Schroeder vs. Triplanar VII Sonic Differences

Though I would not argue the potential advantages,sonically,of an arm like the apparently superb Kuzma Airline(and BOY,would I love to own it),there is a clear disadvantage to the amount of attention,that has to be paid to any arm of this type,in the "convenience" area.Being in the form of the air bearing and pump maintenance,tubing runs,dessicant,and potential for humidity to build up on the bearing.Dehumidifier or not!No matter how good an arm of this type is,it IS a "physical commitment",compared to a "pivot"!But,probably worth it,if you are committed.

If I didn't have such a "friggin" busy life,I definitely would have the patience to deal with it,as it really is(from what I'm told,by friends familiar with it)really SPECIAL!!I DO envy it's owners,though.Yet the arms previously mentioned,"all" are superb performers.Some probably a bit better than others,in a given system.

My dear friend,who just recently got rid of his FABULOUS Air Tangent,does not miss it very much.Even though he moved on,to a fairly straight forward pivoting design.In all truthfullness,he simply got tired of maintaining the thing.Though he did have it for many years.

I loved the sound of his analog "rig"with the Straight Line Tracker.It was a clear improvement over all his previous pivoting arms,but ergonomics,and the impact of every day convienience,forced his hand.He tells me he is still thrilled,with his LP sound,so who am I to judge?

Yet,taken to the lengths that we sometimes go to(who am I kidding,we ALWAYS go to)in these threads,the KUZMA does look to be the new "Owner of the Throne",in arms.Sadly I will not find out,too soon!

Best!

Dear Andrew: I never had the opportunity to hear the Kuzma Airline. I owned the EMT and Dennesen linear traking tonearms and heard the Air Tangent one and certainly the sound is different and I mean different but not necessary better. I agree with Sirspeedy about the setup of this kind of tonearms.

I preffer the pivot ones, these have more " guts " than the linear traking airline. I like more the bass resolution and the right pitch of the pivoted designs against the linear trakers.
KHA preffer the Universe sound on the Kuzma one and certainly this combo is better than the Universe with the other tonearms at least in the quality sound reproduction priorities of KHA.

Like almost any " play " in audio the name of the game is: synergy, if we can find the right synergy around our audio device components we will be on music sound reproduction heaven it does not matter if the tonearms are pivoted or linear trakers.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Raul, SirSpeedy,

Thanks for your feedback on the Kuzma linear tracking arm. This seems a little out of my budget anyway.

I thought your comment about sounding different, but not necessarily better, as well as pivot arms having more guts, interesting. Since the Schroeder is not a pivot in the sense of a Graham or Triplanar, but more of a "floating design" in the sense of an air bearing, does the Schroeder sound lean in the direction of an air bearing more than it does the traditional metal to metal contact pivot designs?

Raul,

By the way, my phono stage is the phono section of a CAT Ultimate MkII preamp (47dB of phono gain and 26 dB of line gain. The unit is pretty linear with good bass response).

Dear Andrew: The 73db of gain in your phonopreamp seems right for medium to high output cartridges. The low output ones and the very low output can't be handled with out noise/distortions.

Now the gain is only one of the characteristics in a good phonopreamp, noise/distortions is other one and the most important/critical is the accuracy of RIAA eq.. Per se, this inverse RIAA eq. is the reason why the phonopreamp exist, this inverse RIAA eq. ( in many ways ) define the quality sound reproduction of the phonopreamp against the recording process where was used the RIAA standard for any LP. So the Phonopreamp inverse RIAA eq. must to mimic the RIAA standards, any deviation in the inverse RIAA standard ( and we are talking here about fractions of decibel ) not only put colorations/distortions on the sound but more important give us a " phantom " from the original recording with additions/remove of " sounds " that were not or were in the original recording.
That deviation most be in the : +,- 0.05 db from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Where are your CAT? or yours?

Of course your phonopreamp or any other could or could not achieve that spec but as faraway it is the great that " degraded phantom " and as near it is as near you are from what is recorded on the LP, that is what we are looking for.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Hi Andrew,

In response to your question about any leanness in the Schröder due to its bearing design, I cannot answer directly, other than to point you to Doug's comments about the sonic differences between the Triplanar and the Schröder. I know that as an engineer, you are trying to correlate design and construction with sonic attributes, but you need to think about this like a MUSICIAN. At the end of the day, we're listening to music and NOT to a design.

Frank's design is much more complex than meets the eye. I've heard quite a few fixed bearing tonearms with less grunt than a Schröder for example. Compare the Schröder in all ways to a Triplanar. You'll have to really stretch yourself to characterize the differences between these two fine arms. We are at that "angels on the head of a pin" stage in trying to differentiate between these two world-class tonearms.

With respect to air bearing linear trackers, I can't comment on either the Air Tangent or the Kuzma, but I have lived with the ET-2 for about 10 months. I agree in principle with Raul's comments (they're different - not necessarily better). The ET-2 can be tuned to a very high level of performance, but at the end of the day it's just a bit too "wispy" for my tastes. No doubt, the Kuzma (which resembles an ET-2 placed on a steroid diet) improves on this.

To me, there are two far more important issues relating to air bearing linear trackers - one of which Sirspeedy alluded to - that of ergonomics, and what extreme you will go to in order to spin a disk.

At the end of the day, record playing has to be fun. For me, things like periphery clamps and air bearing linear trackers take the act of playing a record from ritual into sheer drudgery. Your mileage may vary, and I'm not about to dictate what extremes you are comfortable with.

As far as periphery clamps and air bearing linear trackers are concerned, there is an even more important issue - that of potential stylus or cantilever damage.

With respect to periphery clamps, the last thing I want to do is to worry about landing the precious stylus of my ZYX Universe between the knife edge of the clamp and the available section of the lead-in groove of the record - especially in a dimly lit room during late night listening when the last record side has taken me into one of those altered states we all get into.

Sorry ... not for me. Re-tipping a ZYX Universe or Dynavector XV-1s is NOT my idea of fun.

There's the further issue of an air bearing, linear tracking tonearm sticking on the bearing due to either pump failure or air line contamination and deposits. Now, these are remote possibilities, and I never experienced these with the ET-2, but they are very real possibilities.

Perhaps Kuzma, Air Tangent, et. al. have addressed these issues, but I have trouble believing that they are as failsafe as either a conventional bearing or Frank's frictionless bearing. Consider the effects of a 35-40 gram mass of tonearm / slider assembly (air bearing linear tracker) deciding to stop DEAD IN ITS TRACKS while the record grooves try to drag your cantilever across the record. Not for me, thank you. Again, maybe your risk tolerance is greater than mine.

I'd love to hear the comments of owners of both the Kuzma and the Air Tangent (as well as other air bearing linear trackers for that matter). The ergonomics, pump placement, and other related issues are fatal flaws for me, but the issue of cantilever safety and how they are addressed are design issues I'd love to see explored on this forum.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier