et-2 damping trough-good idea or not?

Raul, this is possibly not the place for this ancillary discussion, so apology to the OP for the diversion.

I could not disagree more with your premise, as you often state, concerning “faithfulness to the recording”. First, of course it is true that complete neutrality is not possible from an audio system; but, it most certainly can be mimicked. Mimicking the characteristics of live music is, after all, the goal of our hobby, is it not? We try and get as close to it as possible. The reason that I believe your premise is mistaken is simple. The damage that the recording process does to the sound of music and the resulting deviations from “neutrality” are FAR greater than differences in sound from one performance/recording venue to another. One can become intimately familiar with the sound of live music and be able to make a fairly good assessment of how far from neutrality the sound coming out of our speakers strays from neutrality. However, when one considers the number of variables that impact the sound of the original event during the recording process due to everything from the particular mics used, cables, board, sound processing equipment, recording device, mastering, pressing and on and on, not to mention the choices made by the recording engineer, the important question remains: HOW DO YOU KNOW? How do you know what the actual sound is on the recording after being subjected to all those unknowns; and, just as importantly, is now going to be subject to the imperfections of your audio system and listening room?

By your own admission your system is “far away to be perfect”. They all are. In my experience the problem is usually that most audiophiles don’t appreciate the extent to which sound systems deviate from the sound of live. The deviation is huge. The best we can do is, in fact, to try and mimic that sound. The best and really the only way to accomplish that is to use the sound of live as a reference and accept the fact that, as much as we would like to think otherwise, it is all a sonic soup to which one adds or subtracts a little of this and a little of that in order to achieve a balance that mimics the real as closely as possible.

Dear @frogman  : """  HOW DO YOU KNOW? How do you know what the actual sound is on the recording after being subjected to all those unknowns;..."""

I did not. My common sense tells me that if at each link in my room/system I try/put all kind of distortions generated,  by the room/system,  at minimum then I can be nearer to the recording. That's all.

"""  that mimics the real as closely as possible.  """

that's my main room/system target.

R.

Dear @ct0517  : I know that the ET designer is not even close ( it's far away ) to be a " stupid " gentleman that designed and promotes a damping way in his tonearm where he took the time in the design, manufacture it and the time to make the measurements  to confirm that it works and he is not alone in the damping issue because almost all tonearm designers take in count with seriously and almost always the damping ( one way or the other ) appears in their designs.

So, what's all about your last post?

Here is not about linear tracking vs pivoted tonearm designs and it's not about which kind of those different tonearm designs needs higher or lower damping.

The subject is that both needs some kind of damping to reduce resonance/vibration or distortions: this is the damping target and this is what I try to say through my posts.

Why almost all the time when taliking of tonearms you have to develop a " tale " around the ET. I don't care about ET or linear tracking tonearms any more. I don't know in the future if I can change my interest about.

I posted a question to you: which are your experiences with the damping in your room system with the ET and you decided not to give a direct answer?

Frogman did it and you just can't write: I don't like it or bad experiences or I like it. Simple as that. At the end and with all respect I don't care if you like it or not because that does not change the damping necessity in any tonearm design no matters what.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.

Dear @ct0517  :  """   negates the need for a damping trough.. """

my fault. So for you resonances does not exist or already puts/are at zero in the CF/magnesium ET wands and does not needs that kind of damping.

Now, clear to me and again : my fault about answers from you.

R.

@rauliruegas 

no one is at fault Raul when we are in learn mode.  the forum mode here makes discussion challenging sometimes. Especially when I am not able to link pictures from my virtual system into a forum thread. I am forced to add a picture to my external google account and link it.  

I mentioned that this is a 3 dimensional setup - meaning 3 aspects need to be considered. 

1) armwand which you reference. 

2) leafs springs on the I beam that hold the weights. these are small flat leaf springs that we attach to the I beam that holds the weights. We match the spring compliance to the cantilever compliance  SO - 1 leaf is the most springy / compliant-  for MM carts.  2 or 3 leafs joined together become firmer and match well to MC carts with stiffer cantilevers.  
.  
3) ET 2.0 and 2.5 - the air bearing manifold in the 2.5 holds a larger diameter air bearing spindle. It resonates lower. think of hitting two hollow pipes -  one is 1/2 inch the other one inch. The one inch pipe will resonate lower and it matches better to MC carts as they are stiffer than MM and resonate higher. We need to bring their resonances down.  

I will be posting an ET2 Damping Yellow Sticky on the ET2  thread soon and leave open discussion questions there as well.  

I am hoping that you liked my Tale of the Canoe ride going across the lake. It was trying to show what the trough paddle is doing. See picture 31 of my virtual system for a visual of this picture.