Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

It’s really impossible to have a calm friendly open minded discussion  of anything remotely controversial on this Forum. Particularly since so few of us have hands on familiarity with the subject device. I vote to quit trying.

Dear @gibsonian : " All tube system (SET best) and a Viv tonearm and sound like all the intoxicating distortions that "audiophiles" have adopted over the years will be enhanced to new super pleasing levels. Not surprising is it? "

No, not surprising because is what they like the more and that is the whole education all of us received by the corrupted AHEE where we all belongs.

Of course several audiophiles were and are excellent " students " even some of them with post-grade AHEE education and some others like me not really good.

I love MUSIC and I learned to respect what that means taking actions against that corrupted education I received by AHEE . Through the time my audio ignorance levels improved thinking that way but " diversity " is part of the human world.

There is rigth now a thread where the OP wants to change its tube phono stage but AHEE post-graded gentlemans insist with that alternative even that he posted 1-2 times that wants to change:

Audiogon Discussion Forum

R.

lewm

I do not view this discussion as a debate where there could ever be a true "winner". I champion the idea of an underhung tonearm as a novel idea that deserves some thought and attention.

Those are my thoughts exactly. Unfortunately, there are some users here who very much treat discussions as a battle where the adversary must be annihilated. They make absolute pronouncements, and then attack any person or product that conflicts with their personal gospel. It stifles conversation.

I have heard an RS Labs RS-A1 tonearm, because I own one. The fact that it does so many things directly against convention (besides the fact it’s underhung) and yet still sounds very good first started me thinking whether we should question some of our tonearm gospels. And I am still at that point.

Me too, but I’m a curious guy by nature. Even though I have no plans to change from the SME V arm I’ve enjoyed for decades and have never heard an underhung arm, I’d jump at the chance. It would be interesting to discover if I could hear any correlation between the sound and the unusual geometry.

Raul, I get your position vis a vis tube vs transistor.  You are entitled to it.  But you cannot seriously be thinking that the idea of an underhung tonearm is or ever was foisted upon us by the evil "AHEE", can you?  I hope not.  It's quite the opposite, as I think you know.  Not to mention that in the early days of SS, transistors were promoted heavily by the AHEE, as against the then prevalent tube devices, just because of the lower HD measurements, never mind that very low HD was achieved at the expense of tons of NFB.  It was only after about 10 years into the SS era that tubes made a comeback, partly because of Harry Pearson and TAS and partly because of Bill Johnson and his Audio Research.  Yes, I guess you could say that HP and TAS would come to personify the apocryphal AHEE, in the eyes of some.  Anyway, I think we have reached a point where we now have superb devices that use tubes and equally superb devices that use transistors.  There's room for both in the present audio universe.

@lewm 

There are 2 elements to the VIV Lab arm -

1. Zero offset headshell
2. Underhung geometry

What would be interesting would be to set the VIV Lab arm with 2 null points and straight headshell and compare that to the underhung geometry with straight headshell. Then we would get a more accurate picture of the "underhung" vs 2 null point impact on sound.

From my reading of the VIV Lab notes It would appear that the zero offset headshell has more impact on reducing skating forces than the underhung geometry.

From the posts thus far in this thread we have no idea of whether 1 or 2 above is the major factor in the VIV Lab sound.