mhardy6647
Lunatic Member
Your response lost me... most 'audiophile' arms today are medium or high-mass, and most cartridges (the expensive ones, which are most of them today) are low-compliance.
Cartridge Compliance
- Thread starter kodawaru
- Start date
Your response lost me... most 'audiophile' arms today are medium or high-mass, and most cartridges (the expensive ones, which are most of them today) are low-compliance.
WopOnTour
Hoarder Extraordinaire
Exactly. The appearance of higher effective mass arms (such as the Rega RB series, SME 300 series, Dynavector 500 series etc) is directly related to the emergence of lower (to mid) compliance moving coil cartridges, many with sub 2-gram tracking force requirements.
Where the effects of having a high effective mass, low MOI tonearm actually pays off is on the horizontal plane, not the vertical plane as stylus to groove movement, and the effects of tracking force and anti-skating are all in the horizontal plane. So ideally having low vertical effective mass with high horizontal effective mass would be desireable with these types of cartridges.secretguy said:
I place emphasis on the term effective mass as AFAIK this tonearm property can only be calculated, with numerous considerations- it cannot be measured using a scale. Tonarms like the Dynavector 500 series are an interesting study. Here's a "high-end" arm that has an unmounted total mass of 1380 grams (that's over 3 lbs!) with an effective mass of 25-30 grams (depending on model) and can establish accurate tracking forces down to 0.2 grams! It's almost hard to beleive it would track at all! (and obviously needs quite a supple support system to pull it off) Dynavector had an real interesting white-paper on this a few years back. Maybe it's still on their site...
My 2c
WopOnTour
Pio1980
AK Member
My take from the "High-End extremist" viewpoint;
I think first and formost, it's about better sound thru higher reactive inertia of the generator element relative to stylus movement.
Almost all pick-ups in use today are of the magnetic type which function as rate-of-change velocity detectors. Ideally one wants the generating element effectively rigidly stationary relative to the motive force (the stylus tracing the groove) at the lowest frequency to be reproduced for maximum dynamic impact from the playback. Since the generator-transducer's stylus must also track the groove as effortlessly and accurately as possible being freely movable under perfect positional control via fine-grade bearings, mass-grounding of the generator with a relatively high "backing" mass and a rigid arm/bearing structure is the modern method for this result. A heavy vacuum platter carries this idea further by "grounding" the recording itself firmly to a heavy non-reactive mass. All this together ensures that the record cannot recoil from the stylus mass or resonate however slightly, nor can the cartridge recoil from the stylus movement on it's suspension resistance, thus ensuring maximum energy transfer into the generator-transducer on hard transients and a greater sense of dynamic impact.
This philosophy is quite a change from when I was intro'ed to High-End audio in the mid-'70s and "low mass" ruled the turntables with the quirky Vestigal arm & tempremental ADC XLM MKII reigning supreme. A perfectly miserable set-up by today's standards when all the untended consequences of the design compromises of arm and pick-up are taken into account.
My "good" primary set-up still carries one of the lowest mass arms ever, the Souther SLA-3 (mod'ed) on a Denon DP-55K owned since new ca 1982. With a decent cartridge, it's a trackiing marvel that ignores unstable floors typically found in old Army barracks and low-budget rental residences.
Definitely not a "modern" high-end set-up but it's paid for and it still works as well as ever, unlike my economic options since retirement.
C'est la vie.
S.B.
I think first and formost, it's about better sound thru higher reactive inertia of the generator element relative to stylus movement.
Almost all pick-ups in use today are of the magnetic type which function as rate-of-change velocity detectors. Ideally one wants the generating element effectively rigidly stationary relative to the motive force (the stylus tracing the groove) at the lowest frequency to be reproduced for maximum dynamic impact from the playback. Since the generator-transducer's stylus must also track the groove as effortlessly and accurately as possible being freely movable under perfect positional control via fine-grade bearings, mass-grounding of the generator with a relatively high "backing" mass and a rigid arm/bearing structure is the modern method for this result. A heavy vacuum platter carries this idea further by "grounding" the recording itself firmly to a heavy non-reactive mass. All this together ensures that the record cannot recoil from the stylus mass or resonate however slightly, nor can the cartridge recoil from the stylus movement on it's suspension resistance, thus ensuring maximum energy transfer into the generator-transducer on hard transients and a greater sense of dynamic impact.
This philosophy is quite a change from when I was intro'ed to High-End audio in the mid-'70s and "low mass" ruled the turntables with the quirky Vestigal arm & tempremental ADC XLM MKII reigning supreme. A perfectly miserable set-up by today's standards when all the untended consequences of the design compromises of arm and pick-up are taken into account.
My "good" primary set-up still carries one of the lowest mass arms ever, the Souther SLA-3 (mod'ed) on a Denon DP-55K owned since new ca 1982. With a decent cartridge, it's a trackiing marvel that ignores unstable floors typically found in old Army barracks and low-budget rental residences.
Definitely not a "modern" high-end set-up but it's paid for and it still works as well as ever, unlike my economic options since retirement.
C'est la vie.
S.B.