"At some point isn’t the vibration going to travel onto the cantilever or arm just through the air?"
excellent question. The acoustic waves traveling through the air don’t matter because speakers, even with big subwoofers usually cannot generate frequencies low enough to excite the cartridge or the tonearm, which are generally designed with resonant frequencies circa 10-12 Hz. Whereas seismic type vibrations with very low frequencies, including 10-12 Hz, can easily excite the cartridge and tonearm.