Schroder sq and the new talea

Dear Halcro: Principles first guide on our tonearm design?, well first than all understand in a precise way the overall role of the tonearm/cartridge works. Not only on mechanical or geometrical levels but really " see " inside what a cartridge is asking for and how the tonearm could help to achieve what each one cartridge ask for shows at its best.

This " ask for " means how attain that the tonearm relationship with the cartridge could be nearest to " invisible/transparent " one with almost no influence.

Cartridge compliance is important but was and is only one factor in a tonearm design and IMHO not the one that mainly defined our tonearm design. Things were a little more complex than that. Either the pivot type ( unipivot, gimball or whatever. ) as important as it is was not either the main subject to attain our " universal " goal.
Obviously that these factors/subjects as many others were take it in count and important in the design.

I can't disclose yet ( till we have the patents on hand. ) the overall design but as I posted we hope could do it in the first middle of 2011.

All I can say is that is an interesting tonearm design that fulfill almost all needs of we customers/audiophiles as never before.

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.

i abstained from posting in this thread until now as i had a few strong feelings about the event for awhile after and thought that would be best. as far as how things came together that evening; with the perspective of over three weeks i'll just say that Joel was dealt an unfair hand, but pointing fingers serves no purpose and i don't think any intent to be unfair was present.

i know it was not supposed to be a shootout; but honestly what the heck else did anyone think it could be? even when Frank changed cartridges and phono's, it was still a shootout.

as far as my perspective coming into the event; anyone who cares can read my system page about that, i won't get into it here. i'll just say i have my biases.

i spent some time in that room prior to that evening; i hung out on that floor alot as other rooms there had my interest. then Saturday night i showed up at 7:30pm, an hour early, to make sure i got a good seat. i was in the third row center until around 11pm. so i had a very good seat.

the room was filled with really nice gear; but it never really synergized to my ears. which allowed one to listen for the sound, as the music mostly did not cast it's typical spell. this is not to criticize any of the gear, or Tom, or anyone. Tom has already spoken about this.

i live with multiple arms, cartridges and phono stages every day, and these arms were very familiar to me. not that i'm as good at this as many in this room filled with analog Icons.

my impressions.

i heard nothing that surprised me. is this because i made up my mind ahead of time?

the Talea had much better sense of organization, it had better precision, it had an ease in the groove and clarity better than the Schroeder. the Talea did more space and microdynamics. i will say that the Schroeder went a bit deeper in the bass; although based on my time in Frank's room listening to his phono stage (and knowing from my multiple phono stages how this factor works), i'd assign that factor mostly to the phono stage.

Frank's first cut was 'Neverglade' from 'Into the Great Wide Yonder', Trentemoller. i've since purchased this Lp and another by this artist. the cut is spacey electronic music. the Talea nailed it in terms of detail and texture; it was relatively 'homogenized' by the Schroeder. i liked it on both arms but it was real on the Talea.

early in the session there was a piano track where the Talea had much more detail and clarity. more pluck and decay. more definition.

mostly this was not a good-bad kind of thing but degrees of good. the one glaring exception was later when they played the Basie 88. this is a long term demo track of mine; i've likely played it 1000 times. early in this track there is a muted trumpet which is a torture test for dealing with arm reasonance. what's interesting is that the 33rpm pressing of this track is easy for any cartridge, but the 45rpm track is very difficult. until the Schroeder played it i was not sure it was the 45.

the Talea sailed thru it perfectly. the Schroeder came unglued completely.

again; i've had both arms in my system and nothing i heard was a surprise.

that's one guys biased viewpoint.

Dear Mike,

Many thanks for enriching this thread with your detailed contribution - on top of documenting it in your system page. It was not easy and I am appreciative of your effort.

Your post raises a few questions, cardinal amongst them whether similar events could be anything but a 'shootout'.

I believe they can - when they are modelled on the paradigm of a few friends visiting an audiophile's home to evaluate changes on his/her system: strong beliefs still emerge about differences - but that is as far as it goes.

However, my belief system is occasionally tinted by romanticism :-)

Dear Kostas: IMHO I think it could not be in other way, as you say anything but a shootout but even way before the event take action both designers agree that that was not a shootout so I think that no one that attend were waiting for other that to grow up the people frienship.

Lewm put in very good terms that subject when he posted:

+++++ " to their own perceptions of how the two designs SHOULD differ sonically, given the differences in their construction. All I could tell was that I heard two different tonearm/cartridge/phono stage systems that sounded different from each other, " +++++

I think this is what almost all heard in that event and IMHO could not be in other way with two different signal sources and at the same time with two way different signal process phono stages.

Probably next time things could be different. I hope be there this next time.

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.

Hi Mikelavigne,

I had exactly the same impressions. And so did two others that I was with in the room. I think the differences were pretty obvious. That being said, I have no idea what was the greatest contributing factor. I am wondering about the Soundsmith cartridge compared to the Dyanvector though. Your comment about the Basie 45-vs-33 comparison was interesting. Could the differences that you heard be a function of the cartridge as opposed to the arm?