Tonearm mount on the plinth or on Pillar ?

@Atmasphere 

What is the vertical angle being cut into the disc where you work ?

thanks  

Raul, You are conflating opinion with fact.  The fact that you listened to your turntable and your tonearms in a variety of set-ups, and by your own admission made no measurements but merely judged the various configurations subjectively, only adds up to.... your opinion of what sounds "best".  Modern principles of science and experimentation show conclusively that unblinded testing of this sort is never free of bias. On the other hand, I may be accused of bias too, but is it not true that one wants no motion at the stylus tip, ideally, except that which is induced by groove undulations deliberately introduced during the encoding of music? (I am hoping you would agree with that premise.)  Then, if so, why would one want to take a chance on movement of the tonearm pivot with respect to the turntable bearing/platter/LP surface that could be due to the differential effect of forces acting on one and not the other or both to different extents?  I cannot think of a reason why that would be acceptable, if it can be avoided.  That's the theory on which I base my choices.  In this case, I think it is YOU who are subconsciously preferring "distortions".  I am completely of the "live and let live" philosophy.  Doing what you like is perfectly OK with me; just don't turn around and accuse ME of being deluded.  There is no science at all in your approach.  If you want to do some science, take some relevant measurements using sensitive instruments. By the way, if you are still using those Audio Technica pucks under your turntable, then even Halcro and the other Copernicans have left you behind, because they have come around to using rather massive cradles for both the turntable and the arm pod. 

Enjoy the music.

Anyway, stand alone tonearm pod or not in both " configurations " exist distortions of many kind. Wich configuration puts us nearer to the recording?, this's the question and main subject.

This is actually easy to measure! We do it with a silent disk, cut on our lathe, which is much quieter than normal vinyl. All we have to do is place the turntable in a room with speakers playing loudly and then measure the output of the cartridge. The fact that turntables that employ a separate arm pillar are more noisy then 'tables with a proper plinth is easy to see on the 'scope.

What is the vertical angle being cut into the disc where you work ?

In theory the ideal is 92 degrees. In practice, its **about** 92 degrees. This is so because not all cutting styli are identical. They only last about 10 hours before no additional heating of the stylus will keep them quiet, so they have to be replaced. This is a bit of a procedure! Once in place the cutterhead has to be set up from scratch. This is because the previous settings that worked with the first stylus are not going to be the same with its replacement. The technique for setting up the stylus involves a lot of measurement, but an exact rake angle is not actually specified in any of the manuals. What is important is that the stylus be able to cut a silent groove. So after making an adjustment that's exact what we do, then play it back and measure the noise floor. When the noise floor is the noise of the electronics and not the surface then we know we are in the ballpark.

From this you can correctly infer that no LP is cut at exactly 92 degrees, instead, all LPs are cut at **about** 92 degrees. Its an approximation that results from the way the cutting stylus itself (which is made of sapphire) is cut. 

As Fleib writes.....which tables have you measured?
This would seem like excellent scientific data and would resolve this argument once and for all.
Could you please list all the tables, arms and cartridges and what they were sitting on Atmasphere? Photos would be good here.
And can you upload the frequency print-outs for each one?
Lastly....how do you discern the different contributions of arm, cartridge, table, drive system, arm support and isolation provisions in the data?