The Palladian-A step beyond

Fleib,
It's telling that your only example of the move away from Rule by Law is the actions of Greenpeace.  As for the rest of your random shots, where did they come from, and where are they going?
Anyway, we are all under stress right now, and perhaps it's therefore a bad time to talk politics.
The Palladian is much less controversial, good, bad or indifferent.  I suspect it's at least quite good, because I respect the collective opinions of those who are listening to it.

I can only think that someone served Trump a bad taco, somewhere back in his childhood.  And he's still vomiting.

Meantime, yes to live music.  Dynamics and more dynamics.

Flieb, I wish I knew what you were trying to say in your comment on males v females.  And then the attribution to Neobop.  Is this something once written by Neobop?

Dare I respond?  No one said or says that males and females are precisely equal biologically.  What is sought by justifiably insistent females is equality of treatment in a work environment, as well as freedom from sexual harassment or the power to take corrective action if harassment occurs.  Is that so wrong?

Leonard Cohen's lyrics have taken us off the subject of the Palladian, for sure.

Chris, I would amend your "audiophilic rules" in one way: Audiophiles seek change, even when they ARE already happy.

It's much like what Jerry Seinfeld said about the male propensity for channel surfing when watching TV: "Men don't want to know what's on; they want to know what ELSE is on."

As for me, as much as I love both of my audio systems, nothing does it quite like live music.  So last night I went down to Blues Alley in Georgetown (DC) to catch the late show of the Cyrus Chestnut Trio.  For those who don't know, Cyrus is a jazz pianist of note.  I like that he still plays standards, and his improvisations are very imaginative.  As a surprise, he brought up onto the stage a young female singer imported from NYC.  Her name is Brianna Thomas.  I had never heard of her, let alone heard her.  She was utterly brilliant, a new major talent, in my opinion.  Sarah Vaughn and others, re-visited.  (Almost no one ever in history had the chops of Sarah, including opera singers. Well, maybe Aretha. Maybe Tebaldi.) Her work with Cyrus made my day and my night.  I had a conversation with her after the show, and I intend to hear more of her during future visits to New York.  She's on CD only, sadly.

I know he has a big following, but I cannot make myself love Leonard Cohen.  However, any man's death diminishes me, as John Donne said.
More than Leonard Cohen, I will miss my best friend, who was killed in a freak accident last April, 2016.

Last night I had reason to unbox my UNItractor (or whatever Dietrich calls his first and most elaborate protractor) in order to align a new cartridge, and I once again was able to appreciate its elegance.  It is not a simple device, but I like what Einstein is said to have said about solutions to problems (like aligning a tonearm). Something to the effect that the solution should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.  DB thought of everything that could go wrong or be a source of error in alignment and provided mechanisms to eliminate them as much as the skill and patience of the user will permit.  Well done and worth the relatively high cost.

Did anyone else get censored for relating a story about what Groucho Marx said about Doris Day?  No, I don't think so.  Just me.

Geoch, I am not quite sure what you are trying to say, but your prose is lovely.  Except I think it's "whiskey-tango-foxtrot" (WTF) that you meant to write.

The five wise guys, instead of 3 wise men?

Big fan of that Acutex, here too.
Every time I go back and forth between the SoundSmith Grace Ruby and the LPM320STR, I change my mind about which I like best. 

Thuchan, I hope you did the right thing and also sent along your torque wrench. Raul can send it over to Nandric when he is sufficiently torqued.

Nandric, I am relying upon my memory of what was available to audiophiles of the 1970s.  The Mark Levinson pre-preamplifier was nothing but a separate phono gain stage that did not "do" RIAA equalization; all it did was to add gain to the output from a low output MC cartridge.  This, in fact, was Mark Levinson's very first commercial product, I think.  The product filled a niche in the market, because there were very few alternative ways to amplify the output of an MC sufficiently.  The output from the (solid state) ML device was then fed to the input of an MM phono stage, because RIAA correction (and a little more gain) was needed.  Thus, I was not being eccentric when I fed the ML output into my MM phono. (Actually, I never bought into MC at that time, and I never owned the ML pre-pre; I heard them in other systems.) The other notable "pre-preamplifier" that came along a little later in the USA was the Counterpoint SA-2.  Also an active gain device, but one that used tubes and was therefore noisy but better sounding than the ML.  Maybe the early Denon and Ortofon SUTs were available back then, but I don't recall that they had gained popularity as yet.  There are still one or two pre-preamplifiers on the current market.  Hagerman make one of them.

Once again, you are double-spaced.  Very stylish.

What I want to know is, why are Nandric’s posts always double-spaced, whereas the rest of us only get single spacing? Could this be a hangover from his days as a professor? Does he want to leave room for us to take notes?

It is interesting to read that the Supex was felt to be the start of the "MC Revolution" in Europe, as well as in the USA. When it first arrived here in the mid-1970s, I heard it via the use of a Mark Levinson pre-preamplifier into a MM phono stage. There were few or no SUTs available back then. In my opinion at that time, my Grado TLZ blew away the Supex, which did not sound at all "musical" to my ears. And yet now the Supex is a collector’s item. It wasn’t until the late 1980s or early 1990s that I "drank the Kool-Aid" and became a convert to MC cartridges.

To keep this on track, Halcro, did you use a torque wrench on your cartridge screws?  The tension on cartridge screws can certainly affect sonics, for all the reasons you and others reiterate.  If one were to draw conclusions regarding the efficacy of this or that fastener per se, then I think torque has to be a constant.

Solong, it's fascinating that you have already done research on titanium screws.  Prior to now, had you drawn any conclusions?  Thanks.  I've just been using aluminum or plastic screws or anything non-magnetic.

Nandric, The best I can figure out  is that my post(s) were deleted because I used the word "virgin", in the context of re-telling a well known anecdote about Groucho Marx and Doris Day.  Since neither Groucho nor Doris will be reading this thread, I cannot believe it was because my post(s) might have offended them.  Moreover, those two would have laughed and probably did laugh. By the way, Doris is a much under-estimated chanteuse.  If you have the LP of her singing with Andre Previn, it's pretty good work.

Folkfreak, Thank you for taking the time to post your very early observations.  Sadly, the cost is such that one cannot casually "check this cartridge out".  It's more an act of faith. After you put tens of hours on the Palladian you might then want to switch back to the PC1 for a bit.  Such experiments can be quite revealing.

Bluewolf, I admire your desire for peace and tranquility.  However, it's the squabbling that makes these threads interminably long, thought provoking, and occasionally funny.  Some of us some of the time have no patience with the fact that others of us disagree on this or that.  In fact, this could be said of all of us, some of the time, and some of us all of the time.

Flieb, What I read, on the website of a dealer who can hardly be said to be unbiased, is that aluminum was chosen for the cantilever, because its resonances are higher (not "lower") in frequency, above the audible spectrum, compared to boron, etc.  As the Germans might say, "machts nicht" (or something like that), the point is, does it sound good? Like everything Dertonearm brings to market, the cartridges look to be beautifully made.  The rest is for the end user to decide.

My tendency would be to go for the second most expensive version, without the gold inlay.  Or the cheapest one if Nandric says it sounds good.

Now I am getting angry.  The second of my last two posts has also been removed, and I received yet another warning email.  The email states that the criteria for censoring a post are as follows:

"Content may be removed for one or more of these reasons:
It looked like spam
It was abusive towards another member
It depicts explicit and/or violent content
It contains profanity"

Please tell me in what way either of my last two posts fits any of the above criteria for removal.  Unless the moderator deems the word "virgin" to be either violent or profane.
Sayonara.

Halcro, I loved your observation about vintage MM and some (not all) vintage MC cartridges vs modern LOMC cartridges.  It was bang on the money.  Last night I was listening to my SS re-tipped Grace Ruby, about a $600 total investment, and wondering whether and how, for example, a ZYX UNIverse will compare to it.

I personally credit Raul for calling this dichotomy to my attention.

If we could have a rational discussion of "damping", I would like to comment on Raul's long post covering that subject.  There is more than one way to skin the cat (with apologies to Flier's cat).  Besides damping spurious resonances one can also sink the energy that affects the magnitude of the resonance.  This is what I think might be happening with the FR64S/66S.  It may be that the tonearm is efficient at draining resonant energy away from the cartridge body and headshell. Because, as Raul correctly states, there is no impediment to energy transmission along the arm tube and back to the pivot and base structure, it may be that the energy is effectively drained away or "sinked".  

Taking a lesson from the structure of my L07D turntable/tonearm, I took great pains to add mass to the arm board of the turntable where I have mounted the FR64S.  Plus I use the B60 VTA adjuster, which also adds tightly coupled mass to the base of the FR64S.  Perhaps for this reason, and/or because the Acutex cartridge I mounted on the FR64S just does not energize the headshell very strongly, I perceive no issue that I can attribute to resonance.  And the sound is anything but the romantic euphonic one that I think R associates with "distortions".  It is quite uncolored across the entire spectrum. (I have read that MC cartridges are most guilty of this "sin" of producing a lot of mechanical energy into the headshell and beyond.)  Using a single material from front to back, as is done in the FR tonearms, also helps sink or drain away spurious mechanical energy produced by the cartridge.

I think this is an interesting topic.  I also think that trying to kill resonance purely by damping can be a losing proposition unless done properly.

Apparently, one not only has to see, but to see only with your eyes.

Dear Raul,  According to every treatise I have ever read about the Tiptoes, the originals made of solid aluminum, they were not intended to be anti-resonance devices.  They were/are meant to drain energy, but in one direction only.  In other words, they are diodic in nature.  If carefully placed at vibrational nodes on a shelf surface, they are supposed to transfer vibrational energy FROM the component INTO the shelf, but not vice-versa, ideally because the shelf is inert at the point contacted by the tip of the tiptoe.  This has nothing to do with damping; it's all about dissipating energy.  Using a stethoscope to survey the surface of a shelf, so as to locate the inert points on the shelf surface, I have observed this effect personally.  If you don't take care to place the tiptoes correctly at vibrational nodes, then they lose their diodic property; energy can go in either direction, into and out from the shelf, and they are no different from raising your gear on alu blocks.  The very best "tiptoe"-like device I ever owned were/are the Goldmund cones (no longer available).  They have a core of amorphous damping material that feels like putty and an outer body of some dense metal. I still use them whenever and wherever it makes sense.  One of the few tweaks I can actually "hear".

Were it not for the fact that I own and use an FR64S, I might take your critique very seriously, because "on paper" it makes sense.  What I wrote above is based on my actual experience using the tonearm, and my experience is in contradiction to the theory you posit.  Evidently, you had a different experience.  This could be due to a difference in cartridge or headshell or in the construction of the tonearm mount.  As noted, I am using it with an Acutex MI type cartridge; perhaps non-MC cartridges impart less energy into the headshell than do MC types.  I am not using the FR headshell; I am using a lightweight aluminum headshell.  Also, Halcro is using a carbon fiber headshell.  For sure, this would make a drastic difference in the transmission of energy into the arm wand, compared to the clunky FR headshell and some others as well.  

Dear Raul, I have to laugh every time I read one of your posts that cordially begins with "Dear" so-and-so and cordially ends with "Regards and enjoy the music", yet in between the salutations, we find only vitriol.  It would be OK to agree that we don't all agree on every topic and that failure to agree does not indicate that the other person has a fatal character flaw, which in this case seems to be love of "distortions".  I don't know about you, but I am saving my anger for politics. This stuff just does not amount to a hill of beans.  Relax and REALLY enjoy the music.

For me, it may be no coincidence that the MC cartridges I like most have tended to be those with high-ish compliance, compared to their brethren.

Maybe because I have to be concerned with exact calculations and minutiae of other kinds in my work life, I tend to be lazy about facing exactitude in my hobbies.  Seems to me that no matter what anyone can do, no matter how great a genius or how creative or innovative, it is only possible to achieve tangency to the groove wall of an LP at two points on the playing surface, given a conventional pivoted tonearm that is mounted such that the stylus tip overhangs the spindle and employs a headshell with offset angle.  Optimal mounting geometry would seek to place those two null points such that tracking angle error up to and after each of the two null points is minimal.  From what I can gather, Lofgren and Baerwald published the best solutions to this problem, and maybe now Dietrich has done even better, but I have to wonder how large a difference alignment alone could possibly make in the listening experience, when we are comparing solutions that are very close to each other.  I am dubious, and I do own and use a UNItractor.

If the AS cartridge sounds wonderful, it is probably because it is a very good cartridge, maybe a great one, but I doubt its excellence has much to do with alignment per se.

Now as to the discussion of cantilever movement.  It's interesting to me that MC cartridges, which are generally low in compliance, lose again. Add this to the other drawbacks: (1) The moving mass of an MC is not as low as that of an MI cartridge. (2) The low signal voltage necessitates one of a few tricks to add gain, any of which inevitably also add distortion of one kind or another.  Why do they dominate the high end?
They do have the undeniable virtue of costing more.