Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

@lewm , you are talking about the GT5000 for $8K. It has a straight underhung arm, a 10 lb platter and a 2 phase AC synchronous motor. They brag about no feedback control but do not mention what the motor is driven with. The arm looks very stiff but it's vertical bearing in above the record surface and it is stable balance. No suspension. Not my cup of tea.

@clearthinker, OK, 3 degrees then. The problem is with signal imaged to the center. One channel becomes out of phase with the other at high frequencies which will hinder the formation of the image. The higher the frequency the worse this gets. It is even worse with modern line contact styluses. I am sure you could see this with synchronized sine waves and a scope.

Then problem with warps is the pitch variation that they cause. Any good modern arm should be able to track most warped records fine. I will never use a turntable w/o vacuum clamping. The lack of pitch variation gives the music a solidity of presentation and makes the effect more realistic. With a clean record one could easily confuse it with a digital file.

IMHO the CLXs are the best speaker ML ever produced. 

Mijo, I am talking about underhung tonearms as a separate subject relative to the Viv tonearm.  Whether the GT5000 is totally to your liking or not is not the point, but I did notice that the tonearm design on the GT5000 does have the technical flaws you mention.  As previously discussed, the placing of the pivot at the level of the LP surface, or lack thereof in this case, has relevance only with warped LPs.  To which you may reply all LPs are warped to one degree or another.  To which I would reply that really tiny or minimal warps are also really tiny and minimal problems in terms of altering VTF.  Anyway, neither of us is going to buy the whole turntable just to get an underhung tonearm.  All that said, I would be very curious to hear the GT5000 in a good system.

@clearthinker @atmasphere 

The hardness of the metal in the bearing is not the only issue.  The fineness of the machining is fundamental.

And let’s not forget materials such as the yoke etc. as some materials reflect energy while others may absorb.

@mijostyn 

twist your cartridge 5 degrees in the head shell and listen to what happens. If you hear nothing wrong either your system or your head does not image.

For purposes of discovery, I’m curious what the result would be with a spherical/conical styli without skating forces acting upon it ? ? ?

As the saying goes, “maybe we’re measuring the wrong thing” if the numbers don’t justify the sonic results.

Is it possible that an established priority of setup parameters could be threatened  &/or reshuffled?

Booth, Not sure what you mean.  A spherical tip still generates a skating force, if that is what you're suggesting.