It is not how fast you go, but how you go fast. With only so much money to spend and only so much real estate in my media room I prefer to head down the path of least resistance. Negating skating forces is a noble cause. Minimizing tracking error is also a noble cause. I would prefer a solution that does both. Until I can manage that leap I prefer to stay where I am. The VIV arm may sound fine but it is not the solution I am looking for. |
@jasonbourne52 1+, The Viv arms extreme tracking angle error will be audible. It's argument that skating is worse is incorrect. Skating can be minimized so that it has no audible effect. If you want to get rid of skating and tracking angle error the right way to do it is with a Schroder LT or Reed 5T. |
@lewms arguments are correct. What follows is just an opinion. As for what sounds better or as for the Viv arm sounding OK or any other arm sounding OK for that matter has more to do with the sensitivity of our hearing which relative to the best lab equipment, stinks. You could also argue that what sounds good has nothing to do with distortion measurements until they are patently ridiculous. At any rate, viewing equipment changes as a natural progression, the Viv arm, and arms like it are not a step in my natural progression. The next step for me would be either the Reed 5A or the Schroder LT (once I have a turntable they will fit on). I think they both represent a much better solution to the problem. The only design issue with these arms is the vertical bearing can not be lowered to the surface of the record as there is not enough room in the vertical axis of these arms. If you have a turntable with vacuum clamping this is not and issue because all records become perfectly flat except for the very rare one that is severely warped. The genius of these arms is that they use the force generated by friction in the groove to power their mechanisms just as skating is powered in offset arms. As the Reed is a surface mount arm I just might be able to mount it on my table sans dust cover but I lean towards the Schroder as I think it is a more elegant solution. |
There is one simple fact that everyone seems to ignore out of politeness. I would rather rely on the physics of a mechanical situation than what anybody thinks they hear and I include myself in the anybody. The only accurate thing you can say about the Viv is that it is a silly design on several accounts and anybody who buys one has a poor understanding of the situation. Try this, intentionally twist your cartridge 5 degrees in the head shell and listen to what happens. If you hear nothing wrong either your system or your head does not image. It is the rare system that does image at the state of the art. It is the easiest aspect of HiFi performance to corrupt. |
@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. |
@boothroyd , the problem is the same although the conical styluses inferior high frequency performance might make the problem less severe, so won't presbycusis. Sound quality is a relative thing and depends on what a person is sensitive to or is use to hearing. The Viv arms errors change quite dramatically across the record and will be minimal somewhere in the middle of the record where it should sound fine. It also skates as @lewm related, outward at the beginning of the record to neutral near tangency back to outward at the end. The Reed 5A and the Schroder LT very near tangency across the entire record and very near zero skating across the entire record. The trade off is an elevated vertical bearing and an additional horizontal bearing for the Schroder and several additional bearings for the Reed which is why I favor the Schroder. One has to admit that a properly designed offset pivoted arm is a brilliant solution to the problem as it minimizes all the errors and can eliminate some of them. In short if the Viv arm sounds OK these other arms are going to sound even better. Some very smart men like those at SME, AJ Conte, Edgar Villchur , Frank Kuzma, Frank Schroder, Mark Gomez and others would never design an arm like the Viv.
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@lewm , and in my pedestrian experience that is all clear BS. Not you, but the claims this person makes. @clearthinker , now crank that experiment to the admitted 10 degrees. It's killing me. Anybody have a test record with synchronous sine waves in both channels? It will be easy to see the effect on a scope. Another important point @lewm made earlier is that an underhung arm is not free of skating due to the curvature of the record. the effect is going to skate the tonearm outwards toward the rim at both the outside then again on the inside. So at the most difficult area to track you are faced with both skating and a 10 degree tracking error. In my book that sucks. If any of you have not looked at the Reed 5T, the 5A and the Schroder LT you should. These are the solutions very bright people came up with that solve a host of issues. The only problem is that they require a lot of real estate, a table that can handle 12" arms at least. |
A Bose radio can sound "good" to some people. The RS Labs arm is a seriously defective design. The only reason some people think it sounds good is because the rest of their system/room is defective in some way or these people do not know what to listen for. The same holds true of the Viv arm. Everyone should angle their cartridge 10 degrees and listen to what happens to the image. I did this last night just for fun. Distortion of any type is inaudible below a certain limit. It is said that IM distortion becomes audible above 1%. Below 1% it is inaudible. Dynamic speakers can easily exceed that limit. There are many other types of distortion. The point is to minimize all of them below their detectible limits, all of them. The 9 inch, offset, pivoted, gimbal tonearm does this better than any other design excepting carriage driven linear tonearms and the Reed and Schroder arms. This is pure mechanical engineering and physics. What ANYBODY says something sounds like is totally and completely meaningless unless you have first hand experience with that person's abilities listening to a sota system. Most of us do not know what a sota system sounds like because we have never heard one listening from a proper listening position to a variety of excellent recordings. Because some people will think just about anything can sound good, shysters try to take advantage of this spewing out crap, sometimes expensive crap that does absolutely nothing or even make things worse. Some humans will do just about anything to make money. Looking at your spam folder should convince you of this. Sometimes equipment is generated by honest people who have an idea or design that is unusual in some way but violates the laws of physics in a way they do not understand. Perhaps these arms are an example of this. It does not make these designs less defective. |
@alan60 , You need to read the thread. What people think they hear is essentially meaningless. It tell you nothing about the actual performance of the unit. It only tells you that it works and plays music. @lewm , As I said minimizing distortion is important and the phase error that a 10 degree tracking error causes is most definitely audible. 2 or three degrees maybe not, but as the error increases the phase shift crawls down the frequency spectrum to places where it is more audible with systems that image correctly. Listen to a great recording of a female soprano. Then twist your cartridge 10 degrees and listen again. Her location will become less distinct. Some might mistake this for ambience which it most certainly not. The Viv arm has other substantial disabilities like it's bearing and I know you and I agree on this. A tonearm has to be rigidly connected to the plater. THey can be absolutely no differential in their movement. A tonearm can have two degrees of freedom period, vertical and horizontal. |
@cleeds , Like @raulirugas said, what you think you hear is meaningless. I include myself in that category. With issues like this science always knows best. Everything else is alchemy. I have made my own missteps in the past and have learned not to buck the reality of the situation. Viv owners seem not to understand that reality and that they have been taken advantage knowingly or not by the purveyors of snake oil. There is a sucker born every minute and I have to admit I have been suckered plenty. In order to be old and wise you have to be suckered a lot. @ pindac, like I said above there is a sucker born every minute. Consumer beware. " A bose radio can sound good to some people." There is no such thing as a perfect tonearm. Each one has a slew of compromises which should be aimed at minimizing all significant sources of distortion in a balanced way. The offset pivoted tonearm with anti skating is the solution scientists came up with over a period of 100 years and most of the work was done 90 years ago. In state of the art systems the sonic benefits of this design executed intelligently are obvious. My suggestion to those Viv owners who are looking for the best sound quality is to suck it up and get rid of that arm. That it sounds good to some people is meaningless. @rauliruegas , you may not be so hot typing English but there can be no doubt you know how to read it :-) |
@alan60 , I am totally and completely comfortable in my position. My goal is to keep others from making the same mistake. You obviously are resistant to buyer's remorse. I would not buy a Viv arm like I would not buy a tricycle all terrain vehicle. The only difference is the Viv is not dangerous. But please do not feel bad. You are in very good company. In my youth I purchased some seriously stupid equipment like the Transcriptors Vestigial Tonearm, live and learn. People have to get off this listening thing. You can not trust what other people hear because there is way too much variability in system and listening performance. Unless you are very well seasoned you can not even trust yourself. This is also not about music. We all love music or we would not be doing this. This is about system performance and design issues that make for a competent device. I am not going to beat around the bush when I see an obviously defective design. Because some people think it sounds good means absolutely nothing to me. |
Dogberry, The distortion caused by the Viv are is easily measured and if your system is really good and you know what you are listening to is quite audible. Most of my music listening is done in my shop in loud background fashion using mid Fi equipment I don't mind getting choked with dust. Yup, I like listening to the big system better but I am enjoying the music either way. I can't be in the listening position and make furnisher at the same time. It is also a very bad idea for an old person to get stuck in a seat. |
@cleeds, The problem cleeds, is that without direct AB evaluation and perhaps even some pointing out and even with a decent system, most people will not be able to discern the problem even though it is easily measurable. In other words, They think it sounds good when in actuality it does not. All ears are not created equal. All systems are not created equal. What people think they hear is meaningless. You are absolutely right about the mount. Now throw in the geometry and the bearing. What you get is a tonearm disaster. @alan60 , Human ears make very poor measuring equipment and you do not know what you are missing. Ignorance is bliss. |
@intactaudio, Not true. We also have our brains to judge designs by established criteria. Most of us refuse to use our ears constructively. Listening back and forth to two samples makes it easy to pick out the winner. ABing equipment is the single best way to determine what actually sounds better. Our brains and ears are not wired to do this in isolation. Anybody who thinks they can is more likely than not to have an unsatisfactory system. Remember the first time you sat in front of a real SOTA system. I do and my jaw must have dropped three feet. Most people have never heard that system and are out to sea without a compass. @mckinneymike , I could care less what sounds satisfy you. Chances are you have no idea what you are listening to other than it pleases you. I am after accuracy and I know for an absolute fact that paying close attention to manageable and programmable factors leads to the kind of sound that drops peoples jaws. A good example of this is the equality of both channels. In order to produce the most accurate image the two channels have to have identical frequency response curves and no group delays. Two identical speakers placed in different locations will have significantly different response curves blurring the image. Same for group delays and phase issues. All this can be easily measured and remedied. Who here has the facility do do this besides me?? |
@lewm, come on Lew you ought to know better than that. None of my cartridges has a significant zenith error. Every last one was fully examine and carefully set up with a very high power USB microscope, and not one of those cheap $60 ones either. Getting to the proper 92 degree VTA can be tricky with asymmetric styluses like the Replicant 100 and Gyger S. It helps to be able to see it in technicolor. I can snap lines and the program will automatically compute the angle. I set it on a 180 gm record. The amount of error going to 200 or down to 130 is miniscule, a few minutes maybe, Fortunately, The Schroder CB has a fine scale on it's post so once I have it set up I can return to the setting for any of my cartridges instantly without having to set up the microscope. Time to go skiing. The man who dies with the most tools wins:-) |
@intactaudio , Dave, JR is a pen pal. There is a new design for the stage of the WallyScope. I am in part responsible for the design change. I have the exact same microscope JR uses except it is on a laboratory grade stage which makes it easier to adjust. To look at zenith you need to put reference marks on the cartridge or whatever the cartridge is sitting on then you snap lines across the reference marks then on the long axis of the stylus. The program then automatically calculates the angle. In all my cartridges that is Zero degrees +- a few minutes. I am not your usual casual audiophile. I was in the business for a decade and I am a technocrat and tool collector. If it can be done I can usually do it, in analog fashion anyway. I do not have any CNC equipment because I do not make production runs. All my furnisher are one offs. I have way more capability than JR ever dreamed of. I will put a picture of the SteinScope on my system page so you can see if you can figure out how I made it. @clearthinker , Thanx for doing the calculation. I'm lazy. IMHO VTA towers are a complete waste of money. A scale on the tonearm's barrel is a very useful touch. It is always nice to have repeatable measurements. The real riot is that people will say up is brighter down is duller (I may have that reversed). As the stylus tilts off the axis of the cutter head in either direction the contact line can no longer fit into the smallest modulations, this high frequency ones. Moving the tonearm up or down creates a mechanical low pass filter. You loose the high frequencies in either direction. This is a great example of people letting their brains fool them. |
@cleeds , there is a distinct difference between a music lover an an audiophile. You can be both. @clearthinker is a music lover. He has his system at the level satisfactory for that enjoyment. @lewm is an audiophile. He is always looking for ways to improve his system and knows his way around a soldering iron. He also looks at audio equipment in an academic fashion with an excellent understanding of the sciences. Then there is everyone else for which I do not have a description. |
@rauliruegas , All I can say is that people are entitled to like what they want but then they are not true audiophiles. A true audiophile knows that technology advances and there is always better, more accurate sound around the corner. You have to wade through all the BS to get there, but that is life with humans. A true audiophile is never entirely happy with their system. The view this hobby as an evolutionary process. In our day audiophiles built their own equipment. Wait till you see the subwoofers I come up with! News Flash, The Atlas Lambda SL has landed somewhere in the US. I will have it in a few days. It's New Cartridge Time! Break out the Champaign and the SmarTractor. |
@dogberry Yes dogberry, distortion above a certain level is quite audible especially if it is not low order harmonic. Lower levels of distortion may be audible by people who know what to listen for. This has nothing to do with evaluating the low distortion performance of an audio system. What sounds right to some people can be woefully inaccurate. You can not trust what other people think a system sounds like unless you know that person and their system very well. Even then as @clearthinker has mention we are all subject to modifiers based on mood and internal biases that we might not even be aware of. Dogberry, I like both chocolate and cheese, but I am too damn fat and am desperately trying to avoid both of them. On the bright side listening to music and using my Weller soldering station do not cause weight gain. An audiophile is never entirely happy with their system. It is the same with racing cars, always looking for a way to go faster. Once you are totally satisfied you are not longer an audiophile. You are just a music lover. Not a bad place to be. Certainly a lot less expensive. "What does audiophile mean? a person who is very interested in and enthusiastic about equipment for playing recorded sound, and its quality: For an audiophile the quality of streamed music is sometimes inadequate.Feb 1, 2023" I like both cheese and chocolate but I am too damn fat and am trying to avoid both. On the bright side playing with my Weller soldering station and listening to music are not fattening. Praise be to the lord. If you are an opera buff then you REALLY need to go to Milan and see a show at Teatro alla Scala. It's like the Sistine Chapel for opera lovers. |
@pindac , Sorry pindac but you must live on a different planet. Just look at this discussion. Humans are endlessly competing with others and even themselves. At the route of it all is our survival instinct. If I did not compete with myself I would not be able to make the furnisher I do. Competition is healthy in us until it gets to killing each other. All the audio manufacturers compete with other manufacturers of similar equipment. They have no choice if they want to survive. I do know that many CEOs of audio manufacturers are very close friends with other audio CEOs. AJ Conte was very close with David Fletcher. Both made turntables but they were priced at distinctly different levels and did not compete directly with each other. In fact AJ used David's basic design for his turntables with David's blessing. We all try to buy what we think is "better." Thus the manufacturers have to make their equipment better which is a good thing. @rauliruegas Read racedoc's last post. Incredible isn't it. @racedoc, you offer absolutely no rational reason why the Viv arm should not be the disaster it is. You support it purely on an emotional basis, always the road to ruin. You obviously do not know what to listen for. Tracking angle error of that degree changes the timing between channels as the stylus is now reading one channel before the other. This is going to create a phase differential between the channels most prominent at higher frequencies working its way down as the error increases. It is that time and phase information that generates the image. With phase errors the image becomes less distinct. If you can not hear this in an AB comparison with a good normal pivoted arm like the Reed 2G or SME V it is because your system does not image correctly. Don't feel bad, very few systems do image correctly and very few audiophiles have heard a system that images correctly. Most loudspeaker/rooms are incapable of imaging correctly and that includes some very expensive ones. The Viv arm make a few important points. An arm that does not skate is a good thing. The compromises the Viv arm makes to achieve this are unacceptable. A tonearm has to be held rigidly in all but two directions rotation vertically and rotation horizontally. It can have absolutely no motion in any other direction or the cartridge can not make an adequate representation of the information held in the groove. The Viv arm fails to do this and It's bearing design has no real benefit. In short, the Viv arm is a Rube Goldberg device and will do down in history as such. It will not be alone. There are many other tonearms that fit in that category. It is what happens when someone with no idea what they are doing designs what they think is a simple device.
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@rauliruegas , I did not say that all new technology is better, but as a whole technology moves on and the equipment we have today is far superior the the equipment we had in the 60's. The trend is unmistakable. @pindac , I do not deal in snobbery pindac. That comment is just an excuse to dismiss opinions you do not like because you have no other way to counter. The Sun rises in the east and sets in the west. You can argue about the definition of east and west but the Sun comes up over there and goes down over yonder. And, you can not do a damn thing about it. @neonknight , Buying the Viv arm is a huge mistake. You might as well buy a Yugo.
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@lewm , 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.
@intactaudio , see my post above to alan60 @pindac, you build your own equipment, any of it? You measure the performance of your system with anything other than your ears? You been doing this since you were 4 years old. You spend 10 years installing very expensive systems in the homes of rich people to pay your way through medical school? You sir are a totally subjective nightmare. @atmasphere , 1++ Excellent dissertation Ralph. @rauliruegas 1++ Ditto. The key it is to maintain objectivity as far as you can and save the subjectivity for areas you can not measure or control. The Tonearm is not one of these areas. The Speaker/Room is by far the most difficult issue and subjectivity has to creep in. Here there are issues of taste and preference that go beyond measurement. It is still important to measure and understand everything you can. @wallytools , JR, your opinion is always welcome here. Nobody is shooting at anybody and heated discussions are not a bad thing. Sometimes you have to be very specific to get the message across. There are always a few...total subjectivists around. The Viv arm is a great example of them in operation. They are entitled to ruin their own systems. But, others read these posts and I hate to see them swayed by alchemy. Yours is a voice of reason and should be heard especially when it comes to tonearms and cartridges.
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@alan60 , It doesn't which is why I own a Schroder CB. Mr Schroder would argue that the string is pulled so tight by the neodymium magnets that it is essentially rigid. Anti skate is applied by twisting the string. The arm is also naturally dampened by the tension on the string. It is a great example of Mr Schroder's lateral thinking but not my cup of tea. On the other hand His LT model is a brilliant design and I will own one when I have a table I like that it will fit on. The CB, IMHO is as good as a pivoted offset arm gets. It ticks off every single important design feature. The only other arms that do this are the SME V, the Reed 2G, the Kuzma 4 Point, Origin live and the TriPlanar. There may be a few I am not aware of. |
@lewm , Never second guess a tool collector. The only thing I am lacking are the LPs. Go to Channel D's web site and check out Mac the Scope and Waavebox. I use a calibrated microphone and an audio analytic program to measure the output of the system on top of the measurements the preamp processor makes. Most of my testing is on the output of the system. It seems your memory is just as bad as mine. Old age sucks. @intactaudio , All these parameters count at some level and every type of distortion has a range of volume. At some low level the distortion becomes inaudible. The key is to minimize all parameters to the point where each one is inaudible which requires a balanced design with the appropriate compromises. To go all the way with any one parameter at the expense of the others is a huge mistake. After the 9" offset, pivoted arm the arms that do the best job of this are the Schroder LT and the Reed 5A and 5T. A carriage driven straight line tracker like the Dereneville DTT-05 could be a contester if it were not for the stupid price. I am neither polite or politically correct. The Viv arm is a pitifully sad design for a number of reasons. The fact that it can sound OK speaks only to the mediocracy of some systems and the inexperience of some listeners. |
@lewm , you did not check out those programs. I can measure distortion both IM and harmonic. I usually do not do that as it is a PITA. I trust in the specifications of the equipment I buy. Distortion also is not something I can adjust aside from optimum set up whereas frequency response and group delays I can to great effect. Yes, we live with some phase distortion. The point is to minimize it. I used fairly potent sound absorption behind the speakers from floor to ceiling. The Sound Labs being the dipole line arrays they are minimize reflected sound otherwise to a degree impossible with any other speaker type including horns. The Viv arm's bearing is floating which makes it worse than a unipivot which is pretty bad. The digital filters I use do not change phase. They will ring if you get carried away with the slope. I have done the experiment of twisting the cartridge and underhanging it. The image is distorted and the blackness between instruments and voices disappears filled in by high frequency hash. Things like cymbals and triangles become harder to localize. The Viv arm is a very poor design perpetrated by people who have no idea what they are doing. If I prevent one person from getting one I have done humanity a service. |
@neonknight , My system is on a 16 foot wall. Go look at it. The speakers are just over three feet from the wall and behind them the wall is covered from floor to ceiling with 4" acoustic foam tile. This greatly attenuates frequencies above 250 Hz which alleviates the harshness atmasphere mentions. This distance keeps interference out of the midbass and I use subwoofers below 100 Hz with very steep slopes. Without subs and wall treatment Atma-Sphere is correct. I have been using dipole panels exclusively since 1978. They have run the gamut from Acoustats, to Magnepans, to Apogees, back to Acoustats and now Sound Labs. Let me know what speakers you plan on getting and we can talk about it. 16 feet is plenty. |
The distortion created by the Viv's design, tracking angle in particular, are easy to measure. The fact that it and other designs that seem implausible are capable of sounding "OK" to some people means absolutely nothing in the greater sense, just as some obviously silly "tweaks" seem to sound better to some people. Human ears do not make very good measuring devices and what "sounds good" is a matter of experience which is varied to say the least. Since it is impossible to standardize our hearing and the systems we listen to we are all thrown into a washing machine of varied opinions much of them based more on individual bias than real substance. As for what sounds better, an aluminum or carbon fiber arm tube, properly designed they both sound exactly the same, like nothing. If an armwand has a sound it is defective. The arm wand that has no sound will always be more accurate. The ideal arm wand is infinitely stiff and totally resonance free. It has to have a mass appropriate for the cartridge being used. The Kuzma 4 point arm is a great aluminum design and the Sat arm a great carbon design. I have heard both and I do not think I could tell the difference in an AB test. I also doubt they are measurably different. But there are people who wax poetic over the SAT arm which admittedly is a beautifully made device. It is beautifully made like a Patek Philippe watch. My Garmin watch is not near so beautifully made and costs 1/50th what a Patek Philippe does but it actually is more accurate and a lot more informative. How a well designed carbon fiber or aluminum arm tube functions depends on what it is attached to. @cleeds I am mortally wounded. I shall never be able to show my face in public again.
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@lewm, "nothing" is the ideal goal. The tonearm's job is to hold the cartridge rigidly in the right position to do it's job having only two degrees of motion, vertical and horizontal. The right position is tangent to the groove with a SRA of 92 degrees and a stylus azimuth perfectly perpendicular to the surface of the record. The tonearm can not resonate in any way and should have frictionless bearings. There is no perfect tonearm, but in evaluating tonearm designs I think it is helpful to keep this in mind and make as little compromise as you can, picking the compromises that are least harmful. When you add into it that you are dealing with a sprung suspension and an unavoidable resonance problem the cartridge itself becomes an important factor in the design of every tonearm and has to be kept in mind. So, there is this push-pull situation in tonearm design. Fixing one problem makes other problems worse. I believe, since there is always a threshold under which problematic issues become inaudible, the appropriate approach is to minimize all the problems in a balanced fashion and hopefully bring all of them in below the threshold of audibility. Many very smart engineers have looked at this problem and the vast majority of them have decided that the 9", pivoted, offset tonearm does this best. Newer tonearm designs utilizing the Thales algorithm like the Schroder LT and the Reed 5A and 5T may advance tonearm design to the next level. The principle makes enough sense that I would be willing to try it. Carriage driven tangential tonearms also make sense but are much more complicated and expensive to make. I put air bearing arms and this Viv arm in the same category, arms that optimize one or several factors at the gross expense of another which I find unacceptable. Maybe the distortion caused by this is inaudible to some people, but it is there and is audible to some of us. Lew, if you look at the business end of the Schroder arms he uses the same design on all of them, a cartridge mounting plate is attached to the end of the arm with one screw in a slot. So the cartridge can be twisted within a certain range and the overhang can be adjusted withing the range of the slot. If you mount the cartridge with only the inboard screw you can twist it straight and slide it back creating an underhung arm without any offset. This may not work with all cartridges but it does with the MC Diamond because I tried it. This configuration definitely caused enough havoc with imaging that I am pretty sure I could pick it out reliably in a blinded AB situation. |
@intactaudio , it is always safe to assume the math is always right especially when it comes to human hearing. Just because some obviously defective designs sound OK to some people does not make them any less defective. It is an interesting but extremely complicated and hard to fathom, not tonearm design but the psychology behind human hearing. I think it is analogous to the Rorschach test. Show 10 people an ink blot and you will get ten usually different impressions of what the ink blot looks like. The same is true of sound. It depends on that person's experience, preferences and state of mind. |
@lewm , I am at Vail skiing so, pardon the delay. There are standard answers to ink plot tests but as anything with humans there is a bell curve distribution of answers. Most regular folks are going to think the Viv arm sounds fine. Those of us at the higher end of the bell curve are going to think it sounds like sh-t. When given the test all I could say was "it looks like and ink blot." Shows you how imaginative I am. Distortion is like fog the heavier it gets the more impossible it is see / hear. Systems with really clear vision put distortion on Viv-id display. |
@rsf507 , I would guess that @retipper would think you would haven to be out of your mind to buy a Viv arm. He probably would not state that directly as he would not want to lose customers. Manufacturers tend to be politically correct for obvious reasons. Maybe he will chime in. |
Straight underhung arms still skate, one way or the other depending on where they are on the record. The only arms that do not skate are straight tangential trackers. The problem is there are currently no straight line trackers that do not have substantial issues. The fact that the Viv are sounds satisfactory to many people is an enigma as the distortion is substantial. Maybe we are not sensitive to that type of distortion. I applaud you for your curiosity and willingness to spend money on a device that might not work out. It is how you learn. |
Hold on Raul. I do not use a processor to correct colorations in the recording. I use a processor to correct amplitude and timing problems with my system and room, plus using it for crossovers. The was a time when I has a specific target curve to minimize sibilance in some recordings but since I have moved to the Sound Labs I never use it. Once the system is set up I never change anything unless something changes like a new amp of my wife moving the sofa. Once you know what you are doing (took me 5 years to figure it out) it is a set it and forget it issue. Now, I have a new processor coming, the DEQX Pre 8 and I am going to add another amp to drive the SL's high frequency transformer, probably the Bricasti M25. So, there will be a period if instability until I figure it all out. |
Hi Sir. Have you looked at the Schroder LT. Brilliant design! Then there is the Reed 5A and 5T. The only other solution would be a tangential straight line tracker, but that one is difficult to pull off. There is not a satisfactory one on the market yet. Both the Schroder LT and the Reed arms require more real estate than a 9 or 10" arm. You have to have a turntable that will accept a 12" arm. The fact that the Viv arm sounds good to some people speaks to the lack of sensitivity our ears have to the distortion created by zenith error. It is well made and trick which helps. |
I have a hard time believing that the distortion created by the underhung arm is euphonic. But, whatever. My approach is always to setup my system with a scientific approach. In order to determine what is going on with the Viv arm I would have to buy one and a second cartridge. It is far enough afield that I am not interested in doing that, the deeper dive. Knowing what phase errors do at high frequencies my supposition while not proven is as likely as any other. The distortion caused by zenith error is easily measured. As for cartridge set up. I prefer Lofgren B because it has the lowest TAE across the entire record accept at the last 2 cm which are usually not used in modern records and most older ones. Setting a cartridge up is a very fastidious process that requires the right tools and a sharp eye. If you have not used a SmarTractor I highly suggest you try one. It looks intimidating at first. After a few installs you'll never understand how you managed without it. The WallySkator is also very useful as is a proper USB microscope and computer program. The WallyScope uses a great head unit from Amscope and a great program, but the stage is a work in progress. I know of no horizontal stage that is appropriate for a high powered microscope. I my case I made my own cannibalizing an old medical microscope. Zenith error and TAE are almost identical. The stylus is presented to the groove at the wrong horizontal angle. In the case of TAE the entire cartridge is at the wrong angle. One can safely assume that the distortion would be very similar between the two, perhaps a bit worse with TAE. You like the sound of the Viv arm and there is no way I can argue with that. |
Simple, I have a very powerful USB microscope and a computer program that allows me to snap lines and it automatically determines angles. I detail each and every cartridge I buy. If there is an error I correct for it, but frankly all my cartridges are in the 9 to 13 thousand dollar range and are beautifully made. If I ever got a cartridge that was that bad I would send it right back. |
By the way JR and I are pen pals. He modified the WallyScope due to a recommendation of mine. The head unit of my scope started out life as a WallyScope. TAE is bad, so isn't skating. The approach taken by the majority of pivoted tonearm designers is the right one. Regardless of how you think the Viv arm sounds it is the wrong approach. The ultimate tonearm would be a tangential straight line tracker but nobody has managed to do one correctly yet. The technology to do it correctly has just been developed. Also, the author of that vinyl asylum paper is FOS. TAE affects all frequencies but primarily high frequencies the distortion is not harmonically related at all as the distortion varies continuously as does TAE. All frequencies have a horizontal component except those in perfect mono dead center. |
With the program I use, you snap a line exactly parallel to the cantilever then another through the long axis of the stylus. It should read 90 degrees. All my current cartridges are 90 degrees within the error of the process. I just started doing this recently. But I have seen cartridges that were obviously off by eye. As for TAE as the stylus rotates off tangency it reads the groove at a slightly different time in one channel than the other, phase shifts. The higher frequencies have much shorter wavelengths and consequently shorter groove modulations. Thus with TAE you are going to shift phase much more dramatically for high frequencies. At 180 degrees the channels cancel eachother. This will happen a lot sooner for 20 kHz than it will for 20 Hz. You actually cannot shift phase enough at 20Hz to make any significant distortion because the wavelength is so large in comparison to the size of the stylus. You can't even shift phase much more than a few degrees at 20 kHz as the wavelength is still significantly larger than the stylus. |
I'm still here Raul, enjoying the banter. Not that I should question your cleverness, but the only way I have ever been comfortable with an audio assessment is to do rapid AB comparisons. I have a new method which you will hate but @intactaudio will appreciate. If I want to compare two cartridges everything else in the chain has to be identical. I record both cartridges to my hard drive in 24/192 playing the same record. I can run both files at the same time and switch back and forth with the remote. You can compare any analog source this way. Intactaudio, I recommend that people who have very small or no record collection at all should not get started in vinyl. It is problematic from a number of perspectives and silly expensive. It is for hobbyists like Lew, Raul and myself, people who already have insanely large vinyl collections who have to play them with something. We are like little old ladies around a little glass table at teatime discussing our medical issues. |
