Kuzma 4Point Tri-Planar

Haven't heard the 4Point but I have compared the Kuzma Airline to a Durand Talea. The Talea had a lower sound floor and was much more effective at keeping complex music sounding uncongested. Instruments and voices retained much more individuality. This was with an Ortofon A90.

The Talea is also notably superior to my TriPlanar VII in these same areas. We've compared twice with my ZYX UNIverse and all present were in agreement. If I had the funds and time to play as much as I'd like, a Talea would replace my TriPlanar, beloved though it has been.

Add the Talea to your shopping list. It's the best arm Paul and I have heard (with a UNIverse). Haven't heard a Phantom so can't offer that comparison.

Reverb here (echoing Mike Lavigne's echo). Our comparisons were also with the Talea 1. The Talea 2 is reportedly a sonic improvement, which would only increase its advantage over the TriPlanar and Airline.

With regard to why some arm designers choose wood, I've spoken at length with two (Frank Schroeder, Joel Durand) and neither is seeking "warmth" or any sort of coloration. The idea that wood adds warmth (other than visually) is a myth. (Proof: the Talea is not particularly warm sounding. Schroeders are but that's due to the mobility in the "bearing", not the wood in the armtube.)

Wood is a chaotic material comprised of millions of random grain boundaries at varying angles surrounding cells with differing sizes, shapes and densities. Such a structure tends NOT to allow standing waves (resonances) to propagate or reinforce each other. Acoustic energies which flow into wood tend to be repeatedly scattered into disorganized packets with randomized frequencies and amplitudes. This makes it easier for the arm and armboard to dissipate them, rather than reflecting organized energy back toward the cartridge. Result? An armtube that adds LESS color to the signal than one made of (say) an organized (crystalline) material like most metals.

Of course there are ways around this for the maker of metal armtubes. For example, one could make a tube of sintered metal. Expensive, no doubt, but probably effective in similar ways to wood. I don't know if any metal armtubes are actually made with this in mind or not, just sayin'...

Ralph,

Thank you for offering a sublime example to buttress my argument (viz., musical instruments made of wood). Instrument makers use wood precisely because the phenomena I described occur differently depending on the particular wood. This allows them to control the sound of the instrument. It's the reason we have spruce sounding boards but ebony or cocobolo fingerboards and bridges (and tonearm wands).

The following are demonstrable and proven for any kinetic energy travelling through any material:

- the energy will reflect and/or diffract at a material boundary.

- the velocity of the energy will vary with the density of the material.

- the energy will be reduced in amplitude, slew rate and/or frequency in proportion to the flexing of the material in response to the energy, if any.

Perhaps you've not considered that these phenomena occur at the microscopic/cellular level inside an acoustically excited piece of wood. The laws of physics apply inside the wood as much as outside. We just need to think INSIDE the box. ;)

Saying that wood (woods, actually) is less quantifiable or more difficult to work with is quite different from dismissing the phenomena I described, which you acknowledge exist based on your own examples.

The phenomena exist as I described them, personal remarks notwithstanding.

Lew, I agree that an armtube's internal energy transmission properties can only affect energies which cross the headshell boundary into the arm, and the design and materials of the cartridge mount affect that transmission.

FWIW, the single-screw plate design seems to provide some effective coupling in Schroeder arms. For example, I've A/B'd the Model 2 with a carbon fiber tube vs. a pertinax one. (Pertinax is a composite of resin-bonded paper fibers, somewhat similar to a treated wood, though less dense and chaotic than the exotic hardwoods used in the Reference and Durand's arms).

Audible differences between those armtubes were readily apparent. Pertinax provided a lower sound floor and greater individuation of tones than carbon fiber, which is consistent with my blah-blah above. In this case at least, the one-screw cartridge/headshell plate passed sufficient energies so that the energy transmision properties of the armtube material itself made some audible differences. The cartridge/headshell connection of the Durand design is virtually identical, so one would expect similar behavior.

That said, there is a boundary so some energies will indeed be reflected back toward the cartridge, as occurs in every tonearm. My only point was that whatever energies *do* cross that boundary into the armtube will be more effectively dissipated by a material with a chaotic structure than an organized one.