Schroder sq and the new talea

Kostas_1, classical economics is helpful in explaining valuations on luxury goods like tonearms, insofar as the theory of marginal utility accounts for diminishing returns. However esoteric consumer behaviors relating to tonearm purchases requires a more complex model than rational behavior--perhaps something from evolutionary economics building on Veblen's idea of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. Yet as everybody around here knows, there is not much that is socially conspicuous about audio consumption. Valuations are formed in the privacy of one's living room and socially in a small virtual community of mostly shallow ties. The virtual gathering might appear to be just another form of country-clubbish exclusionary bonding, were not manufacturers and enthusiasts dancing together around the maypole of the thread after sharing a sweat lodge at an RMAF demo. We've come a long way since Frank built his first arm without a lathe...

"What is trans-cognitive knowledge? And if there is a perception beyond formal operational cognition, then what would it see?"

This question is addressed by the crack in the bowl--a complex metaphor suggestive of the failure of knowledge and the symmetries, elsewhere in James a mutation of liminal inter-connectedness into spiritual vampirism. Gladius and scotum as mark of quality or as glandular pustule of the Roman venerium?

On the deconstruction of gladius & scutum I'll defer to Henry James, whose modern perspective on Romans and intrinsic quality & universal valuation(embodied in the ideal of perfect marriage) is captured in the symbol of the Golden Bowl. Perhaps the Imperium is closer than we know...

"The Prince had always liked his London, when it had come to him; he was one of the modern Romans who find by the Thames a more convincing image of the truth of the ancient state than any they have left by the Tiber. Brought up on the legend of the City to which the world paid tribute, he recognised in the present London much more than in contemporary Rome the real dimensions of such a case..."

"Oh, marble floors!" But she might have been thinking—for they were a connection, marble floors; a connection with many things: with her old Rome, and with his; with the palaces of his past, and, a little, of hers; with the possibilities of his future, with the sumptuosities of his marriage, with the wealth of the Ververs. All the same, however, there were other things; and they all together held for a moment her fancy. "Does crystal then break—when it IS crystal? I thought its beauty was its hardness."

Her friend, in his way, discriminated. "Its beauty is its BEING crystal. But its hardness is certainly, its safety. It doesn't break," he went on, "like vile glass. It splits—if there is a split."

"Ah!"—Charlotte breathed with interest. "If there is a split." And she looked down again at the bowl. "There IS a split, eh? Crystal does split, eh?"

"On lines and by laws of its own."

"You mean if there's a weak place?"

For all answer, after an hesitation, he took the bowl up again, holding it aloft and tapping it with a key. It rang with the finest, sweetest sound. "Where is the weak place?"

She then did the question justice. "Well, for ME, only the price."

Another one that come to mind is the Coke bottle discarded from an airplane that becomes an object of religious veneration for a primitive tribe in the "The Gods Must Be Crazy." Finally in Antonioni's "Blow-Up", David Hemmings fighting off concert fans to take possession of Jeff Beck's broken guitar neck-- a prize that is immediately devalued by being discarded on a street corner before indifferent passers-by.

As Lewm said, it's a tonearm.

Asa, I was not saying that trans-cognitive knowledge stems from a failure of knowledge. Rather, in literary terms at least, there is merely a caution that any attempt to rationalize full absorption of the Other contains inevitably parasite potential that indicates "a crack" in the original notion of perfect symmetry. With respect to gladius, its quality(sharpness, hardness) cannot be entirely separated from its value or purpose in the context of its use in the service of imperialism. Similarly(but without the martial implication)a tonearm's quality cannot be separated from its value or purpose as a transcriptor. However, unlike the Gladius, there is enough deviation in theory, design, execution & measurement of tonearms(unlike the simple kill-shot of Gladius) to mostly confuse distinctions between quality and value, and to relegate judgment to opinion. For example, while debate continues regarding long vs. short pivot arms and even shorter linear arms, there has really been no success in ranking all of the variables of these divergent designs. As there is no reasonable prospect of synthesis, there is probably no possibility for a sine qua non of tonearms. And yet audiophiles yearn for this convergence, probably from the false assumption that these are at bottom simple devices.

"Once all demands are identified the design will determine itself...it is the approach of an engineer."

Dertonarm, I don't think so. If it does then you should name your tonearm Athena-- born directly from the forehead of Zeus. Since an LP is far removed from a virgin uncut master and tracking is diametric from cutting, there is really little more than force of analogy to suggest that the engineering process will be self-determined by a complete understanding of the physics embedded in an LP. I see the engineering process in this instance more as a series of differential equations that are fitted to a problem and tested at boundary conditions. The solution is revealed through an iterative process.

The diversity that we see among tonearm designs stems largely from each designer's particular assumption about which variables are key determinants. An illustration is captured in the recent thread on 12" tonearms, in which a Bob Graham citation suggests that there is a necessary trade-off between the tracing advantage of a long arm and the disadvantage of increased wand resonance and mass. IIRC Graham conceded that the 12" Phantom option was driven mostly by market considerations. If your "blue book" can build a pivot arm without any such compromises then I will be at RMAF 2011 to celebrate.

Dertonarm, were the ubermensch tonearm to emerge from its cave like Zarathustra or reveal itself as the Golden Bowl of Manna, it must have zero length and track without a pivot point, have variable mass and damping separately selectable in both horizontal and vertical domains, and maintain perfect tangency.

Dertonarm,

"I teach you the overman." Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Perhaps the translation is weak or I took this too literally. In any event, if I am short on criteria for the ideal tonearm, it would be enlightening as a thought experiment to have some of your tonearm "blue book." To the degree possible it would be most helpful to define the arm's qualities in terms of practical design rather than physics. For example, I suggest an arm of zero length to eliminate wand resonance. I suggest an arm without a vertical pivot in order to eliminate vertical tracking error. These notions are not specious, as I can at least conceive how to implement such designs.

Atmasphere, I had in mind a short tangential headshell that instead of pivoting vertically to navigate warps, would rise and fall in parallel with the record surface via some sort of servo mechanism, possibly guided by a laser to measure the fluctuating distance between headshell and LP. I wouldn't rule out an air bearing. If the moving mass is kept light and of a design such as Ladegaard/Trans-Fi, the bearing actually works better at lightest feasible pressure. I'm not really trying to push one approach or another. It's more interesting to rank the key variables as a basis for trade-offs in design.