TW-Acustic Arm

Dertonarm,

Just to get back to the market situation:

What are the technical issues in tonearm design?

What is your opinion to the very serious price tag of the Linn Ekos SE, which ? I picked this arm because of a comparable technical complexity, and therefore, as you argue, the same technical issues.

Ttttt, what are the technical issues in tonearm design?

How about someone asking TW that question .....

Its about pivot tonearm design here in general and whether a new product tries to address some of the questions or maybe all.
The Linn Ekos SE does have a very serious price tag too - indeed.
However - I quit making any comment about any Linn product in he late 1980ies and won't break my rule. I will neither comment any Linn product nor do I communicate with any proud owner/admirer of Linn components.

But the answer lies in a direct - even an only visual one - glance to the two tonearms.
Both are of comparable "complexity" and both face and therefor should "address" - as any pivot tonearm should... - the very same technical issues and demands.
Now the core question arise whether those issues were actually detected and understood.
Thats where in our mother language "sich die Spreu vom Weizen trennt" - or that's the way the cookie crumbles....

To illustrate the point please look close at 2 long time contenders for top-tier in pivot tonearm design - both are around for more than 20 years now in their various versions and incarnations - the Graham and the Wheaton/Triplanar.
Their designers both tried from the very beginning to address several issues they had realized existed and were key steps on their way to create a great tonearm design. They both detected many other small issues and modified and evolved their designs over many years.
Getting better and better in a long struggle for optimizing.
Two tonearms I both had in various versions side by side with other great designs of the art.
I have great respect for both of them - I do prefer the Graham design due to its consequence in attention to detail and the Triplanar sadly lost its father due to the run of life all too early.
Both however were belonging to the handful of great pivot tonearms 20 years back and did hold their place ever since to this very day.

Why?

Because their designers tried hard and went new ways which to some extend were their very own.
Two very different approaches which both tried to took care about very similar questions in design, mechanic, energy transmission, force vectors and periphery.

Reading a comment like that the new tonearm in discussion here "is clearly superior to .." one or both of those proven designs, only shows to me that the author of those lines has either
a) no clue what he is talking about
b) a special way of hearing which is all his very own..
c) a very poor and limited set-up I do not want to learn about...
d) taken some funny - if very effective - pharmacy...

The co-designer of the 10.5 said in this thread he is looking forward to more lessons in analog from me.
I told him that there are enough lessons out there to learn from before asking for more.

There are great tonearms already out there.
Designs which stayed and survived the hardest and most painstaking test of all - the test of time.
All issues in pivot tonearm design have already been addressed - but never in one single component.
Some did succeed in many points - none in all.

Thats all my critic is about - if a new component is hailed like King Arthur's return to this sphere of existence (and with a price tag further announcing it...) I expect to see more than the picture of a white ? Raven on its bearing block cover.

Dertonarm,

Thanks for the explanations of the Graham an Wheaton. I already knew the details. That is not my point and a different story.

I am asking you, because you are claiming to have the superior knowledge in this case. At least you are a professional manufacturer of analogue equipment.

And I am asking myself why a classical tonearm design concept, i.e. cardanic, could not have a similar or superior performance?

Anyway, nobody will know better before listening himself.

What about the 'Breuer Dynamic' which also has a similar price tag?

Tttt, the Wheaton/Triplanar does feature a cardanic bearing too - just like the Breuer, Ekos, TW and about 60% - 75% of todays tonearms.
You miss the point - the bearing concept has some influence on the sonic performance, but any bearing - knife edge, magnetic, gimbal, uni-pivot, air-bearing or mechanic - can yield excellent results.
It is about taking all the different issues into consideration and addressing them in a good designed tonearm.
The bearing is but just one of many different topics.
A good - even great - bearing can be bought from many tool-boxes OEM easily.

"Anyway, nobody will know better before listening himself" - well, thats the problem...... this is not the point at all.
Trying to judge a new tonearm now by its "sound" (whatever that is...) would imply in the very beginning, that the system set-up will be perfect (impossible...), the listening room likewise (not likely either ..) - simply all other factors beyond question and critic.

All you or any other testing the 10.5 can possibly find out whether its suits your particular taste at that point of experience in audio-listening and system set-up and under the given surrounding conditions of hardware, state of health, cartridge etc.
Thats why I am so amused about "sonic performance" as the ultimate point in the design of a purely (!) mechanical device.
Or let me put it in even shorter words:
... a perfect designed (in the mechanical/technical sense of the word) tonearm, addressing all issues in its concept will, as a direct consequence, produce the best possible "sound" with any cartridge suitable to work under the given conditions.
Why so ?
Because all the tonearm does, is to give the best possible working and guiding conditions to a cartridge.
The tonearm is nothing but the direct mechanical periphery to the cartridge at work.
The tonearm can only lessen the sound of the cartridge - it will never enhance it. All the tonearm can do - and none does - is to make no mistake.
And these are all matters of geometry, mass - dynamic and static, energy transmission and handling.
All plain simple physics - no Voodoo, no myth, no secret knowledge.

My "superior knowledge" in this case is just a matter of looking closely, using my brain and following mechanical rules.
There is no secret knowledge needed to build a truly great tonearm - there is care to detail, an intensive and complete blue-book addressing all details, a clear concept free from marketing calls, an open-minded engineer who looked at everything which was made before and detected all the pros and cons of the various attempts of others.

The Breuer Dynamic is a design which goes back to the days of (here we go again...) a Fidelity Research FR-66s.
It was quite expensive in the very early 1980ies and has more or less only hold its price tag ever since.

Its a delicate, in its early days sometimes fragile, design of today very nice craftsmanship, care and good attention to its details. It is very cartridge-sensitive too. That is to the mechanic energy emitted by the cartridge at work.

Dertonarm,

a lot of information, but interesting though.

From the bare looking at the 10.5 it seems to me that it's a classical concept, but in means of precision and manufacturing there has been taken good care and looked at the details. Even when it doesn't fullfil your expectations of innovation. At least the 10.5 was made for customers and not for fullfilling the expectations of competitors - you may understand that.

I trust Mr. Woschnick to having looked at the details closely and having used his brain, too. Moreover he had the assitance of another engineer. At least he runs his company for some years.

The performace of the tonearm will be proven anyway and is the missing link by now. On the other hand, who shall be the 'absolute judge'?

Compared to the Breuer I don't see any difference in surface/manufacturing quality or conceptual differences.
I like the VTA adjustment of the TW arm.

Testing a tonearm (and any other piece of equipment) is always a compromise, because it is clearly a fact that the surroundings always differ from place to place. I'm with you in this aspect. Even though the relative difference will always be detectable, because the surrounding won't change at all.

I don't think that this is a claim to absoluteness.