Why will no other turntable beat the EMT 927?

Dear Tbg: +++++ " tracking distortion are typically superior. Long tone arms also are superior for this reason. " +++++

these are your words and these my answer to that " false " statement:

++++ " IMHO that kind of % distortions can't be detected even for a bat.

The differences you are talking perhaps comes from other " side ". " +++++

so your " nevertheless " has no real meaning. I own Ikeda tonearms and know it very well along several other tonearms.

IMHO a longest tonearm provoque more problems that what it try to solve. As with the TT subject the tonearm one is full of misunderstood for us because our opinion is based/took foundation in what we learned through many audio years where the teacher always was the AHEE that has more a commercial $$$$ orientation that gives us any real help to improve our audio/music knowledge level. They still think that we customers/audiophiles are still stupid people and I can tell you that no one of us is " stupid " .

IMHO any tonearm design must fulfil the cartridge needs ( not our needs. ) and the first target has to be that the tonearm be " transparent " for the cartridge that does not degrade the cartridge signal in any way.
From this point of view a long tonearm against a shortest one is in clear disadvantage because can't " respond " to the cartridge tracking movements as fast as the shortest one.

As that fact there are several ones why a shortes one is better than a larger one.

Things are that the additional distortions/colorations provided by the long tonearm match in better way your music/sound priorities but not because lower " tracking distortions " in the long tonearm. This is a misunderstood and a marketing hip promoted by the AHEE.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Dear Raul, As I understand it, the principle potential disadvantage of a "long" tonearm, e.g., 12-inch, vs a conventional tonearm, e.g., 9-inch, is the fact that to take advantage of the superior tracking angle distortion available from the former, one must be far more accurate in the mounting and alignment than is the case with the latter. Tiny errors in the <1mm range can completely or nearly completely obliterate any tracking angle advantage of a 12-inch arm vs a 9-inch one. I don't really follow your argument that "a long tonearm can't respond to the cartridge tracking movements as fast as the shortest one". Obviously, long tonearms will tend to have higher effective mass and must be mated to commensurately lower compliance cartridges. But if the compliance and the effective mass are in suitable relationship, I don't see any negative effect on tracking related purely to tonearm length. Enlighten me.

Raul and Lewm are both correct. The longer 12 inch arm can reduce tracking error but adds new design challenges by being longer. And as Lewm states, if the setup of the 12 inch arm is off a bit, the tracking error becomes worse than a 9 inch arm. And the articles that I read showed the tracking error is worse for the 12 inch arm vs. the 9 inch for the same amount of mis-setting. Effective mass is actually the inertia of the tonearm and inertia is mass times the radius squared plus 1/3 the length squared. So the 12 inch arm has to have a higher effective mass. The arm tube rigidity to avoid resonance response becomes a bigger challenge too for the longer arm. It is a mechanical engineering problem that was solved decades ago. The 9 inch arm, in general, provides the optimum solution for all conditions. Sure, new materials can justify a revisit of old ideas. Just watch out for new designs where the hype outweighs the engineering.

Rauliruegas, "From this point of view a long tonearm against a shortest one is in clear disadvantage because can't " respond " to the cartridge tracking movements as fast as the shortest one." I think you are referring to the great mass of the long tonearms. So this is a wrong statement. If you had a short arm with greater mass than a long arm, it would be untrue.

I still maintain that in my experience the same cartridge on the 407 sounds better than on the 345. Since I buy based on what I hear that was enough.

I heard a clearly better and more believable presentation with the SME V-12 than I did with the SME V using the same cartridge and cable on the same turntable during a direct comparison over a two week period. In fact, it was not really close.

The effective mass of the V-12 is only 1g more than the V. Inertia may even be less because the counterweight ended up being considerably closer to the pivot on the V-12. The weight of the arm tube and counterweight is greater on the longer arm, so there is more weight on the knife edge bearing, so that may also help drain energy away from the cartridge and into the arm base.

The headshell angle is less on the longer arm, so there is less need for antiskate and I used two Mint LP custom arc protractors for each alignment, so I presume one was not better set up than the other. So it is reasonable to presume some of the better sonics I hear are a result of the lower tracking distortion of the longer arm. To Tony's point, SME did spend two years developing the longer version of the V arm. It is not simply a 3" longer arm tube like some other designs.

My only experience with arms in my system is with three different SME arms, so I can not make a general argument for 12" arms over 9" arms, but the points raised above by both Raul and Lewm do make sense.