Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

@boothroyd , the problem is the same although the conical styluses inferior high frequency performance might make the problem less severe, so won't presbycusis. 

Sound quality is a relative thing and depends on what a person is sensitive to or is use to hearing. The Viv arms errors change quite dramatically across the record and will be minimal somewhere in the middle of the record where it should sound fine. It also skates as @lewm related, outward at the beginning of the record to neutral near tangency back to outward at the end. The Reed 5A and the Schroder LT very near tangency across the entire record and very near zero skating across the entire record. The trade off is an elevated vertical bearing and an additional horizontal bearing for the Schroder and several additional bearings for the Reed which is why I favor the Schroder. One has to admit that a properly designed offset pivoted arm is a brilliant solution to the problem as it minimizes all the errors and can eliminate some of them. 

In short if the Viv arm sounds OK these other arms are going to sound even better. Some very smart men like those at SME, AJ Conte, Edgar Villchur , Frank Kuzma, Frank Schroder, Mark Gomez and others would never design an arm like the Viv.

The Viv and its unique design qualities have nothing whatever to do with the Schroeder or Reed pivoted tangential trackers. Why do you constantly choose to compare the Viv to those specialty items? It’s more interesting and on point to compare the Viv and any other underhung tonearms to conventional overhung pivoted tonearms. I take it as a given that the Reed and Schroeder are likely to outperform the Viv, but the former two are very expensive. And a listening test would be most informative. Results might surprise all of us.

I’ve been waiting for this thread for a while.

I have a 10" Viv Labs arm that I haven’t used much as my secondary arm. The main reason for purchase was that it’s easy and relatively affordable to implement on my plinth without buying an entirely new plinth or doing a bunch of legwork to figure out how to implement a more conventional arm with a tonearm pillar.

I have a Soundsmith Strain Gauge cartridge coming soon that I will be using with the Viv Labs arm. My main arm will be for ’orthodox’ archival stuff, and the Viv Labs / Strain Gauge combo will be for ’experimental’ archival stuff. I archive 90-to-100-year-old 78s, so it might be hard to hear any meaningful difference given the limited frequency response and lower signal-to-noise ratio. I think the Strain Gauge will have a more dynamic time-domain sound compared to the Shure V15 and M44 cartridges most archivists use to transfer 78s (especially knowing how to correctly re-EQ the Strain Gauge, which nobody else has figured out).

I still wonder whether I should just bite the bullet and buy a Kuzma 4Point or something roughly equivalent and tonearm pillar. I see there’s still no real consensus on what distortions, if any, are imparted by the Viv Labs arms...doesn’t seem to be anything measurable, anyway. Nobody can quantifiably rank the importance of tonearm design elements. As others have said, horizontal tracing angle error doesn’t seem to be as important as many think.

Reading the Brochure Content. The Viv Labs wording seems to be Transparent when describing a error that is increased in its effect over some other arm designs

・NO OFFSET-ANGLE STRUCTURE
We believe that elbowed shaped arm with offset angle and overhang setting affect seriously to the sound quality because of side force fluctuation, which can never be canceled by anti-skating machanism.

So we dare to choose completely straight (i.e. NO OFFSET-ANGLE) structure.

You may ask “What about trucking error?” , and the answer is, “The trucking error is a little bigger, but the sound is much better.” You can hear no distortion even with 7” model.

Dear @lewm  : " Even the "distortions" that you consistently preach against may be worse with the standard pivoted tonearms than with an underhung tonearm . "

I don't know from whre you have that statement with out showing any measurement about.

The VIV site the designer neither has any measurement, he just said ( with out any true fact/number ): 

"" You may ask “What about trucking error?” , and the answer is, “The trucking error is a little bigger, but the sound is much better.” You can hear no distortion...""

Is it a joke?

Te average distortion in a 9" EL normal pivoted tonearm Baerwald IEC standard is

0.43% with a maximum of 0.65%.

Sorry but many of you but @mijostyn  have different kind of hypoyhesis that proves almost nothing.

Atmasphere said something as " The physics is inescapable. ". Numbers is a must to have other way all belongs to the audiophile famous : " I like it " and good that you like it.

WEe all are sensitive to the sounds in diffrent ways as mijost posted.

R.