Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

I guess the questionable part is whether the bearings being aligned with an offset headshell is going to make the rest of the experiment invalid?

My take on it is Just Do It....I  think the flaw here is without actually doing the test,  to assume that *IF* it makes a sonic difference that the 'mis-aligned' bearing is a liability and not an asset.  It seems a common experience that in trying to do comparisons, the perceived sonic difference in two tests is not confined to / caused by the singular parameter being examined.

This discussion kinda got to this point from the categorical insistance that the high  TAE of an underhung arm means they are a flawed design and must be awful sounding.  This coming from a group that has never heard one of the arms in question.   Based on a long list of anecdotal reports that this may not be the case. This puts me in lew's corner looking at the other parameters for possible 'alternative explanations'  that may help paint a clearer picture of how what we hear aligns with what we think.

dave

Dave, in line with what you say about the placing of the single null point, I related earlier my experience where I had gotten sloppy about using the supplied template to align the Viv; I was slapping cartridges in there without checking with the template. Until I got to the point where I re-installed a cartridge that earlier had sounded great in the Viv, and I was underwhelmed. This drove me to check alignment, and I found it was grossly wrong because the cartridge was in a different headshell. When I corrected alignment using the Viv template, it came back to life. Before correction, the null point was on the label, way off.

Dear @theophile : No, he does not wrote that way but looks as he implicate that and many other things.

Go figure and in good shape with lewm:

this is not the first time that he made a critic against an analog audio world icon of the Löfgreen caliber, he made it ( against Löfgreen ) at least over 5-6 times in Agon different threads

when in no other internet audio forum some one different gentleman posted something similar not even reviewers or gentlemans as bAERWALD, sTEVENSON, Bauer, Pisha whom made it its own alignment calculations that at the end mathematicaly are similar

to the Löfgreen alignments where no one of them never made a critic to any of the 90+ Löfgreen white papers pages. Not only that but 50+ tonearms designers/manufacturers choice/reference was and is Löfgreen alignments.

I know for sure that almost all of us are amateur audiophiles with out the scientist levels of Löfgreen. I know that audiophiles with a huge high technical knowledge levels than me as B.Ellison or M.Kelly or D.Garretson and other never made that kind of critic that’s ( for me ) at the border of insult.

In the other side, the "stupid " nayseyers as me only say that the VIV tonearm has higher tracking distortions that at the same time develops higher THD and IMD against other normal pivoted tonearms with offset-angle. I’m not touching thesubjective facts because every one likes what they likes I’m only refering to objective facts where the VIV has not lower tracking distortion levels or at least the VIV designer never proved or any other audiophile with facts and away from that : " I like it ". because this is not the issue.

Theophile so we can stay calm using Löfgreen alignments. Don't worry.

R.

Will I be burned at the stake for witchcraft? I am going to buy some asbestos pants. I do own and regularly use 5 other tonearms, all of which are conventional pivoted overhung types, some that you like and some that you dislike. Your vitriol is precisely why I have kept quiet about the Viv and will go back to observing that policy. But if you ask me, I am going to say it is very good with a wide variety of cartridges. Take it or leave it. Also, I have yet to find a negative review of the Viv on the internet, and some of those reviews are written by persons with a good reputation for intelligence.

By the way, I am not aware of any negative comments on underhung tonearms voiced by either M Kelly or Dave Garretson, with whom I am quite friendly, because we both own the Atma-sphere MP1. Since you are apparently one who saves and catalogues responses by frequent posters, like myself, can you quote one of theirs to that effect?

And for the last time, I never ever said not to use a Lofgren alignment. Of course, that is what to do if you are using a pivoted overhung tonearm. That’s what I do, too. My point was (I feel like shouting) that if your cartridge has even a one degree zenith error, then you had better account for that in implementing any of the standard alignment algorithms (usually be twisting the cartridge in the headshell so that the two contact patches are perpendicular to the groove walls), because even that small error will screw up the alignment if you ignore it. (Do you get it now, theophile?) Ask Dave Slagle (an acknowledged smart guy whom you choose to ignore) about the effects of zenith error on alignment and the distortion caused by zenith error. He has evaluated it in far more detail than I.  And he demonstrated both the effect of zenith error and the cure in my home system. It was rather astonishing. Again, this latter has nothing whatever to do with the Viv tonearm, although a zenith error will also affect an underhung tonearm, albeit not as drastically.

Personally I'm not interested in pursuing the Viv, but for all the naysayers, if you find the Viv concept so egregious, why are you still running any pivot arm.

A linear tracker has 0 tracking error, no skating forces to contend with, and if accurate alignment is your primary goal, then any arm other than a linear tracking, or tangential tracking, is a failure.