Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

04-27-13: Dover
.....dont be embarrassed about using spotify, I've heard spotify streamed through an Ipad.........

Dover – if you know Spotify then you would know its not available in Canada. Have never heard it. My post on that article had everything to do with music itself – regardless of format and nothing to do with the equipment. It appears my post was misunderstood by you ? and maybe others so the reason for my post.

Dover –in this picture is a mechanically grounded unipivot. Please note the way it has been setup. What do you think happens to the sound when it is set up this way ?

Here is another
example
A little more extreme ?

Some Gooseneck Impressions in my system/room.

First a reference point.

You can go listen to a group/band in the same location for two different days. They will sound different for each performance. No performance is the same. They are humans after all not robots. Sometimes you walk away from the performance with a smile on your face a lift in your step. Other days you are neutral; walk away thinking not about the performance but where you are headed next. This could be the result imo - of how your day went or maybe how the day went for those musicians. Did they gel or not ? I like my music to give me a lift, give me a smile. Its a stress reliever. When we add or change gear or tweak our gear it needs to go forward for us. This is a personal thing based on our own preferences. Its doesn’t always go forward as we all know. So.

In general a tighter sound and transients faster. More lively. Pace is quicker.

The Carbon Fibre (CF) gooseneck sounds a little plusher and velvety in comparison in my system. Bass notes last a little longer with the CF. This in turn depending on your setup can fill in the sound or smear the sound if too much bass – in the later case it makes the music sound slower for me.

The aluminum goose neck increases the clearness of the individual bass notes themselves; rather than a note mixing with another I now able to better hear the end of individual bass notes clearer. It was really good before - its just better now for me.

A bigger surprise to me. My room monitors were designed to be used in active mode with a Bass Alignment Filter (BAF). This allows the monitors to go down to 20 hz in a room that normally would not allow this much extension due to room constraints. I own a couple version of these BAF’s. This gooseneck tweak is a big enough tweak in my room that it allows me to better differentiate between the BAF’s and their engineering differences.

So many ways to tweak our sound from the source to speakers.
I am very happy with the sound and even more impressed with the quality of this piece.

Cheers

04-29-13: Ct0517
04-27-13: Dover
.....dont be embarrassed about using spotify, I've heard spotify streamed through an Ipad.........

Dover – if you know Spotify then you would know its not available in Canada. Have never heard it. My post on that article had everything to do with music itself – regardless of format and nothing to do with the equipment. It appears my post was misunderstood by you ? and maybe others so the reason for my post.

Dover –in this picture is a mechanically grounded unipivot. Please note the way it has been setup. What do you think happens to the sound when it is set up this way ?

Here is another
example
A little more extreme ?
Ct0517 (System | Reviews | Threads | Answers | This Thread)

Ct0517,

Spotify - Ct0517 since you mentioned this I thought I should share my experience. Digital can be a very useful tool to benchmark our analogue front ends to, particlularly in terms of speed, timing, transparency and identifying colourations in our systems. It can provide a useful benchmark due to its consistency whilst we tune our analogue front ends. That is not a value judgment on quality - it is the consistency that is of value. Nevertheless, I have heard Ipad/DAC front ends sound better than poorly set up or badly modified analogue TT's. I was unaware it is not available in Canada as I dont live there.

Mechanical Grounding - Please explain your point. When I use the term mechanical grounding it was in the context of the bearing itself, not how the arm is mounted.

Naim Aro tonearm
By Markus Sauer • Posted: Jun 5, 1995 • Published: Jun 5, 1993
The bearing is the ARO's stroke of genius. In other unipivots, a sharp pin is mounted to the turntable and the arm carries a cup which sits atop the pivot point. The ARO's arm carries the sharp tip, resting this atop a stationary cup: a true mechanical ground, and the only spiked tonearm I know of!

I've had less experience with the Eminent Technology ET 2 and Graham 1.5t than with the other two arms, and so don't want to make too strong a statement, but I don't think they can hold a candle to the ARO in the boogie department. The ET 2, on the other hand, presents an even more spacious soundstage and possibly even lower distortion, due to its superior geometrical accuracy.

There are clearly pro's and con's with any piece of equipment. In this case of the Naim ARO and ET2 we are trading off the more accurate preservation of the leading edge from the mechanical grounding of the Naim bearing for the superior soundstaging and lower distortion of the ET2 from the tangential geometry.

This notwithstanding that adding mass and removing the decoupling from the I beam and counterweight assembly will of course promote distortion, negating the benefits that are inherent in the ET2 as has been explained by the designer Bruce Thigpen.