the Viv and will go back to observing that policy. But if you ask me, I am going to say it is very good with a wide variety of cartridges. Take it or leave it. Also, I have yet to find a negative review of the Viv on the internet, and some of those reviews are written by persons with a good reputation for intelligence. By the way, I am not aware of any negative comments on underhung tonearms voiced by either M Kelly or Dave Garretson, with whom I am quite friendly, because we both own the Atma-sphere MP1. Since you are apparently one who saves and catalogues responses by frequent posters, like myself, can you quote one of theirs to that effect? And for the last time, I never ever said not to use a Lofgren alignment. Of course, that is what to do if you are using a pivoted overhung tonearm. That’s what I do, too. My point was (I feel like shouting) that if your cartridge has even a one degree zenith error, then you had better account for that in implementing any of the standard alignment algorithms (usually be twisting the cartridge in the headshell so that the two contact patches are perpendicular to the groove walls), because even that small error will screw up the alignment if you ignore it. (Do you get it now, theophile?) Ask Dave Slagle (an acknowledged smart guy whom you choose to ignore) about the effects of zenith error on alignment and the distortion caused by zenith error. He has evaluated it in far more detail than I. And he demonstrated both the effect of zenith error and the cure in my home system. It was rather astonishing. Again, this latter has nothing whatever to do with the Viv tonearm, although a zenith error will also affect an underhung tonearm, albeit not as drastically. |
Dave, in line with what you say about the placing of the single null point, I related earlier my experience where I had gotten sloppy about using the supplied template to align the Viv; I was slapping cartridges in there without checking with the template. Until I got to the point where I re-installed a cartridge that earlier had sounded great in the Viv, and I was underwhelmed. This drove me to check alignment, and I found it was grossly wrong because the cartridge was in a different headshell. When I corrected alignment using the Viv template, it came back to life. Before correction, the null point was on the label, way off. |
theophile, For those who are adherent to the gospel about minimizing tracking angle error (TAE) at all costs, the terms "distortion" and TAE are interchangeable. In other words, they (and apparently you) use the two terms as synonyms, where TAE is a subset of all causes of distortion. So it is no wonder that the Radiotron book conflates the two terms. But overhung tonearms with headshell offset trade off low TAE for a large increase in skating force, and a skating force that changes in magnitude, up and down and up, etc, across the surface of the LP. In 1940, when Baerwald, Lofgren, etc, published their papers on overhang and offset angle, they were just solving a geometry problem. They had no knowledge of stereo or modern stylus shapes (all styli were spherical) or even vinyl records. The majority of music lovers were still using wind-up "Victrola"s to play mono shellacs in that era. You have to ask yourself, could it be that skating force (and the application of Anti-Skate) is more pernicious than TAE, or at least similar in its negative effects, for the performance of a modern cartridge with an exotic stylus shape trying to produce a stereo image from information encoded on the sides of a V, rather than on the floor of a mono 78? Furthermore, the underhung tonearm with no headshell offset angle does give a single null point where there is also no skating force at about the midpoint of the LP surface; at that moment, the underhung tonearm behaves exactly like a linear tracker. Immediately before and after that null point is reached, the TAE is actually in the same ball park with that of a conventional overhung tonearm, with the added benefit of much lower skating force. So knowing all that, is it so preposterous to think that there may be some merit to the idea of an underhung tonearm? I own two copies of the Radiotron Designer’s Handbook, and I have learned from the book often in studying circuit design, but in this case their heads are or were in the sand, in my opinion. For me, the most glaring fact is that the naysayers say an underhung tonearm properly set up would be a disaster with high distortion based only on TAE. If you listen to such a tonearm, the very first thing you would absolutely have to admit is that there is NO such disastrous distortion. This is regardless of whether you go on to love the tonearm or not. Doesn’t that simple observation make you want to think more? If not, I cannot help you. Oh and by the way, I always forget the fact that most cartridges have some zenith angle error. This is error in the way the stylus is mounted on the end of the cantilever. An imaginary line connecting the centers of the two contact patches on the stylus tip must be perpendicular to the groove walls. If there is any deviation from that standard, then all your or my best efforts at alignment according to any algorithm are for naught. Turns out that the few companies that make all the cantilevers and styli observe a +/-5 degree standard for zenith angle error. Even a one or two degree error will screw up Lofgren, etc. |
Doggie, cleeds makes a very good point. Note that the bearing assembly at the pivot of the SME tonearm is offset to match the headshell offset angle. That would confound any attempt to use the SME as a test bed for underhung-ness. You could try it but probably should not generalize from such an experiment. As for me, I continue to enjoy the 9-inch Viv I bought in Tokyo last year. |
So I ask again, why are you so angry, Raul? This is a hobby. I bought a tonearm and reported on its sound quality here in a thread that is supposed to be about that very same tonearm. Take it or leave it. Meantime, I am having fun with it. You tried to mock me ("blah, blah, blah" was the way you put it) for not saying why the tonearm might perform well, so I responded with a description of my current thoughts, even though I had already done so before you "blah"-ed me. End of story. This is not the first instance in which you have become apoplectic when someone reports an opinion or an observation that does not comply with any of your many biases. The best you can ever do in such cases is to suggest that the other guy "likes distortion" but it's "perfectly alright". |
Dear Raul, Please read one or two of my earlier posts wherein I speculate on the reason why a proper underhung tonearm might be worth a further thought. To boil down what I already wrote, (1) although much is made of the extreme TAE, those very high numbers (by comparison to conventional pivoted tonearms) only occur at the extremes as the stylus traverses the playing surface of an LP. For a half-inch or so on either side of the single null point (i.e., for a whole inch or more of the playable surface), TAE is within the same range as the maxima for an overhung tonearm. Thus one would not expect to hear a problem, if one were to compare overhung to underhung in that region. Moreover, the change of TAE from zero at the single null point to the maxima at the outermost and innermost grooves is nearly linear going from positive to negative (adopting the convention that "positive" TAE is TAE that results in a skating force directed toward the spindle, and vice-versa for "negative" TAE) and very gradual. Whereas, with an overhung tonearm, TAE is always positive and is changing up and down then up and down again, across the playable surface. Maybe that is a factor too, and (2) perhaps the very significant (2X to 3X) reduction in the skating force seen with an underhung tonearm compared to an overhung tonearm is very significant for the performance of the cartridge, because the skating force is borne at the fulcrum of the cantilever and more so when AS is invoked. All of this is speculation stimulated by listening and thinking. No measurements. My listening so far suggests that the Viv makes average or above average cartridges sound better than I expect based on prior auditioning in overhung tonearms, but it cannot make a mediocre cartridge into a top class cartridge. Sometimes the Viv is only "as good" as a good overhung tonearm. Sometimes it portrays an ease and sense of open-ness and low distortion compared to a good overhung tonearm. You may now re-state your often repeated mantra that I "like" distortion. Have at it. |
Mijo, I have to apologize. Of course you have every right to choose where to spend your bucks and to reject one innovative approach in favor of another. As you know, I waited to buy the Viv Float until we were in Tokyo, and at a time when the yen to dollar exchange rate is at an all time high favoring the dollar, which saved me quite a bit on cost. I am kind of a high end cheapskate. |
Mijo, with great respect, all I’m asking for is a thoughtful cessation of knee jerk negative reactions to the very idea of an underhung tonearm with zero offset. Your point about cost is interesting; you’d rather not spend on an underhung tonearm so as to save your money to buy a different type of tonearm that costs 2-3X more. Just spent 2 afternoons at CAF and didn’t see the Schroeder or Reed tangential arms on demo, but did see a TruGlider with Nasotec headshell sporting an optical DS Audio cartridge. That setup makes the Viv look old school. |
As I’ve said before, I’d value your opinion if you would seriously audition an underhung tonearm. That would be a real contribution. The way forward in science, and even in this trivial pursuit of audio excellence, is to seek an explanation for observations that run contrary to one’s cherished beliefs, rather than to ignore surprising results. That’s all I’m trying to do here. |
Interesting tidbit, I learned yesterday that Yamaha has been offering an underhung tonearm since the early 80s, as an extra cost option on their GT2000 and possibly standard on the GT2000X. The YSA-2. So the idea is not at all new. Nor was it categorically rejected by Japanese audiophiles, since all commercially available underhung tonearms emanate from japan. The YSA-2 is an entirely conventional tonearm for its day. Nothing odd about its appearance or functionality, and it can be mounted on any TT. Except it has zero headshell offset and is meant to be underhung. I want one. |
I’ve “discovered” that alignment is important, using the supplied template. I aligned for the first cartridge I auditioned on the Viv (Ortofon MC7500). Since then I’ve simply been swapping out different cartridges each mounted in a different CF headshell without bothering to re-check alignment. Recently I noticed that SQ with my Dynavector 17D3 was not up to snuff compared to a previous audition of the same cartridge. I had remounted the DV in a different headshell and the cartridge by chance was at the extreme end of the slots in the headshell. Thus alignment was off by about a centimeter too close to the spindle. This would place the null point in the runout grooves or even on the label. Correction of this error resulted in a huge improvement in SQ, 17D3 now sounding better than ever in any other tonearm. |
Right now I am flabbergasted about how good is the Nagaoka MP500 that I also bought in Tokyo last May. Don't know why it took me so long to mount it for an audition (in my Triplanar on my Denon DP80). To those who don't know, because many refer to it as an MM type, this is a Moving Iron cartridge. MP stands for Moving Permalloy, which is a little confusing because permalloy is magnetizable. Anyway, this is yet another great MI cartridge. |
I am as familiar with JE's views as I am with yours. Why can't you just go your own way, with my blessings, and know that there are other humans who think differently, on many matters related to audio, at least? Like JE, you are replacing my comparison of the Viv tonearm to other conventional pivoted tonearms with a comparison of vinyl to digital. I certainly readily concede that vinyl has more of various distortions than digital. Happy? Further, JE is calculating "distortion" using formulae that incorporate TAE as a determining parameter of distortion. This is what is called a tautology. Of course, if you make TAE a factor in the equation for distortion, then you will be finding that the more TAE, the more distortion. Like I also wrote above, in an earlier post, JE admitted that he liked the SQ of the RS Labs tonearm, based on LISTENING to it. |
I made an error in my post of 10/27 at 3:10 PM. The TAE of a 9-inch UH tonearm would not range between +9 degrees and -9 degrees, while passing through TAE =0, because the radius of an LP at outer grooves vs inner grooves is so radically different. Because the radius at the inner grooves is much less than outer, making for a tighter smaller circle at the innermost grooves, TAE at inner grooves would be higher than it is at outer grooves, even when you align for a null at the midpoint of the playing surface. That consideration is what leads to the very complex equations for TAE derived by Lofgren and others. You can see this easily in the graphs posted above by Intact Audio (Dave). John Ellison posted graphs showing TAE for a 16-inch UH tonearm over on VA, perhaps included in the thread I referenced. His graphs also show the effect. This is why the template for the Viv puts the single null point nearest to the innermost grooves, 90mm from the spindle. |
Over on Vinyl Asylum, there was a congenial discussion of underhung tonearms back in 2018-19, in relation to the introduction by Yamaha of their GT5000 turntable which comes with a straight, underhung tonearm. I kind of wish I knew then what I know now about the Viv, but you can read some thoughts on the pros and cons. Interestingly, John Ellison, who is certainly a ranking guru, comes down on the negative side, but in an earlier post, not included here, he admitted that he very much liked the RS Labs RS-A1. What I would say now to JE is that I am not comparing the Viv sound to that of hi-rez digital, which he often does with vinyl; I am comparing it to other conventional overhung tonearms. And to my ears, the Viv might come a bit closer to the master tape/digital ideal of low distortion. |
My previous post was not meant for you or your comment, but of course you are welcome to comment. Your response reveals just how close-minded you are on this subject. That’s fine. My post was meant to elicit comments or ideas from others who actually want to think on this subject. Dave and I have been trading emails on this subject for the last few days, and he has some interesting ideas as well. See if you can borrow a Viv tonearm and give it a listen. Then come back and tell me what you hear. You can send me a private email if you like. Until then, silence is golden, "for say the least". |
I don't claim to know in the scientific sense why the Viv tonearm sounds very good with every cartridge, but here is some food for though: (1) TAE. While the Viv and all other underhung tonearms with zero headshell offset does exhibit much higher TAE than can be achieved with an overhung/offset headshell, there are some mitigating factors, even assuming TAE is a major determinant of high SQ. For example, my 9-inch Viv would be expected to exhibit about 9 degrees of TAE at the outermost grooves and about -9 degrees of TAE at the innermost grooves, assuming the playing surface of the average LP is about 3 inches across (the radius of the LP from outer to spindle). This is assuming you set up the tonearm such that the single null point occurs in the center or middle of the playable surface. At that point, TAE=0. Thus TAE is very gradually changing from +9 degrees down to zero degrees and then further "down" to -9 degrees near the runout grooves. The change in TAE is linear (but on the arc of the stylus). If you consider only the middle inch of the playable surface, TAE goes from about 3 degrees through the zero null point to -3 degrees. This is about what you get with a well aligned conventional tonearm. Possibly, the continuousness of the sound from the Viv has to do with the linear nature of the change in TAE. Conventional tonearms generate TAE that goes up and down and up and down across the surface of an LP. Maybe that is not so good, even though lower in magnitude than a UH tonearm. (2) Skating. The skating force generated by the Viv and other UH tonearms is directly proportional to TAE, because the headshell does not add to the skating force. Whereas, for conventional tonearms, the headshell offset angle is the major cause of skating PLUS the effect of any TAE. It thus has been shown that a conventional 9-inch tonearm generates about 2.5 to 3X more skating force than does a 9-inch UH tonearm. And just as with TAE, the side force generated by a UH tonearm has its maxima at the outermost and innermost grooves, but at the null point, the direction of the side force changes by 180 degrees, pulling the tonearm outward instead of inwards. This makes the side force very low on either side (outer vs inner) of the null point. Yes, we correct for the skating force of conventional tonearms with the application of AS, and we all know how imperfect that is. Moreover, AS is applied back near the pivot whereas skating happens at the stylus. This puts a force on the fulcrum of the cantilever that may be a source of distortion in overhung tonearms. These are my thoughts. Raul says I cannot justify what I hear from the Viv in "audiophile" terms. (I won't sully the word "scientific".) But there actually are things to think about here. |
So if you ever get to listen to the Viv Lab tonearm under conditions that are familiar to you from past experience, and if you can manage to divorce yourself from pre-formed opinion, I would be very interested to know what you think of it. Until then, you cannot add anything, because we know already about its theoretical shortcomings. |
Yes, I now recall that you did mention somewhere in the past that you owned an RS-A1. I've never sold mine, but I don't use it for reasons stated. However, it too sounds better than it should given its shortcomings when you compare it to conventional tonearms. My test process is based on more than 40 years of listening to a wide variety of turntables (5 TTs up and running), tonearms, and cartridges, and on recent years of being able to listen to any of several turntables, each with a different tonearm and cartridge, using one of two different audio systems. This enables me to make rapid transitions (I can move a cartridge between turntables or between two tonearms or between two completely different systems, for example, in minutes, in order to evaluate that cartridge in isolation. The same can be done with other elements of the chain.) But such evaluation is always limited in the sense that it is always subjective. I do own and use oscilloscopes (Techtronix, Sencore), audio frequency generators (HP), meters of all kinds, and a laboratory microscope, which I most often use for diagnostic and repair purposes. I also have trained as a vocalist and even performed several times, back 10 years ago or so. We attend live music performances at least once a month and more usually 2-3 times per month in the DC area, where there are a plethora of great performers. I am also a member/donor to the Kennedy Center, and we attend often. This is all a useless argument between us. I say the Viv Float sounds very good and has some characteristics that are near to uniquely good among tonearms I have heard. I am interested in why it sounds good. And in the process, I have come to doubt certain gospels of modern pivoted tonearm design and the origins of these "gospel truths". In contrast, you say the Viv simply cannot be good. Let's agree to disagree without disparaging each other's qualifications to have an opinion. That's what you just did do, despite your follow-up claims to the contrary. |
Dear Raul, I often have a problem to figure out in what way you are questioning my opinions or abilities, because of the language barrier. In this case, it seems you are saying that I am incapable of discerning what are to you and some others obvious issues with the Viv Float tonearm, because I don't have a "test proved process" to use as a basis for comparison. Based on your past statements, going all the way back to the MM thread, I gather that you worked very hard to develop ways to test new equipment or program material by training yourself as a listener. To my knowledge, you don't actually use test instruments to collect data, and you don't do a formal analysis of yours or anyone else's data to draw conclusions. In the end, you rely upon your trained ears. Perhaps you are exposed to quantitative analysis in some cases through your association with Jose'. If so, I don't recall your ever bringing such information to Audiogon Forums. All that said, and even assuming you are a better "listener" than I am, you have no experience with any underhung tonearm, so far as I know. I have made the empirical observation that the Viv Float tonearm (and the RS-A1) sounds "good", better than one might ever expect based on theory as we have come to know modern tonearm theory. And in some respects, the Viv is revealing in ways that other tonearms do not often achieve. I have made no claim that the Viv is "the best" tonearm or that it is even "better" than good pivoted tonearms with overhang. My 45 years of experience as a bench scientist tell me that when one gets a surprising result in an experiment, it is time to pay attention to those surprising data, because understanding what happened can sometimes lead to important alteration of one's belief system. Here I am merely trying to understand why the Viv sounds so good with a variety of cartridges. Since you have never heard it, you have no status in this discussion. We all know in what ways it defies convention. That does not explain its goodness. Meantime, you are welcome to read the discussion here, such as it is, but your criticism of my qualifications adds nothing. At least I own and listen to the tonearm you so dislike, probably without ever having seen one in the flesh. As to your inference that I cannot be a MUSIC lover, that's insulting. So I see that you took your usual tack at the end of your post which is to suggest that my shortcomings are not my fault; they are merely due to a defecive "process". Anyway, I posit that anyone who listens to music every day or plays an instrument, and who attends live concerts, and who says he or she is a music lover, IS a music lover. Most music lovers stay away from this Forum for good reason.
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I found this interesting treatise on tonearm alignment in the context of a review of the Triplanar tonearm by Dick Olsher, which appeared in S'phile. If you read it to the end, his comments on the consequences of TAE are of note. He also brings in skating force. https://www.stereophile.com/tonearms/the_tri-planar_tonearm/index.html |