Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

All the other owners of the Viv, will undoubtedly have their own agendas for the use of their time, using their limitation in contributing posts to add to the inefficacy that this ongoing discussion is creating, is certainly not a substantiation that there is a lack of conviction to the ownership and usage of the 'Viv'.

Extending to other forums and one in particular, 'Shakti', from 'What's Best Forum' has expressed a very worthwhile experience with their usage of the 'Viv'. There are very limited in number individuals who share this persons knowledge about and experiences of using Vinyl Replay ancillaries. A recent post referred to their continued interest and that they will be looking into methods to enable to be used in present set ups.

Even though not a direct comparison to @lewm descriptions, there is plenty of commonality in the feel good and positivity the usage of this arm is able to generate. 

I fully get this euphoria, as I can relate to it from the change toward and then usage of a Tonearm I adopted to be used over other respected Branded Models.

As said previously, this thread is to become an uphill climb for certain contributors, life is certainly too short for this one as a hike.    

@lewm, well both of us are in some way " closed mine " because if I need to listen VIV youuuuu need to develop a way better tests proccess. When do you start to do it?

I'm not willing to buy a VIV  first because I don't need a tonear my self design is very good but I woned over 20 tonearm and still own a good number and second because my common sense says so and my curiosity level is way lower that yours mine is ZERO.

R.

Over on Vinyl Asylum, there was a congenial discussion of underhung tonearms back in 2018-19, in relation to the introduction by Yamaha of their GT5000 turntable which comes with a straight, underhung tonearm.  I kind of wish I knew then what I know now about the Viv, but you can read some thoughts on the pros and cons.  Interestingly, John Ellison, who is certainly a ranking guru, comes down on the negative side, but in an earlier post, not included here, he admitted that he very much liked the RS Labs RS-A1.  What I would say now to JE is that I am not comparing the Viv sound to that of hi-rez digital, which he often does with vinyl; I am comparing it to other conventional overhung tonearms.  And to my ears, the Viv might come a bit closer to the master tape/digital ideal of low distortion.

https://db.audioasylum.com/mhtml/m.html?forum=vinyl&n=1173526&highlight=viv+float&r=&search_url=%2Fcgi%2Fsearch.mpl%3Fforum%3Dcables%26searchtext%3DChoseal

@rauliruegas 

I'm still here Raul, enjoying the banter. 

@lewm 

Not that I should question your cleverness, but the only way I have ever been comfortable with an audio assessment is to do rapid AB comparisons. I have a new method which you will hate but @intactaudio will appreciate. If I want to compare two cartridges everything else in the chain has to be identical. I record both cartridges to my hard drive in 24/192 playing the same record. I can run both files at the same time and switch back and forth with the remote. You can compare any analog source this way.

Intactaudio, I recommend that people who have very small or no record collection at all should not get started in vinyl. It is problematic from a number of perspectives and silly expensive. It is for hobbyists like Lew, Raul and myself, people who already have insanely large vinyl collections who have to play them with something. We are like little old ladies around a little glass table at teatime discussing our medical issues. 

I made an error in my post of 10/27 at 3:10 PM. The TAE of a 9-inch UH tonearm would not range between +9 degrees and -9 degrees, while passing through TAE =0, because the radius of an LP at outer grooves vs inner grooves is so radically different. Because the radius at the inner grooves is much less than outer, making for a tighter smaller circle at the innermost grooves, TAE at inner grooves would be higher than it is at outer grooves, even when you align for a null at the midpoint of the playing surface. That consideration is what leads to the very complex equations for TAE derived by Lofgren and others. You can see this easily in the graphs posted above by Intact Audio (Dave). John Ellison posted graphs showing TAE for a 16-inch UH tonearm over on VA, perhaps included in the thread I referenced.  His graphs also show the effect. This is why the template for the Viv puts the single null point nearest to the innermost grooves, 90mm from the spindle.