Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

Suggesting skating forces cannot change the cantilever angle vs. saying the changes will be minimal and not dominate an individual situation are two very different things.  One is a seemingly incorrect statement of fact and the other an opinion and it is unclear which you are trying to propose.

The conflict that is happening here is the validity of a single parameter (TAE) being used as the only metric that is important when comparing various arm geometries.  You have already addressed how other factors make the complete elimination of TAE of a LT arm a 'bad move' . You then revert to the single parameter to discount the large population of people here who have found that underhung arms sound good in spite of the drastically higher TAE.  This completely ignores all of the other possible explanations.  Playing both sides of the fence when it suits you is not accepted scientific practice.

I set out to prove to myself that TAE was the dominant parameter and find that ~3° of TAE at the inner groove was unlistenable in a traditional offset arm and somehow far greater values with an offset free underhung arm was musical as hell.   It was this disconnect in addition to the numerous other reports of UH arms sounding way better than the gross TAE would suggest that started me wondering if there was something else at play.

I asked above what underhung arms you have experimented with and would also be curious as to where the single null point was placed in your listening tests.  If you have experimented and found that the sonic results of similar levels of TAE error is consistent across all of the possible arm geometries then you are free to voice your opinion.

dave

What if the issue is skating force?

that seems to be the idea put forth by many of the UH arm designers.  I wonder conceptually how this idea could be tested.

dave

I'm not looking for a the " perfect " tonearm. The best way that in the begin the cartridgecan pick up as much recorded information from the groove modulations is that the stylus tip stays centered along the LP surface grooved and taking in count that premise/main target the LT is the best solution but not " perfect " and for me the second best are the pivot tonearm with off-set angle using the Löfgreen alignments.

So, according to you all those different AS mechanism used by tonearm designers do not helps in any way to that skating developed then all those designers are wrong.

What you like in your listen sessions has no matters because is a subjective opinion that proves nothing but that you like it.

Be a little objective and please give us the best tonearm over the LT that helps the cartridge to its stylus tip stays centered as I said. Easy for you but not for me. Any one?

R.

It would seem to me that the skating force does much more to prevent the stylus from being “centered in the groove” than TAE. AS is all we have to counter skating but AS can only be correct at one or two moments of play, because it’s constant in magnitude and direction whereas skating is inconstant and variable in direction. Plus it’s applied near the pivot, whereas skating occurs at the stylus. This puts a twist force on the cantilever. But you know all this already.

As Lew points out, AS is set by the user at a constant magnitude.

Those who successfully opened the Youtube link I posted (the second one) will, I  suspect, be surprised at the significant variability of stylus drag, and at times, its "violence". Trying to negate the skating force that this creates with a constant magnitude counter force at the other end of the arm would seem to me to be an exercise in futility. How much stylus misalignment and hence distortion, stylus drag causes, is perhaps the key question along with what these nasty forces are doing to the cartridge's inner workings.