It has absolutely nothing to do with IMHO. Everything that I said is a fact of life. The best linear tracker available today is the Walker and it still has an unacceptably high horizontal effective mass. I will say this again. The horizontal axis has to be servo driven and the arm has to have a horizontal pivot just like a normal pivoted tonearm. Some older linear arms worked by tripping a switch which activated the drive but the arm had to deviate from tangent to trip the switch negating the benefit and the systems tended to be unreliable. When some one develops a reasonably priced system that reads the groove right in front or behind the stylus driving the horizontal axis I am all in. Otherwise you are much better off with a good pivoted arm. How many reviewers use a linear tracker as their reference? Air bearings can create very low friction systems but do nothing to reduce horizontal effective mass. Mass is mass, friction or not and these systems are extremely sensitive to level. Keeping a turntable exactly level under all circumstances is very difficult. Just differences in record weight can change the level of a turntable unless it is extremely rigidly mounted. Then you have all that air rushing around (making noise) and the complexity of using a compressor. With a servo driven horizontal axis level does not mater as much and there is no wind noise. Put your ear next to the bearing and listen.
Again, don't believe me watch for yourself. The cantilever should appear dead straight at all times. With any linear tracker you chose you will be able to see the cantilever drift back and forth. I can understand the draw but when it comes down to reality these arms are just not ready for prime time.
Again, don't believe me watch for yourself. The cantilever should appear dead straight at all times. With any linear tracker you chose you will be able to see the cantilever drift back and forth. I can understand the draw but when it comes down to reality these arms are just not ready for prime time.