Dear Atmasphere, I recorded - as chief executive engineer the Johannes Passion by J.S.Bach in 1986 in the Munich Philharmonic Hall with Enoch zu Guttenberg conducting the Neubeurer Choir and Members of the Munich Philharmonic.
I am very familiar with your recording of the Canto General.
I know my stuff and have followed the suggested way over 2 decades past.
Have a great weekend.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Raul, relax........
And don't worry.
The world is eagerly anticipating your tonearm.
Mine won't be half that interesting to the avarage Audiophile connaisseur - as everybody knows now - thanks to Dr. Raul and his medical insight - that my hearing is set on the need for distortion.
It will still be entertaining for many to see these 2 approaches.
So - we'll see.
I hope you have a peaceful sleep - your last post directed to me have raised some concern about your peace of mind.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Peterayer, the huge majority of todays tonearms is static balanced mode design and features gimbal bearings. Its a matter of economics - both in design effort as well as in financial input.
Cheers,
D.
P.S.:..... we made 200 again.... |
Dear Perrew, I have already built the phono stage which closed the book for me (and for several others who before had all worth mentioning in the top-price region).
If you happen to come to Munich one day - let us know in advance and you are inivited for a nice session and a good coffee at the lakeside.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Axel, well - why no let Raul comment on the Lurne hypothesis?
As you know - I do not share Lurne's point of view.
Maybe Raul does.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Perrew,
I am regulary in Koblenz too - family affairs.... but there's no sound there.
Anyway - you are one of the few who will be welcome.
Still vividly remembering my visit to Stockholm in early September 1986.
10 of the 20 most beautiful women I ever saw - I saw that one day in Stockholm.
The best of the other 10 mentioned I married many years later.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Axel, there is no such thing ever as a "new geometry". I believe at least this should be clear to each and everybody.
Lurne's concept idea brings a very special aspect of sttice balance into focus.
His claim that this is the one very important key-stone is however off topic.
In fact - mother nature invented a similar concept/principle of self stabilizing balance as far back as the Carboniferous Period.
Well ahead of all tonearm designers.
It was somehow improved in later years, but the concept was put - dare I using that term... - to an absolute as far back as the late Creataceous.
I am really dissapointed if anyone do ask now what I am refering to.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Perrew, if you browse through Syntax's system it should be quite obvious what he is refering to.
Nice picture of the new raptor in tonearm territory....... black, lean, fast and beautiful.
Mr. Robert Graham - my respect!
And that is something not easy to come by.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Henry, no cryptic, full information ego but not dogmatic......
You may ask too much - you see, we can't have everything.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Perrew, the very best women are self-financing......
Anyway - no, there is no tonearm on the market now or on the market in the future which would justify other than under marketing aspects a retail price of 20k.
The best can be made for far less.
I'll proof.
Lets see - maybe I made it to Sweden in the next 12 months.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Raul, sorry - my mistake - so far I mistook the situation. I always thought the ideas behind the tonearm project were yours, now I realize, that you are the one of your team responsible for public relations.
Now that makes sense.
I do no longer have to wonder about several of your sonic descriptions and technical statements.
My apologize for getting this wrong in the begining - I thought you were into design and technical aspects too, now I know that is not the case.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Raul, sure - I have 2001 NOS samples of FR-66s on stock and am just waiting for the day their used-market price meets the US$10.000.- mark.
In the meantime I restrict myself to sell off only 4-5 units each month through Audiogon.
How did you know - god man! - you are so clever I can hardly believe it!
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Raul, the one depressing thing is, that it is no fun to pull someones leg and then you see you still have to explain the sense to him.
Cheers,
D.
P.S.: by the way Raul.... how about Syntax's question some posts back whether you can give some input on modern tonearms to (which was the inital question on this thread - glad to find a way back to it!)?
None at hand ?
You should - since you are working on a tonearm, you should aware of the current state of art (even if you ignore VTA.....). |
I sincerely think, that todays prices for the top-flight tonearms aren't so bad. I was browsing through the price lists of the early 1980ies and we had several tonearms back then who demanded a very serious price tag too.
In adjusted buying power we were looking at several (4-6) tonearms in the price range of todays US$8k to 12k.
Serious - it isn't much worse today.
So it hasn't really changed - we had the same game 25 years back.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Raul, sorry - I can see little to no answers in your system set-up. Owning and mounting dozens of mostly vintage tonearms and cartridges doesn't imply answers.
It looks rather like collecting for the joy of it.
Which is perfectly fine.
I do not think that any toenarm designer starts the project on designing a new contender for the state of the art because he is "not satisfied" with the current available.
This particular phrase is used by most, but in the end it is always the same (to quote the Rolling Stones...): we're only in it for the money.......
Which is perfectly fine too.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Axel, ..."The man has the best tonearm, best woman, best system, best ears, best education, best audio knowledge, best superlatives... well."
Well - the tonearm/cartridge combination which gives the best result so far - yes.
Best woman - in my eyes and regarding all significant parameters - yes, of course (as it should be with every happy married man).
Best system - maybe.
Best ears - a full pair of useable ones, with a lot of training.
Best education - a good one.
Best audio knowledge - well, enough.
Best superlatives - no - you and your buddy in middle-america outdo me in this regard.
After we have settled this now - any chance you might come back to this thread with some true input other than euclid geometry and Lurne's concept (which he didn't discover nor were the first one to bring it to audio...) of matching inertia and gravity center and worshipping my taste, audio knowledge and education?
While I am certainly enjoying this it is a bit boring for the others and does not bring any useable input to the topic.
But maybe this thread has already reached its end, as the inital question has long been answered.
Is my impression wrong?
Cheers,
D.
|
Dear Audiofeil, you're right - it was Frank !
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Raul, tears are running down my cheeks ...........
What great display of humanity and earnest strive for the better in mankind.
Unbelieveable - I never thought I will ever (even not in virtual reality...) meet such an almost holy audiophile soul like you.
All those highly agressive emails directed at me coming under your pseudonym in the past must then be the expression of Mr Hyde sleeping in Dr.Raul-Jekyll ??
Almost unreal.
Almost.
I am sure you will give your "world's best tonearm" to the audiophile community for the mere parts cost and free shipping.
So we will be looking at a price tag below $1k for sure.
As you already do - if unsuccessful - with your "world's best preamplifier".
A pity that the world won't realize..
Cheers,
D. |
Dear T_bone, the use of the term "occam's razor" seems to be en vogue among US-audiophiles right now........
As I am quite sceptical about the biblical Kain and Abel-picture as a whole, I would rather favour the equal well known picture of the old, lazy and used to enjoy wide homage because of his presence lion all a sudden facing a new competitor showing up in "his" territory.
Even if we were living next door, I doubt that we would see a "keeping up with the Johnsons" situation.
In fact, I am sure that our concepts in the way we want to hear reproduced music are very dissimilar. As are our backgrounds and taste.
I am certainly no philantrophist and I make no secret about this.
Questioning things again and again till you get to the core and being critical about what people really have to show behind their mere words is a lesson I have learned from history - not only of my home country and not only from days past.
But to get to the core and to give your post the answer it deserves.
You are right that the exchange of personal posts between Raul and me does indeed do no good to this thread (although I know that the "oldskool tonearm"-thread - which was MUCH more informative than this one here - was eliminated because of the direct insults exchanged between Bob and Raul).
I do a favour to you, the other Audiogoners, Raul and last but not least me: - I will ignore all posts by Raul from now on.
Will continue to post, but will do so as if he doesn't post at all.
Cheers,
D. |
Dear Quiddity, absolutely right. Furthermore - as T_bone has already noted, a long (spiral) spring of say 4-5 inch length will hardly alter its tension because of an increase of 1/1000 or less of its length.
Furthermore - while everybody is talking about small alternations due to record thickness, no one seems today to care about a VTA compliant to the cutting-angle of the groove of the record on the platter......
As for the dynamically balanced vs static balanced mode of tonearms, I would like to note, that every dynamically balanced tonearm is static balanced too.......
If I were Berlinta, I wouldn't use nor design a dynamically balanced tonearm too. This is hardly possible to incorporate into tonearms not featuring a fixed two-point bearing (i.e. gimbal or gimbal/knife). Hard to do at all with string, magnet or uni-pivot bearings.
Anyway - we will at least see one new dynamically balanced tonearm on the "market" within the next 12 months.
I am sure we'll have another very interesting thread then.
Most likely we'll see that tonearm at the RMAF in 2010 too. |
Dear T_bone, how to dampen a spring to be used in a dynamically balanced tonearm has been nicely demonstrated by Isamu Ikeda in his (...here we go again...) FR-60 series.
A new or in stock condition FR-60 tonearm will feature a long spiral spring which is embedded in a lot of white and creamy grease.
Much more than you can see on any of the pictures of dismantled FR-64/66 on the web.
If a spring is fairly large, fairly wide in diameter and quite solid (stainless-steel) it is - due to its location at the very center of gravity and inertia and to its position in conjunction with the surrounding grease and the fact that its edge is in contact with another surface on the whole length - most unlikely to resonate at all.
There are many more light-weight parts much less dampened in many more high-ticket tonearms past and present who are much more likely to resonate and add colorations to the sonic picture than a hefty and highly damped by several different measures spring.
Furthermore we do see dynamically balanced - i.e. spring loaded VTF - in very different tonearms ranging from high effective mass (FR, Exculsive, MAX (depending on armwand and headshell)) to medium and low like MA-505, SME V et al.
So it is neitehr a measure taken to deal with warp or high compliance (most unlikely to go with a high effective mass tonearm anyway...).
Interesting enough we see dynamically balanced design in the most expensive stock toonearms of the early 1980ies:
The Exclusive EA-10, Micro Seiki MAX-282, FR-66s/fx and SME V - all dynamically balanced.
All made by fairly large companies and/or specialized tonearm-manufactures which tried to set the benchmark for the component.
Constant VTF independed from the static balance mode of the tonearm does have several virtues and no disadvantage.
It can however - not be incorporated in every tonearm. It depends on the bearing you choose.
Consequently there must be disagreement about the dynamically vs static balanced mode - depending what "school's" scholar you are..... |
If it were as you stated, in consequence the derivation in VTF would be worse with increased effective length (= increased inertia) and increased effective mass (= increased inertia). Thus a super lightweight short (9") tonearm would be best in conjunction with a low mass body cartridge.
What brings up the Black Widow w/MM again.
However the sonic results do show us a different picture.
The derivation in VTF with a dynamically balanced tonearm is less than with the same tonearm in static balanced mode.
As all dynamic balanced tonearms can be used in static balanced mode too, this is easy to illustrate in demo. The static balanced mode to some does sound more "livelike" due to more alternations in VTF. The dynamically balanced mode often is mistaken for being too "remote - less lively".
But it is due to more constant VTF.
So same -static- inertia, same effective mass, same effective length.
The whole static spring-mass-system is the same in both modes - but we face different behavior.
I do not think we have yet reached the verdict with the model as described by Quiddity.
Some dynamic aspects has to be taken into consideration too - aside from the pure static model. |
Just a short note from the office between two meetings....
I don't think I was completely wrong.
The inertia in a tonearm/cartridge combination does depend on the effective length, as this is not a homogenous corpus, but the majority of the mass is situated at the very end of the moving corpus - thus the inertia in a say 15 grams effective mass 12" tonearm with a given cartridge is always larger then in a 15 grams 9" tonearm with the very same cartridge.
Inertia is increasing with the distance to the center of movement.
The more so, the further away the majority of the mass from the dead center of movement.
Now we get closer to the model of a tonearm w/cartridge mounted far away from the pivot.
With the model of a pivot tonearm we are looking at the simplified calculation (taking the tonearm as a mass homogenous corpus) of (following Steiner AND WITHOUT including the cartridge mass at the moving tip of the lever !): J = 1/3 m x (2R) sq
J = inertia
m = mass
R = radius
sq = square
More to follow tonight. |
Dear Kirkus,
*****thus the inertia in a say 15 grams effective mass 12" tonearm with a given cartridge is always larger then in a 15 grams 9" tonearm with the very same cartridge.
No. This is the classic "which is heavier, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?" axiom. It's just that 12" tonearms tend to have higher effective masses than their 9" counterparts of the same make and "model", because they're bigger. *****
well.... I am kind of familiar with the feather/lead picture which I used (guess like many fathers..) to illustrate the point of gravity to my son once.
Furthermore I was referring to the inertia and you are referring to the effective mass.
Common knowledge assumes, that we do not see a vertical movement in the tonearm, but we do - and do so constantly during play.
I believe (think, know, have had it checked at the technical university Munich in 1995 with precise laser graphics - choose one), - and this is backed by technical papers of the record industry too - that there is a (although tiny in distance) constant vertical movement while playing a record.
The surface of a vinyl record is anything but dead mirror flat.
It does consists of hundreds hills and valleys (not warps) due to fluctuations in thickness as result of the molding process.
These are minor, but so is the contact area of the stylus.
So I think we do see a vertical angular movement - not constant, but even worse alternating in direction - even if not always apparent to the eye.
Based on this model my assumptions aren't that far fetched anymore.
Quod erat demonstrandum in realitas mobilis versus modelus in spiritus ?
Yet ? |
*** Yes, we are indeed talking about the same thing. The "effective mass" of a tonearm is the inertial mass of the end where the cartridge bolts on. The interchangability of inertial mass and gravitational mass is fundamental to classical physics . . . as P=mv and F=ma . . . mass = inertia. ***
We are not yet talking about the same thing.
Small derivations, but our models are different.
And I seem to be unable to illustrate what I mean.
We have a force of inertia and we have a moment of inertia.
If we do not set up a model which takes speed into calculation we do not reach the point.
I do not mean audio modulations in the vertical mode - the tonearm is moving vertically - not just the cantilever.
Or better. it should, but due to its moment of inertia it can't follow the counter-movement in zero time but changes the VTF and compresses (and other way around milliseconds later again) the cantilevers suspension and thus moving the attached coil out of the optimal position due to constant increase and decrease in VTF.
**** The angular force vector around the vertical bearing will of course change with all different manner of tonearm-design factors (including effective length) but is irrevelant to the cartridge between two tonearms that have the same effective mass. ****
So the moment of inertia is independent from the distance of the majority of the moving mass to the center of movement ?
Only if the moving mass is homogenous distributed in the whole moving corpus - which is not the case in a tonearm with mounted cartridge.
Brings up again the picture of the Micro Seiki and other turntables which increased their moment of inertia by moving most of the mass towards the outer rim.
We already have different calculations for the force inertia of cylinders, balls and sticks - to name but a few.
I am not questioning your thoughts, I just think we didn't have set up the correct model yet.
**** Oder . . . herrum sitzen und daumen drücken? ****
Well - wer sitz herum und drückt die Daumen wem ? |
Well it comes down in several aspects to the static vs dynamic model....
Aber es hat weder mit dem Hammer zu tun, noch damit, wo er hängt (im Zweifel immer an der Wand...). |
Well - since it is a dynamic model (or should be...) I still see excatly this dynamic aspect missing.
The down-swing and upswing of the pendulum (tonearm with cartridge at swinging end) is different in moment of inertia and force depending on the distance from the dead center of movement.
We are still talking different models. |
Well - to get as plain as you: I think your model is incomplete.
The resonance frequency of a given cartridge/tonearm combination can be altered by moving a fairly heavy cylinder further away or closer towards the pivot.
The total mass of the moving body stays the same - of course.
But - I guess neither of us has any problems if we do not agree about the model at all. |
Nice to watch from outside things getting settled so comfortable.
Proving once again that all models and explanations are simply - you just have to narrow the horizon of survey and to exclude tiny details.
I'd rather take economical advantage from a more detailed model and instead going into a mission here.
Have fun - I am watching and musing.
Indeed Axel: Klappe zu - Affe tot.
But you got the wrong monkey.......
And you closed the trap too soon. |
Well - no problem, you are most welcome.
I am still optimistic, that you will find out in due course.
Just look a little more precisely, a bit closer, what is actually happening while playing a record.
The model you are following is simply incomplete - thats all.
You'll find out.
Cheers,
D. |
Well Jlin, you will certainly find a lot of people agreeing with you. I for one like to look at all things a bit closer than most others. So please excuse me if I come to some different results. I am used to find the errors in other peoples thoughts. In fact - I earn part of my income by finding errors in concepts and setting them straight.
Just give it a thought .... maybe there is some truth in my point of view (just as a hypothesis...) and there are more physical details and interactions then meet the eye.
This is not 1st year college - this is still lower high school .......
But the model is still too simple as described earlier. |
