Yes, all your points are valid to a degree, but we don’t have a calculator that produces objective numbers based on all the variables.
We don’t want to throw out the “Baby” with the bath water
I'd rather have a calculator that gives less but correct data, than a calculator that gives uncorrect, made up data.
Because that's what the Korf calculator does.
He states that the acceleration should be in the green zone. But the real world result of that is, that any combination that has a resonance frequency above 10,25Hz, will be outside that green zone in his calculator (10,25Hz is about the edge of his green zone from what I could see).
So according to his calculator there isn't a combination possible that works when it has a resonance frequency above 10,25Hz
So it doesnt calculate the eigenfrequency of the resonance correctly (when Hooke's Law calculates 10,25Hz, his calculator has the peak excursion of the resonance (so the eigenfrequency) at around 7,5-8Hz, which is way too much of a deviation to be considered correct or even somewhat in the same ballpark), it's making up numbers regarding both the amplitude of the excursion and thus acceleration of the headshell, and it basically says that every cartridge has the same amount of damping.
Talk about the possible combinations that would work but not according to this calculator....
And his claims about elastomers stretching to the point that the spring constant deviates from a traditional spring dont happen within the scope of forces we play our cartridges. At least I don't see it in my measurements. He doesn't publish any measurements at all regarding this aspect.
These are my conclusions.
Sure it would be great if we had a calculator that could acutally model excursion of the headshell, and thus damping, with just the compliance/spring constant and mass as input, but that is just sheer impossible, unless you start to make up results by taking assumptions about damping, that apparently all cartridges have the same amount of damping...
But then what are those results worth, if every cartridge displays the same characteristic in that calculator if the resoance frequency is the same? To me: nothing.
Is it the viscosity dampening of the arms movement, or a combination of fluid dampening and cartridge dampening, or does the arm design cancel out the frequency anomalies?
Andy
It's the viscous fluid damping in your tonearm probably.
I don't have much experience with silicone damping systems in tonearms, but I do have a lot of experience with electromagnetic damping in tonearms (Like the Sony Biotracers and certain Yamaha and Denon models), and that can be extremely efficient. Most of the pivoted Sony Biotracer arms are quite heavy (30gr+), but they filter out pretty much every resonance below ~15hz (the linear biotracer arms are considerably lighter, about 16gr, depending on headshell). Really stunning how good such a system can work. The excursion on a testtrack is if I guestimate around 400% less compared to the same cartridge at the same resonance in a conventional arm.
I imagine silicone fluid damping can achieve similar results when properly designed.
