Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

Dear @reimarc @lewm and friends: " I think the complete acoustic decoupling by the fluid bed plays an important role here....."

Way important along the tonearm arm wand O rings to tame additional resonances/distortions..

Well, in this thread I posted similar statements about self tonearm damping importance in the VIV but till today only you as an owner took in count the tonearm critical importance of that damping.

In the past and in several other threads about different tonearms designs I almost always posted exactly what you said and that I said too even in this post. For me your damping tonearm statements speaks who you are, good.

In the other side: " I strongly recommend to forget historic dogma in this case and let your ears decide,.."

well, for me and my targets that " let your ears decide " is the real " historic dogma " touted by vintage and today reviewers and audio manufacturers.

Now,I’m not against your dogma and the Löfgreen alignments is not in any way an " historic dogma " , all depends of each one of us MUSIC reproduction targets in our room/system and I let or I think that I left very clear my main room/system ( maybe I did not or my explanation in that latest post was not clear . ) target where no matter what the VIV can’t help me ( unfortunatelly ) to stay truer/nearer to the recording.

Look, my target is that the cartridges can pick-up as much information from the groove LP modulations as it can due that that MUSIC information is what stays in the whole recording proccess. To reach those first target is that the cartridge stylus reads each single groove modulation in centered position in that groove. In theory you can reach that only through a LT tonearm design and through the years the second best way ( nearer tracking angle to that centered stylus position. AS nearer the best as away the worse.  ) to reach that target is using a pivot tonearm through Löfgreen alignments ( nearer centered stylus groove position. ). All these are facts with measurements and the like.Here my ears not decide,common sense tells me ( and I think almost no one here can’t prove I’m just wrong.) is the rigth way to reach my main TARGET. Different audiophile targets could means different alternatives.

In all these LP play system proccess Accuracy is way important to mantain every developed single kind of distortion system source at minimum, not an easy task.

R.

Dear @dogberry : No, I’m not suggesting nothing like that but only my mistake ( sorry. ) and misunderstood for your statement posted:

" I’m half regretting waking up this thread, especially as some find it hard to be civil. "

I really don't care ( in good shape ) about your experiment, perhaps only for that " crime " adding that third hole to a SME tonearm 

I posted in this thread that once I tested with my SAEC 8000. Were other " times " in my audio life and I did it even with out the existence of underhung tonearm designs.

R.

R.

To rauliruegas

Thanks for your comments. My question to every reviewer (including Harry Pearson at the 2008 RMAF): how do you actually know what exactly is encoded in the LP grove? Unless you have the master tape side by side. And no, I don't want your memory from a concert of the same recording, because our memories are intrinsically imprecise, and between that event and what you are supposed to hear lies a chain of electromechanical recording events AND the taste - or absence thereof - of the recording engineer. So, when you speak of your "target" as "picking up information as is in the grove": what's your benchmark? How do you actually know what's really in the grove, and how do you know whether this cartridge picks up more, and that one less, or that tonearm/cartridge combo, or that tonearm by itself, etc.? Unless you know from the master tape exactly what should be there. And even this is only an approach, because you have no idea what went wrong or sideways during the pressing process. In other words, referring to the "Absolute Sound" as a benchmark in this hobby is fundamentally flawed logic! The only - albeit admittedly subjective - way of accepting or discarding a piece of equipment is our own enjoyment of a piece of music on a record, which we know very well, and have listened to through many different reproducing machines. Only that way can you be sure the new piece is "better" for your ears and oxytocin release. And what about measurements? "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!" If a great-measuring piece makes me want to turn down the volume and cuddle my frightened cat instead of listening, that glorious piece of electronics will go to USAudiomart! I just went through this process with a couple of highly-recommended DACS: they all seemed to scream at me: Hey, listen to ME!", putting themselves before anything musical. Only since two weeks after getting my MSB Discrete, am I finally happy with my DSD256, approaching in terms of pleasure what normally comes from my analog deck. I only keep my Stereophile subscription because of the many references to records that I did not know about, because I cannot listen to a particular piece in MY room with MY gear and peripherals, and most importantly with MY ears, as bad as they might objectively be at 75. Back to this discussion: I spent a lot of treasure on Wally gear and precious times to set my analog front ends to the best-possible values; and yet there was always that nagging Doubt in my mind if I really coaxed the best sound of my system, or if a professional, like Saint Bosclair, would have done a much better job. This can become a real psychological issue in my opinion, ultimately taking the joy out of any listening. And along comes the ViV Rigid Float, which can be placed anywhere on or near(!) the TT plinth, as long as it reaches the inner groves of your LP, and - Lofgren Shloffgren - produces truly enjoyable music, and makes me lean back in my chair and enjoy my glass of Sazerac. Sorry, pal, but for me that's all I need to be happy!

I’ll drink to that. But I will add that it does or did make a positive difference when I carefully aligned the cartridge using the L-shaped template, vs when the same cartridge was out of alignment by several mm using the same template, due to my own carelessness. So I use the template each time I change cartridges.  So far, I have auditioned about four different cartridges in the Viv, all of which were familiar to me based on prior listening in overhung tonearms. In each case, the Viv excelled, with characteristics as Reimac described. (This is another important point; if you look at reviews on the internet, the positive comments of disparate listeners using a wide variety of audio systems hang together.)

@dogberry Before making a new penetration into a owned and spare SME Headshell, please refer to the numerous White Papers that are to be discovered on the matter.

I have not been privvy to such elusive content, but do suggest there would be another methodology in use for at least 60 Years to mount a Cart' to a Headshell, if a Penetration in a Headshell was a concern.

SME the revered Company it is, in the eyes of some, has a line of Perforated Headshells, which seemingly or strongly suggests, the Company has not found any fault, or been very confident in a design with additional penetrations in a Headshell.

In relation to the Viv, I feel the methodology for the use of the Oil at a Interface, is one that has a contribution to the end sound the TA is able to produce, and one that is able to make much more of an impression to the end sound than the Trials of Oil Damping I was privvy to.

I feel confident in claiming to typical oil damping methodology for the TA with the rear mounted trough, does very little audibly, not even tidying up the end sound.

I have had much more success tidying up end sound with a Puck Weight,