TW-Acustic Arm

Well Dgad, again - sorry to see, but the best joke escaped your attention completely.
How about setting the 5th coke/energy drink aside for a moment (you know - sugar and phosphor in close reaction aren't good for your health, concentration and peace of mind) , calm down a bit, re-collect your mind and re-read some posts.
Then just think about the topic from a more remote point of view.
As a hypothesis, just take some of my posts as if they originated from someone else.
That will all in a sudden widen the perspective and horizon.
It might be a bit complicated in the beginning, but if you try real hard, you will get the points.
Take your time - there's no rush.

Tttt, fine.
If you look at the Breuer and TW 10.5 and don't see much difference that is certainly great for you and TW.
It is not about absolute judgement here - that concept is a purely religious one anyway.
It is about looking close, with sharp eyes, open mind and with knowledge.
Otherwise it is the classic scenery of the girl buying the specific car because of its color and because its a special series model labeled with "Cosmopolitan - the magazine" on its back side.
Furthermore it comes with a free sample of "Sex and the City" on blue-ray.
Those are certainly enough hard facts to justify the purchase.
After all - she can't go wrong with those features.

Testing a tonearm is a futile attempt for almost any audiophile and reviewer.
To digest the sonic signature and contribution/deduction of the specific tonearm under test, one must have a clear idea about what actually are those contributions/possible deductions direct relating to certain design features, mechanical parameters etc.
Next you have to keep all other parameters stable.
As most audiophiles struggle hard to keep their set-up on constant day-to-day level performance, we are talking an illusion from the beginning.

People will buy the TW 10.5 not because it "sounds" great, but because it is a TW tonearm and they already have a TW turntable and because they might get a really good package deal.
And that is perfectly fine - it is the way the market functions.
Most people do talk about performance, quality, listening tests and going for the "very best only".
But those are nothing more than standardized lip-services.
Most audiophiles indeed believe, that gathering real back-ground knowledge means regular reading of high-end magazines.
Oh my.....

Dgad, yes - in fact a few of my articles have been translated into english (as a matter of fact - I wrote them in english...).
However they were publish in technical papers about IT security, quality control, precision tooling and the like for professional applications - much too complicated literature.
Very bad stuff when one is on coke and chips and with the air-condition fighting the caribbean heat.
I too had 1 or 2 articles in "the absolu!e sound" back in the mid-early 1990ies.
Those weren't that complicated.

Deartonarm, I think you connive at my points in comparing tonearms which are already present on the market, having a similar design and quality like the 10.5. Remember that it was one of your remarks - the serious price tag. You doubt the quality and performace only by 'looking' at the product. Even though there are a lot of similar products with even more serious price tags and the same structural design. In my opinion no closer looking is possible.

If people only would buy the tonearm by brand (which one can think about different other brands too - this is classical consumer behaviour) then TW established a 'brand'. Quite remarkable, because you may not raise one morning and having a brand by fortune.

However, I don't think that the discussion leads to a reasonable result. There are too much unknown aspects, because we don't have the tonearm in front of 'us'.

Tttt, sorry you are wrong. And so are your assumption of me "connive" at your comparing "similar design" tonearms.
I took the price tag as a call for quality and excellence - you took it as a qualifier.
Of course TW established a brand - this is his one and so far only remarkable contribution to the audio world.
But a brand isn't automatically leading to - nor defining - quality.
But maybe me concept of "quality" hasn't kept up with modern day view.
Just as a reminder - quality in its original sense of the word means neither "presence" nor "price tag" nor "brand".
It means quality - nothing else.
"Brand" BTW, isn't the same either as it used to be in the days before the foremost attention of all managers focussed on shareholder-value and the next quarterly report.

Brand today is as hollow as most marketing action.
And I studied marketing and graduated in.
A terrible business.

In your opinion no closer looking may be possible, - but it is.
Guess we both will agree, that it will make a hell of a difference whether Michael Schumacher drives a Formula 1 car or you take driver's seat.
Aside from the fact that he may be a bit faster than you, he furthermore will be able to tell the technicians some important information after the ride. How the car behaves in certain situations, where there might be some room for improvement - etc.
He will gather all that information and detect tiny details while driving his rounds. In the very same situation you might have a hard struggle keeping the F-1 car on the track at all and might be forced to focus all your senses on surviving the ride. In addition, you may not have too much knowledge to start with about Formula 1 racing car design (which indeed is one world more complex and demanding than audio design as a whole - let alone tonearm design).

When he and you stand in front of the F-1 car, just glancing at it, he most likely will see much more than you too. He too already might have a good idea about how the car might behave and how to drive it.

See the point ?

Of course this discussion doesn't "lead to a reasonable result".
It can't.
The position of the TW 10.5 isn't backed by any technical support - despite the fact that we had a lot of posts by its co-designer himself and his dear friend from the southern caribbean. But all these posts did not contain a single technical input, but concentrated on my person.

As said before - I am still waiting for technical facts to give the tonearm in question some good reason for its claim of superiority ... and its price tag.