Dear friends: I think that the problem with this forum is that it is a " biased " forum.
Here exist too many Fan Clubs with all the problems and close-in limitations of any Fan CluB: Teres Fan Club, ZYX Fan Club, Schroeder Fan Club, deaf people cartridge Fan Club, VTA Fan Club, inaccurate " equalizers " Fan Club, horns Fan Club, etc....
All these Fan Clubs stay with the same old paradigms and when any one of them confront a new paradigm, this one is like a " evil/devil " one and stay away, with out think about, from that " devil ". This is not a mature position and does not help to the development of the quality music/sound reproduction.
++++++ " You take a comment from somebody that you don't know, with absolutely no detail or supporting evidence and hold it up as fact. " +++++++
This was what Teres post: so, Wildwildwes is only " somebody ", because is not an active member of the Teres Fan Club. Very sad to " hear " this opinion.
Teres I'm not against your TTs, I have a lot of respect for you like a product designer. You choose your trade-off criteria design. As you know I already " heard " one of your TTs ( I'm not repeat what I already post about ) and I heard severals heavy mass all-metal TTs, ( in the same conditions ) almost all beats yours or almost any wood/acrilyc TT design. The Wildwildwes post only confirm my statement about.
Dear Teres, you are heavy biased through your design it is almost imposible to have a civilized dialogue about, please do it a favor: buy an Acoustic Signature Final Tool
TT ( third from the AS TT line ) and do a private ( only you ) evaluation against any of your TTs, this is the only way where yo can break your old paradigms.
+++++ " As Lugnut mentioned, cartridge/arm synergy is vital. With UNIverses on the TriPlanar VII and Schroeder Reference we had to A/B the same track 5 or 6 times before anyone would say a word. They were that close. This didn't happen with any other comparisons we made, 30 seconds was often enough. " ++++++
This is a Doug post, who is one of the: ++++ " group of experienced audiophiles " ++++++ Doug, btw no one of those tonearms are my cup of tea.
The A/B evaluations with LP are not of good value: when you play a track you have to wait between 12 to 24 hours for the vinyl track return to its original condition.
This group evaluations had a great fun but poor value, there are conscience or inconscience bias presure between the group members: the group force to any one to choose what they want or what they think.
Any serious evaluation have to be made individually, this is a must, with any external opinion till you do your invidually evaluation: this have a great value.
30 seconds was often enough: in 30 seconds you only know that both item sounds different and that one of them impress you more than the other, but don't really tell you which is better and why is better. For your individually evaluation will conclusive you have to do the evaluation in the " long run ", it is the only way for to have a great value opinion, other way you have a poor value opinion. I give an example: when I start in this forum I post that the Shelther 901 was on the high fidelity side and not as a high end top performer, Doug was angry with my statement but 3 to 4 months later he agree on that subject.
I always feel that I'm in a fight against you all. Any of the threads on this forum it is not a contest: why you put on this way, always ?, it is not important who win or who is right: what is important is what all of us could learn on any subject in music favor, that's all.
I think that all of us can do it a favor: try to post un-biased opinions. I know that this is more easy to say that to do but I think that we all have to try and in this way everybody wins.
Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.