What defines a good tonearm

Hello Lewm....I must agree on the air bearing linear arms...they sound funny to me never liked them much...Now the old rabco (when working correctly) and the much newer pioneer's pl l1000a's arm is fabulous...uses a linear motor for arm movement the arm also uses a graphite composite arm tube and dissipates cartridge energy via high mass structure now that was engineering IMMHO

Dear Atmasphere: +++++ " I'm just trying to get the LPs to sound as close to the master as I can. " +++++

well, IMHO the best you can do it is to be nearest to what is on the LP grooves that in the records you produce/produced you know what is what is on the LP grooves and this advantage you have help to fine tunning your system on that regard.

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.

For the ones as me that don't produce records/LP the way to go and critical issue is what Syntax pointed out:
+++ " System and with what kind of records (with Diana Krall for example it is not really easy to rate something)..." ++++

the choice of those recordings ( analog ) is vital for those comparisons, master tapes are useles on this regard.

Now, if what we are testing/under bench are audio items not related to our analog rig the IMHO digital source ( native DVDA/SACD recordings. ) is a great choice and even better than analog master tapes ( R2R ).

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.

Just because I don't have the specs for the friction measurement of a unipivot tonearm, all of a sudden I am a poster child of the subjectivist camp without even a "touch of objectivity"? Thanks for the flattery, Raul. I'm not that ambitious.

In audio, I am an atheist and polygamist. I like choices. If you want to be the high priest of the absolute sound, go right ahead.

_______

Dear Hiho: I like choices too and I'm not married with any audio subject.

About that " very low bearing friction ": the main subject to me is not if you or other people have it( I really don't care about. ) but that you and other people are " spreading " as an advantage that LBF and my first question to my self is: hey where that statement came?

IMHO and when we are discussing something of interest for several persons we can't ( certainly we can as almost all of us used to do it in forums. ) spread information with out any single " reference "/foundation.
How can we " validate " what other person said it if ( even if had it . ) the persons does not gives any " foundation " to his statements?

I don't agree any more with that common: " Paul is correct " with out any explanation on : why is correct? because I say so? or the more common " I like it " with no additonal explanation.
I know that this is a free forum about but we have to think that at least we all need to understand what the other pérson said or at least be near of it.

In the case of that LBF I think that the spec/number is important because no one here knows what could be a " very low friction " or what is VLF for you.

I try almost always post ( on agree or disagreements. ) for we can ( try at least ) have near the same subject perspective, try to have a reference overall frame. Yes, because my trouble with the English language many times I don't achieve that target.

I think that we are " here " to share audio experiences and to learn and IMHO we can enrich each one opinions along the " forum values " if we can/try to put a " tiny touch of objectivity " in our judgements/statements/posts against the usual: 100% subjectivity. I know that almost every one of us likes to improve his music/audio knowledge/skills and ignorance level and I think that what I'm " proposing " could help about.

Anyway, only an opinion.

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.