TONEARM DAMPING : DAMPED OR NOT ? ? USELESS ? ? WELCOMED ? ?
The original Excalibur arm was plagued with bearing issues. I know this because I used to sell the Elite Rock's. I still somewhere have a hand written 2 page letter from Max Townsend on how to fix them. The fix was not permanent though - there was a design flaw in the arm bearing. Funnily enough for a few months I ran my Eminent Technology air bearing arm on the Rock with no damping and it was excellent - far better than with the Excalibur/trough.
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Dear @lohanimal : You are rigth that perhaps I need to experience in my system the Townshend one but my point is what said the tonearm patent that whith other words I understand like this:
" different damping levels at frequency ranges with the trough at the cartridge position and at the same time allowing for " free movement " at the cartridge stylus " Both actions can't live together or is dampened or exist that critical and extremely important FREE MVEMENT but not both together.
As everything in audio exist trade offs that I'm not discovery yet in my well damped tonearms with out the trough. Till today in all frequency ranges with the " free movement " Ithe system achieved a not tiny improvement and the better of those improvement started with the low bass that's the one range that puts/colored all what in any room/system we are listening.
Now, I gone from 500Kc silicon density to zero silicon damping. I know that I need try something from 10K and from there make more tests and this will take some weeks or months to have a conclusion because is not to easy to clean up the tray to change new density silicon along that my test proccess is a little with long time. R. |
In reading through this thread after so many months of its existence, it seems to me that most commenters are mixing together two different phenomena. The first is the resonant frequency that we calculate from tonearm effective mass and cartridge compliance. This resonance we want to lie in the range 8 to 12Hz, or very close to it. This resonance will not "happen" unless vibrational energy in the range of the resonant frequency is fed into the "system", defining the system as the tonearm/cartridge and anything attached to the tonearm or cartridge. Energy at or near that resonant frequency will excite the unwanted response. The second kind of resonance would be that which results from playing music, where a wide range of audible frequencies (but almost never in the range of 8 to 12Hz) is constantly being fed into the system due to the contact between stylus and groove where the frequencies are encoded and due also to any source of acoustic feedback in the listening room. Seems to me it is this latter source of resonance(s) that we want to control or eliminate, so the conventional matching of tonearm and cartridge based on effective mass and compliance is not so primary in this pursuit. As a result, you could have a tonearm/cartridge that are well matched based on the equation that predicts "resonant frequency", but the combination may sound bad due to the excitation of undamped or inadequately damped resonances caused by higher audio frequencies. You could also have a tonearm/cartridge that are a bad match based on the standard equation based on tonearm effective mass and cartridge compliance but sounds wonderful (so long as it is isolated from the sub-audio frequencies that excite the inherent resonance), because the tonearm is well damped or otherwise built to avoid resonances excited at audio frequencies. |
Dear @lewm : Certainly you had not experiences with the main subject thread and seems that you did not read carefully may latest posts. It's not that the cartridge /tonearm match can does achieve that absolute necessary FREE MOVEMENT in the ridding cartridge stylus but that along that match the tonearm ( any ) must be a well damped design.
When we achieve those the rewards are unimaginable specially for audiophiles with out the " very good damped tonearm design ". NO, your love for the FR and the 505 is only " your love " but it's full of distortions/colorations that you love and that's all. It's wrong to use that kind of audio items if we want to stay nearer to the recording and as always that's my target and when any one achieve that target he will has an experience in MUSIC reproduction way better than never before. Of course that that gentleman needs to own a good room/system with high resolution and obviously with very good first hand experiences with live MUSIC events seated at near field position.
I still own your FR and owned the 505, that's why I'm posting about.
R. |
