Name Your Top 5 Most Musical Dynamic Sounding Tonearms of All time?


Could you list your top 5 all time favourite sounding Tonearms and on which table. 
vinny55

Showing 2 responses by larryi

It is tempting here to just name favorite arms, but, I don't know if it helps in terms of identifying ones that sound dynamic and musical.  I suspect that the terms "musical" and "dynamic" mean different things to different listeners, and any item that emphasizes an particular attribute of sound reproduction will sound good to some, terrible to others depending on taste and matching with the rest of the system.  

Those arms that sound distinctly more dynamic (to me, lively sounding) can tend to sound harsh or "jangly" in some systems.  I suspect that lively arms are doing less to damp vibration and it is the resonance that causes emphasis of certain frequencies that make them sound more dynamic.  Is that good or bad? That really depends on the system.  An example of a lively sounding arm is the Naim ARO.  In a lot of systems, it sounds notably more lively than other arms and that is a good attribute for systems that sound dead and bloodless.  But if you already have a lively sounding system (e.g., horn-based system), it might be too much.  
There are a lot of good and interesting arm recommendations made in this thread, but, as I said before, it is hard to attribute any particular qualities to the arm alone, particularly dynamics and a sense of being "musical."  At best, one can say certain combinations of arm, cartridge and tables have these qualities as strengths (and someone may find those same qualities weaknesses).

You could argue that an arm that can handle the demands of a Decca London cartridge is extremely dynamic because the cartridge sounds dynamic.  The same could be said of an arm that optimizes the performance of a Van den Hul Colibri. 

Keep in mind that "dynamics" is determined by the particular table chosen.  As a rough rule, tables with direct drive, idler drive and very high torque motors on belt drives tend to sound dynamic.  While I am tempted to say that a lot of tables without a spring suspension also sound dynamic, but, there are plenty of exceptions to that rough call (e.g., a good Linn setup is quite lively sounding).  Also, the kind of platter mat on any given table also affects the damping of vibration which greatly affects the sense of dynamics (the right mat is quite specific to each setup).