What Does It Take To Surpass A SME V?

The mighty ET2 was left out of that exclusive club. Never owned the Triplanar, but have owned the SME5 and the Graham and still own the ET2. In the ways that matter to me, and with the many cartridges of both the MC and MM variety that I have used, the ET2 comes out on top. Still available and still beats the SME5.

@frogman

I used to run a Rabco that I modified. I get the allure of straight tracking.

I left the ET2 out on several counts. The first being that the lateral tracking mass is a multiple of its vertical tracking mass. This makes selecting a cartridge rather difficult- if you succeed in getting the mechanical resonance correct in the vertical mode, you’ll see the cantilever bending back and forth on occasion. When it does that, due to the short radius of a cartridge cantilever, the tracking angle error is higher than any radial tracking arm.

Second, it uses an air bearing. If you want the cartridge to play without coloration, there can be no play between the surface of the platter and the mount of the cartridge. We know that bearing play makes a difference since you can use higher pressure pumps and hear a difference.

Finally the arm mass is high enough that a decision was made to run only 4 wires rather than the traditional 5. Cartridges are balanced sources and they don’t make a lot of voltage. When the arm ground is integrated into the left channel signal, it can be noisier. Plus you can’t run it balanced should you wish to do so; something you can do with most arms. One result of this can be RFI, although use of RF beads can sometimes sort this out.

So IMO it didn’t rate the top drawer.

@dover "Yes but trying to adjust VTA accurately with frozen nuts can be difficult."

And that's why we can't surpass the SME V - VTA is just a twiddle of the vertical adjustment thumbscrew!

@atmasphere ​​​​   cc @frogman 

I left the ET2 out on several counts. The first being that the lateral tracking mass is a multiple of its vertical tracking mass. This makes selecting a cartridge rather difficult-

Actually you are looking at this the wrong way round. The horizontal effective mass as adjustable and the decoupling of the counterweight in the horizontal plain means that you can tune the arm to the cartridge.

Secondly, if you go to Bruces website and look at his testing results, the split effective mass in the 2 planes reduces the peak of the fundamental resonance significantly, resulting in more accurate bass and better tracking.

As an example I ran a high compliance Shure V15vxmr in the ET2 when I had a hiatus from audio for 10 years. After that time ( still with the original stylus in place and stabiliser brush removed ) the cantilever was dead straight and negligible stylus wear - so much so that someone bought the 10 year old cartridge for what I paid 10 years earlier after much examination with Lupe and micro scope.

 it uses an air bearing. If you want the cartridge to play without coloration, there can be no play between the surface of the platter and the mount of the cartridge. We know that bearing play makes a difference since you can use higher pressure pumps and hear a difference.

Yes I agree, but the upside is the removal of tracking angle distortion - removing phase and time error caused by tracking angle distortion - and unparalleled reproduction of the soundstage. The removal of phase distortions inherent in pivoted arms also improves timing and coherency. If you bought an ET2.5 and listened to your own records that you cut with the ET2.5 properly set up you would be shocked - particularly in terms of soundstage reproduction and preservation of phase.

Finally the arm mass is high enough that a decision was made to run only 4 wires rather than the traditional 5. Cartridges are balanced sources and they don’t make a lot of voltage. When the arm ground is integrated into the left channel signal, it can be noisier. 

Most ET owners rewire their arms, with no ground. Never had a noise problem, and  balanced configuration is easily attainable. With current wires from Audionote & Kondo you could run 5 wires with less resistance than the original wiring if you need to.

Atmasphere, thanks for your response.  Dover does a much better job than I could explaining the technical details and reasons why I hear what I hear. What I hear is always the bottom line for me and the ET2 has shown itself to be a fantastic arm. Clearly superior to both the SME and Graham as concerns tonal naturalness, sound staging and bass accuracy, if not power. With the possible exception of a Decca London, never had any issues with cartridge compatibility.

@dover , you are making excuses for a defective design. I will say this much less politely than atmasphere, who is a gentleman and a scholar. The ET2 and all air bearing arms like it are not suitable in any way, shape or fashion for high fidelity audio purposes. They put cartridges in such an unfavorable position as to increase distortion and phase errors. I understand the allure but it is based on the faulty premise that tracking angle error is more significant than other problems associated with tonearm design. It is in all actuality, minor. Trying to keep the cartridge tangent to the groove causes much more harm than good. Having said this there are two designs that need to be mentioned as they avoid the issues that plague most LT designs. These are the Schroder LT and the Reed 5T. 

@pindac , there are many beautiful, cool looking turntables that are poor designs. The Onedof is one of them. Anybody can tack a motor to a plater and spin the affair accurately. Very few designers actually have a bearing on all the seemingly minor issues affecting the performance of a vinyl music reproduction device. It is obvious that you do not have an accurate handle on these issues. There is noise and vibration all around us, with amplitudes our senses can not detect. It is these vibrations that the phonograph cartridge was designed to detect, it is a vibration measuring device. If you are the least bit inquisitive you can see this for yourself if you have subwoofers and maybe even without them. Put your tonearm down on a stationary record and turn the volume up. That motion you see in the woofers is environmental rumble, noise you can't detect but the cartridge can. It does not matter how massive you make anything, that environmental rumble will travel through anything, even if it weights as much as K2. This whole mass thing is lay intuition at it's best. It is totally faulty thinking. A turntable has to be decoupled from the environment with all parts fixed together and moving in unison. Any design that ignores this principle is defective right out of the box. There are other issues that affect vinyl playback performance most notable is making the record perfectly flat and coupled to the platter so that any resonance is absorbed by the platter and not reflected back at the cartridge. Lathes use vacuum clamping for a reason. The eccentricity of records with wayward spindle holes is far more audible (pitch variation) than tracking angle error. 

Fancy machining does not a good turntable make. I want my money spent on performance and sound engineering not bling or massive bling. If you have to have an impressive looking turntable at least get one that is soundly designed like the Basis Inspiration.