Experience With Linear Tracking Turntables

"I invested in a Bergmann Galder Air Bearing Turntable with an Odin Liner Tracking Tone Arm.  Simply an amazing turntable and arm."

I've heard one with a couple of my best pressings. Lucky you.

Need to decide what my next cartridge will be.  That will be a tough decision

Lyra, Audio Technica ART1000 or upper end Soundsmith would be on my short list.

@pgaulke60 - enjoy your new table and arm. I’ve been running a linear tracking arm (Kuzma Airline) since around 2006-7. The arm itself is pretty bulletproof-- I’ve had issues with compressor oil leaking and eventually switched to an oilless compressor which is noisier, but I have it installed in a custom silencer box in another room.

There is something special about a good table with a linear arm. I don’t know your table/arm--I’m kind of out of it on the latest and greatest-- but I found that there is less sense of a turntable spinning (I use a very high mass table with the arm) and what I call the "halo" effect of the sound of the disc spinning.

Levelling is pretty critical but it isn’t that difficult. I wound up buying a big MinusK isolation table, not so much to "improve" sound, but to avoid footfalls in an old Victorian era house.

Cartridges- I know that there are people very devoted to the sound of one brand or another- Lyra, Van den Hul, etc. I’ve been through quite a few hi-line cartridges and found that the cartridge that gave me what my system needed-- more tonality and gravitas in the lower octaves, was a Koetsu stone. It seems to really like the linear arm- maybe because it is not a high compliance cartridge. This could be very system dependent. That is, I’m not necessarily recommending a Koetsu cartridge, but that change (from an Airtight Supreme), the isolation platform and the addition of more subwoofers (which I DSP’d) ameliorated the biggest weakness of my system- the discontinuity between the horn mid and tweets and the conventional integrated woofers.

It is so hard to trial this stuff. And given the price of high end cartridges today, it’s a commitment. I’m not sure I’d recommend any particular cartridge other than to make a few observations:

the lower compliance cartridges seem to work better in the linear arms- they do have high horizontal mass even though the theory is they are frictionless if set up properly;

What is the voicing you want? I had great mids with the Avantgarde horns -comparable to my old Quad ESL system (still running since around 1973 with updates, fresh glass, etc.) but far more dynamic, and anemic bass- tune the bass to have some punch and the coherence was lost. Tune them to blend- anemic. The combo of Koetsu, plus DSP’d additional subs and the isolation platform brought this system up several notches. Is it perfect? Of course not. My goal isn't perfection- it is to play back regular older vinyl records (I'm a buff for early '70s post bop jazz, which is not exactly a high point for vinyl in the States) in a way that sounds real. 

The best option, short of buying a bunch of expensive cartridges, is to see if you can hear them via comparisons on another system. I know that won’t tell you what a given cartridge will sound like in your system but ....

in visiting the lovely, knowledgeable and funny Albert Porter a few weeks ago, we compared his Airtight Opus and a Koetsu Blue Lace on the same table with two identical arms (Kuzma 4 Pt. 14"- aka John Holmes edition). The Airtight was more linear sounding and neutral, the Koetsu added something-- more "wood’ on the sticks.

I know the objective is always supposed to be neutral but I have yet to hear a system that is truly neutral. And I’ve heard a lot of good systems over the years. You can always hear the man behind the curtain. So, take your time on the cartridge. I listened to a crazy expensive system here in Austin a few years ago with kilobuck cartridges mounted on three identical arms. One of the cartridges was an Audio Technica that retailed for less than $500. and it did not suck.

Enjoy~ and apologies for the length of this comment.

@lewm interesting ur experience with a B and O cartridge. I understand from

speaking to the Classic HiFi writer at Hi News Tim Jarman that the cartridges were designed to be in the linear tracking B&O turntables and turntables. As such the styli was very small and it was properly thought out as a whole system. I have a 4002 awaiting a rebuild. B&O have some incredible designers who apply their art and knowledge more for a luxury than audiophile market but dismiss their savour faire at your peril. Their top end speakers that manipulate sound around a room are exceptionally clever and sound pretty good too. 
@mijostyn speaks about the problem with lateral compliance which I’m sure is right as it makes sense - but it puzzles me that Kuzma released a silly money arm which is unusually heavy and apparently it throws the whole compliance thing out of the window - that being said the weight (being a pivoted arm) has the weight in all directions.

@lohanimal , you have to be very careful about things making "sense." Just because they make sense does not mean they are right. The whole climate hoax is a perfect example. The best thing to do is delineate the proven facts and go from there. You can also look at what the "experts" prefer but in many instances they are being paid to prefer whatever. That is where us plain folks who never get paid for anything come in. I can use and buy any tonearm currently on the market. I could spend $100,000 on a tonearm if that particular arm blew everything else away. I just spent that much on a RAM TRX because Ford pissed me off. They wanted to charge me a $25,000 market adjustment on an FN pickup truck. You will never catch me even looking at an airbearing tangential tracker for all the reasons I have previously elucidated. Mass is mass. Compliance is compliance. The two interact in very specific ways. These are irrefutable facts. People who argue otherwise are just like those who think they can change their sex. There are XX's and there are XY's. You can't change sex, you can only corrupt it. The doctors who take peoples money promising they can are evil bastards. I just had one such person commit suicide. Please pardon me for venting. I guess it is a fragile moment. 

So now we know that Mijostyn is wrong on lateral trackers and on climate. At least consider my argument for higher effective mass in the horizontal plane vs in the vertical plane. Low bass frequencies require horizontal motion of the stylus tip, which is to say that as frequency goes up, the motion of the stylus tip necessary to produce them goes from horizontal to vertical. Then where is the benefit associated with equalizing horizontal and vertical effective mass? Instead, one can argue that horizontal effective mass ought to be greater than vertical effective mass so as to prevent the tail (the stylus tip) from wagging the dog (the pivot) which would waste potential bass energy. You want the lateral resonant frequency to be lower than the vertical resonant frequency (the one we all talk about and calculate based on vertical compliance and etc.) That is what you get if lateral effective mass is greater than vertical effective mass. There is no special danger in that arrangement as the events likely to trigger very low frequency resonance are all most likely to perturb the vertical motion of the cantilever (footfalls, trucks, warps, etc), where the resonant frequency will be higher to protect against those events. I have no data to prove my thesis, nor does Mijostyn have data to prove his. Among audio engineers, there are both opinions. I urge you to at least think about it.