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What happened to linear tracking?

hbucker

hbucker

Well-Known Member
Back in the 80's linear tracking was the wave of the future. Now I don't see many new offerings with it. At one point in time I heard that linear tracking was good in theory, but it relies on tracking error for the motor to move the arm across the record, so that pretty much nullifies the benefit.

Just curious. Inquiring minds want to know.
 
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1, it's somewhat costly to do it at an acceptably high-quality level, separately or integrated.
2, it increases overall costs of a decent integrated TT.
3, It does increase complexity and maintenance requirements.
4, it just didn't get the "traction" in the marketplace it deserved due to #1, #2, & #3.

Of the dozen or so TT's in my house worth fooling with, most are LTs.
 
HI All,
In addition to what Pio said above,there were other issues as well. Many linear trackers that came on the market were cheap and not good performers. Also, many audiophiles like to mix and match their tone arms and turntables. There were not many linear arms that could be bought and mounted on any turntable.

But the expensive integrated units were really good. Those from the major Japanese makers were very sophisticated. Goldmund, a German company, set very high standards with their integrated arms. I had a Yamaha PX-2 that was a great performer. My B&O 4004 was one of my favorites. There were others. All were pretty expensive which is never good for a mass market product. I never had maintenance issues but they were definitely more complex than a simple pivoted arm both mechanically and electronically.

I have had only linear arms since 1974. Currently, I currently have two turntables with Eminent Technology ET2.5 air bearing linear arms. They are terrific and are still being made. I think linear tracking is the way to go. Pivoted arms are inherently geometrically flawed.

Sparky
 
Pio1980 said:
1, it's somewhat costly to do it at an acceptably high-quality level, separately or integrated.
2, it increases overall costs of a decent integrated TT.
3, It does increase complexity and maintenance requirements.
4, it just didn't get the "traction" in the marketplace it deserved due to #1, #2, & #3.

Of the dozen or so TT's in my house worth fooling with, most are LTs.
Click to expand...

5. And it's a complex solution to a problem that isn't really a problem.

A very interesting paper on VE, "digital simulation of tracking distortion" shows convincingly that the distortion introduced by the tracking error on your typical 9" arm should be below audibility and way below the other distortions introduced by the pickup/stylus/cantilever, not to mention the distortions introduced by the speakers!!
 
Another factor was the appearance/devlopment of the CD. The marketing powers were pushing this new format pretty hard at that time. I can imagine if you are in the product devlopment division of a major corp like Sony or Mitsubishi and a new technology came out the new "toy" got a whole lot more attention that a different twist on old technology would get. The advertising budget for a major corporation was probably bigger than the entire gross of a smaller company like Rabco/HK. All that said I still love mine, got the triad of ST7, ST7 with the factory mods and an ST8.
 
flavio81 said:
A very interesting paper on VE, "digital simulation of tracking distortion" shows convincingly that the distortion introduced by the tracking error on your typical 9" arm should be below audibility and way below the other distortions introduced by the pickup/stylus/cantilever, not to mention the distortions introduced by the speakers!!
Click to expand...

This may or may not be true in practice, but I've got a problem with it from a theoretical point of view. I think distortion compounds itself. The statement that "the distortion introduced by the tracking error...should be below audibility and way below the other distortions introduced by the pickup/stylus/cantilever, not to mention the distortions introduced by the speakers..." implies that only the worst distortion offender in the chain is significant, and lesser contributors don't matter. Taken to an extreme, let's say the speakers have 2% THD. Then it supposedly wouldn't matter if the amplifier had 1.9% THD, the preamp another 1.9%, the turntable yet another 1.9%... get my point? I think that not only do the distortion components add, anything distorted early in the chain gets distorted yet again by every signal processing stage that follows. From that point of view it makes sense to try to absolutely minimize the distortion at the source first, with every succeeding stage being of *slightly* lesser importance.

All that said, I have both linear and pivoting tonearms in my system. I prefer the linear tracker for a number of reasons, but I don't detect any difference in distortion between the two. My system is decent, but there are certainly far more resolving systems that might make differences more audible.
 
My observations:

- LT's showed up late in the cycle of vinyl playback technology.
- Early attempts to address it (Marantz, Rabco, etc) were tedious to set up and complicated to operate - far more than the average consumer to tolerate anyway.
- Later designs into the early 80s suffered from lowered quality as audio entered its "Black Plastic Crap" age.
- The onset of CD playback technology killed off any reason to pursue investing in vinyl playback improvements on a mass consumer scale.

Whether LT is/was a problem of sufficient magnitude will be in the eyes/ears of the beholder. My Harmon-Kardon/Rabco ST7 linear tracker is a _really_ nice table for its age and price point. Frankly, I'll stick with it.

Cheers,

David
 
The Technics series of linear trackers were reasonably good performers and priced low enough to sell to the masses. They sold a boatload of them so they were able to divide the production and development costs out and keep the per-unit cost low.

Today, however, the total number of new TT's sold in the US last year is probably less than the number of linear trackers that Technics sold in one year during the 80's. A company that wanted to develop a linear tracker today would be forced to ask a fortune for it and sales would likely be very low. So I suspect there's not going to be a lot of folks wanting to jump into the LT business today.

Which is a shame, I suspect the old Technics designs could be updated to be really solid performers.
 
JonL said:
This may or may not be true in practice, but I've got a problem with it from a theoretical point of view. I think distortion compounds itself. The statement that "the distortion introduced by the tracking error...should be below audibility and way below the other distortions introduced by the pickup/stylus/cantilever, not to mention the distortions introduced by the speakers..." implies that only the worst distortion offender in the chain is significant, and lesser contributors don't matter. Taken to an extreme, let's say the speakers have 2% THD. Then it supposedly wouldn't matter if the amplifier had 1.9% THD, the preamp another 1.9%, the turntable yet another 1.9%... get my point? I think that not only do the distortion components add, anything distorted early in the chain gets distorted yet again by every signal processing stage that follows. From that point of view it makes sense to try to absolutely minimize the distortion at the source first, with every succeeding stage being of *slightly* lesser importance.

All that said, I have both linear and pivoting tonearms in my system. I prefer the linear tracker for a number of reasons, but I don't detect any difference in distortion between the two. My system is decent, but there are certainly far more resolving systems that might make differences more audible.
Click to expand...

I've got both styles of turntables as well. My impression is that whatever distortion is introduced by arm angles with a traditional tonearm is more than offset by the mechanisms used to move the LT arm, and the fact that it requires some level of stylus pressure to move the arm? If the vinyl isn't perfectly centered, the problems get worse.

bs
 
It was an expensive, complicated solution, and the market moved into more tweaky oriented things, because the people that stuck with vinyl in the draught of the '90s/early '00s were the types that liked to customize things to their own habits and prejudices. I still read the whole crab-walk thing from people who have never heard a good LT table. Misconceptions and the weird (often baseless) biases that permeate the vinyl community killed it as much as anything. Add to that many were P-mount, which limited cart choice, and the cheap, bad implementations of it that came about at the end of the vinyl era, and you end up with it being a sort of afterthought in the history of vinyl playback.

But..there are still some LT tables at the highest levels of price and performance. The Clearaudio Statement is a linear tracking table.

You can also still buy add-on separate LT arms:

http://adanalog.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=30

http://www.themusic.com/detail.cfm?id=9005733

^^pricey!

http://www.eminent-tech.com/tonearm.html

...and others.

It's an idea that makes sense, and when well implemented can keep up with anything. I love my Mitsubishi LT-30. I have noticed no side effects of the implementation of the technology in that turntable. None, nada, zilch. And it works with a variety of carts, on a standard mount SME-style headshell. I could happily have it as my only means of vinyl playback.
 
Still enjoying my Technics SL-10 which is 30 years old. Except for the clicks and pops and turntable rumble due to warped records no subsonic filter on pre amp, sounds more musical then cd's.
 
Pio1980 said:
1, it's somewhat costly to do it at an acceptably high-quality level, separately or integrated.
2, it increases overall costs of a decent integrated TT.
3, It does increase complexity and maintenance requirements.
4, it just didn't get the "traction" in the marketplace it deserved due to #1, #2, & #3.

Of the dozen or so TT's in my house worth fooling with, most are LTs.
Click to expand...

I'm about to install an ET2 on my 301 with the blue acrylic plinth. I have been working on the ET for a few days, including making a new arm vue bracket. Next up is cleaning it and then fitting and setup.

I have been playing with pivoted arms for a near lifetime, except for my B&O 4002.

Wish me luck:smoke:

tripod
 
It does seem like LT hit its peak right about the same time everyone got a c.d. player for Christmas in '85. My friend got a cool Technics LT that would scan records, find songs, was programmable, etc. Really cool stuff for a turntable... until you compared it to what a c.d. player could do the same only better.

The complexity compared with the cost and practicality also make sense to me. It's good to know there are still some LT-heads out there. I've never had one but have to admit I thought they looked like the coolest things ever when they were featured in early 80's stereo magazines.
 
Tripod said:
I'm about to install an ET2 on my 301 with the blue acrylic plinth. I have been working on the ET for a few days, including making a new arm vue bracket. Next up is cleaning it and then fitting and setup.

I have been playing with pivoted arms for a near lifetime, except for my B&O 4002.

Wish me luck:smoke:

tripod
Click to expand...

Hi Tripod,
GOOD LUCK and congrats.

By any chance did you get the optional mounting jig? I hope so. It is very helpful.

I have never heard of an ET mounted on a 301. I see no reason why it won't work fine. Keep you air supply clean. Very important.

Let us know how it goes.

Sparky
 
I've never had or heard a high quality LT table. I have a Sony LT table that I used to use, but it's job was to ruin records it seemed. I'd play a record once and it would not track right after that. That said, I have found a better use for that TT. It now helps me clean records.:music:
I'd be interested in trying a high quality LT like some of the ones mentioned here, except the Clear Audio one. Not that it's a bad table, it certainly is not, but the price is out of range for anyone but a wall street banker.
 
bshorey said:
I've got both styles of turntables as well. My impression is that whatever distortion is introduced by arm angles with a traditional tonearm is more than offset by the mechanisms used to move the LT arm, and the fact that it requires some level of stylus pressure to move the arm? If the vinyl isn't perfectly centered, the problems get worse.

bs
Click to expand...

HI bs,
I'll not take your moniker as an indicator of quality :thmbsp:

Yes, you are right though not much force is needed to move the tone arm because the force to move the arm is actually applied by a servo motor. When the styus is moved microscopically, by the groove, the movement causes an error signal which is sent to the servo motor to correct the error to zero. The tracking error is much less that you find with a pivoted arm. Much less.

Of course, an air bearing arm requires essentially zero force because the air bearing is frictionless. The tracking angle with respect to the groove is constantly zero.

Sparky
 
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