Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

I don’t have a Viv arm, but I think it’s very interesting and positive that sometimes someone  « rethink » something we all thought the right way to do things (tonearm and tonearm’s geometry) for achieving our ultimate goal.

In a way Viv seems to be a nonsense but we have to accept many people for many years have some and all of them are more than satisfied with what they hear.

All these people are not subject to hallucinations of stupid or bad hearing. 
Apart from that they are ugly and do not allow you to use our audiophile toys for fine tuning.🛠🪛🔬😓

but in a analysis of a variety of designs, there are to be discovered elements in the designs seen that veer away from this.

Certainly. I see that as a mistake on their part, nothing more. The physics is inescapable.

I don’t disagree with Atma; the physics that suggest you need to tightly couple the tonearm pivot to the TT bearing is inescapable. However, there are many other "rules" that govern modern tonearm design, any one or several of which might be violated if one were to do a close analysis of any single design. The question then is what is the order of importance of these rules with respect to ultimate sound quality with a reasonable variety of cartridges. And what are the negative consequences of violating one or more of those principles? I think you then have to listen to the tonearm in action to determine its goodness. I have already stated that I wonder about the floating bearing (is the pivot well fixed in space? That’s another imperative.) and the skinny undamped arm wand (Will it resonate?) Yet the Viv float has been reviewed many times, and I don’t know of any reviews that were less than enthusiastic. We have already heard from two users of the Viv that they like it quite a bit. So it may be a "bad design", but it sounds good to most who have auditioned it. Certainly one does not want to dismiss such a product out of hand.

I might add that the Viv has a weighted base, and it is designed to be placed on the surface of the plinth, adjacent to the platter.  Thus it IS to some degree physically coupled to the bearing, to the degree that the plinth and bearing are tightly coupled, and the plinth will move if the bearing is disturbed.  So maybe the coupling between arm and bearing are tight "enough".

@neonknight everyone can develop a theory and the more you read, the less you can choose or decide on arguments. Now that you have heard all arguments do you know what to do ?
What if you just decided to try it ?The truth is in the listening don’t you think ?

@rauliruegas 

I go regularly to concerts of un-amplified music.  I don't regard that a home music system is good because "I like it."  I regard it as good only to the extent that it reproduces acoustic music in real space as close as possible to what I hear at an acoustic musical event.

You obviously listen to a great deal of home music through an analog system or systems.  Compared to others therefore you. like me, are listening to a great deal of measurable distortion (certainly more than in good digital) and yet we may very well find that the analog music we hear at home is our best possible representation of an actual musical event, clicks and pops notwithstanding.  I, for one, am not concerned at all if some alleged "scientist" measures or does not measure a great deal of distortion in my system.

So it may be with the Viv.  If it makes records sound like the real thing, I would be unconcerned with anyone's measurements of it.  That may make owners of conventional arms uneasy.  I have a conventional arm.  I am not uneasy.