What Does It Take To Surpass A SME V?

@dover, here you go again with that "decoupling the mass" nonsense. You can not tune that arm to any cartridge. It is physically impossible. Anything that is hung off that arm is mass that has to be accounted for. If you do not want the mass of the counterweight to affect the horizontal mass of the arm just remove it. There is not a cartridge made that can perform at it's best in an ET2 or any other air bearing arm. You can actually see the cartridge having trouble. Anyone who thinks these arms sound good has work to do on their system and needs more experience listening to reference systems. Most people have never experienced such a system because there are so few of them and experience is the best teacher of all. Many systems can sound ok, a few can sound excellent but it is the rare system that can send frisson up your spine. You will not ever see an ET2 in such a system. Your first move should be to ditch it. You would be better off with a VPI unipivot. 

@mijostyn You are right I do not have a accurate handle on this issue, but from my perspective your own handle is seemingly short, with questions needing to be asked.

As stated frequently previously in other Threads as well as this one,

" I am totally adhered to the Rigid Coupling Methodology "

In this Thread, I stated,

" The Standalone Tonearm Pod' is looking such a lovely morsel to be picked at on the set Traps Plate".

"Lets see which are those, whom choose to tell another how to mount their own Tonearms in conjunction with their own TT/TT's in their own Home".

There are potentially Millions of Vinyl LP's replayed throughout a Period of a Week.

This is

'Standalone Tonearm Pod' is looking such a lovely morsel to be picked at on the set Traps Plate.

Lets see which are those, whom choose to tell another how to mount their own Tonearms in conjunction with their own TT/TT's in their own Home.

There are in use 1000's of TT's used throughout the week for the periods of replay.

The designs for the TT and Supporting Ancillaries being used, will be classed by all certain areas of HiFi usage, especially, where there is a enthusiasm to Replay Vinyl, that the TT > Tonearm in use are more than capable of replaying the Music to a very High Quality presentation. The TT and Supporting Ancillaries in use are again in certain cases designs that plenty are happy to maintain in use and others will want to aspire to.

What is most likely to be occurring, is that the musical encounters are thoroughly enjoyed, even with a Bearing Noise, Platter Resonance, Mechanically Impeded Tonearm, Warp in a LP Pressing and the impact of Seismic Activity.

The average Enthusiast for a Vinyl Replay, has invested their hard earned into their equipment, acquired a furthering of knowledge and most likely knows much of the talking points,  but these types as myself included, do not lose sleep, or 'dictate' to others, that all concerns for a replay 'must' be addressed to the highest resolve or the musical encounters are to be S**t.

You can not tune that arm to any cartridge. It is physically impossible. Anything that is hung off that arm is mass that has to be accounted for. If you do not want the mass of the counterweight to affect the horizontal mass of the arm just remove it.

And there you go again with yet another uninformed comment.

The Eminent Technology ET2 comes standard with multiple counterweights so that users can adjust the effective mass as seen by the cartridge.

I understand this may be difficult for you to understand. but I point it out for other readers who can appreciate the maths and physics behind the design.

@dover , I'm sorry but your take on the situation is wrong. Don't believe me, discuss it with a mechanical engineer.

@pindac , the outright performance of a turntable is not a matter of aesthetics, it is one of sound mechanical engineering understanding the intricacies of life as a vibration measuring device and what it takes to get all the information out of the groove with as little distortion as possible. If you want to add an aesthetic element without hurting performance parameters then it is your money. There are many cool looking turntables because they sell, purchased by people who do not understand these intricacies or are more interested in visually impressing themselves or their friends. Yes, we all enjoy our systems or we would not be doing this. On the other hand there is this endless search for improvement. That is what we are here for, to make our systems better. On the other hand you have the audio business world that desperately wants to sell us things frequently using very shady marketing techniques even outright lying to a public, very few of whom have the education to fully understand what is going on. On top of this we have a very tricky audio processing system tied to out emotions such that our audio preferences have more emotional content then sound engineering content. 

Can turntables with their innards scattered around sound good? Sure, but a properly designed one can sound better. For me the emotion lies in the music, the music system is a science project and to my mind should and can be approached as one. You just have to make it look good enough to get it by your wife:-))

Mijostyn, as far as I can tell, you have not missed one single opportunity to bash the ET2 in the various discussions here; and, by extension, suggest that I (and others) can’t possibly be hearing what we hear. Yet, as far as I can tell, there has not been one single indication from you that you have ever owned one, or even heard one. You seem to base your very strong opinions on theoretical considerations. If I am mistaken about this, please correct me.

I know what I hear and am confident in what I hear. For reasons that I don’t need to get into here, I also have a pretty darn good handle on how close (or not) the sound that I hear gets to the sound of the real thing. My system is not SOTA, but it is more than good enough to let me know that the sound that the ET2 produces is superior to that of the SME5 (and the Graham). That is the basis of the OP’s question. So from that standpoint it’s end of story. Moreover, I have heard both the SME5 and the ET2 in enough other good systems to be able to confirm that what I hear in my own is not the result of, as you suggest:

**** Anyone who thinks these arms sound good has work to do on their system and needs more experience listening to reference systems. ****

I would never suggest that the ET2 is the world’s greatest tonearm. However, there is no question that it is a good sounding arm….at least. Otherwise, neither are the SME, Graham and others that I have owned “good sounding arms”. Really?

You clearly use very lofty standards to judge the quality of sound and that’s great, but those standards seem to me to rely much more on technical and theoretical considerations than anything else. Not my idea of fun (and truth). I suppose that is one of the great things about this hobby. Different approaches with different goals.

Good listening and Happy New Year!