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Tonearm mount on the plinth or on Pillar ?

Folks,
I am looking to buy a custom built turntable from Torqueo Audio (http://www.torqueo-audio.it/). They have two models, one with a wide base plinth where the tonearm would be mounted on the plinth (as usual) and the second is a compact plinth where they provide a seperate tonearm pillar to mount the tonearm. According to them the separate tonearm pillar version sounds more transparent and quieter because of the isolation of the tonearm from the TT. My concern is whether seperating the tonearm from the plinth would result in a lesser coherence in sound ? Isnt sharing the same platform results in a more well-timed, coherent presentation ? Any opinions ?
pani
halcro's avatar
halcro
2,664 posts
 
We do agree on this point. We both recognize that air borne vibration can be a problem.
No we don't....
I pointed out that:-
If air-borne sound pressure is a problem in the turntable playback system, then every increase in volume would of necessity degrade the sound.
You said that was correct....
You then contradict yourself by writing:-
The result is it is quite impervious to the volume level in the room; even at 110 db the sound is still very relaxed.
The two statements are logically incompatible.
No amount of plinth dampening will avoid the effects of air-borne sound waves on the vinyl, cartridge, stylus and tonearm.
The fact that you and many others can listen to vinyl played back at excessive volumes demonstrates conclusively that air-borne sound waves have no effects on the turntable system.

geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
The trouble is that the instabilities and so forth in the Earth’s crust and other sources of low frequency vibration actually force the entire building structure, house, apartment building, converted ICBM missle silo, whatever to move like a carpet being shaken such that everything inside the building is also forced to move and all attempts to control this very low frequency vibration with damping methods won’t accomplish squadoosh. This is not to say that damping doesn’t have it’s place. I’m actually a big fan of contrained layer damping in applications such as CD transports, output transformers, the top plate of iso platforms and capacitors, among other things. Even very rigid structures and stiff materials have their place in vibration isolation inasmuch as they can help control bending forces produced by Earth's crust motion.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,788 posts
 
You said that was correct....
You then contradict yourself by writing:-
The result is it is quite impervious to the volume level in the room; even at 110 db the sound is still very relaxed.
The two statements are logically incompatible.
No amount of plinth dampening will avoid the effects of air-borne sound waves on the vinyl, cartridge, stylus and tonearm.
The fact that you and many others can listen to vinyl played back at excessive volumes demonstrates conclusively that air-borne sound waves have no effects on the turntable system.
Actually I'm not contradicting myself at all- merely point out that the design is successful. I assume from your post here that you did not actually read the post from which you quoted or such would have been rather obvious.

moonglum
619 posts
 

This study trumps everyone... ;^)

http://www.theanalogdept.com/images/spp6_pics/TT_Design/MechanicalResonances.pdf


dentdog's avatar
dentdog
498 posts
 
I've been digging through this to the point of multiple circular thinking all leading to nowhere. My comprehension, while not fully through, does lead me to question many of the tenants expressed here, if only due to being invested in a TT/plinth?/tonearm which violates almost every principle presented here for superior SQ. 
Trans-Fi Terminator tonearms , linear tracker with air bearing. Salvation TT with magnetic bearing, floating for all practical purposes. Resomat platter pad which further isolated the LP from the platter. nothing is connected with respect to vibrations being transmitted concurrently during playback. Sounds great. 
I did follow Terry9 and place a little damping material  on the arm wand to some good effect. 
Maybe it's my tin ears but it sounds really great to me.

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