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disagree, with reservations, complications, & One Overcooked Analogy / long

Posted by J.D. (A) on May 5, 2007 at 13:18:44

In Reply to: Re: cantilever armboards posted by user510 on May 5, 2007 at 11:59:23:

Gotta disclaimer this right off the bat. Much of this heads into physics and territory perhaps better travelled by science dudes. My approach is trying to understand it in simple terms if at all possible. From what I've seen, heard and experienced in audioland & diy-audioland....

First the complications. Numerous tables that are highly respected --Brinkmann, Yorke, Verdier, Sme 10---- do one or two things* that are at first glance counterintuitive.
Like out-boarding the tonearm to an arm-mount on a platform extending away from the central record transport.

Ultra-overkill massive construction, careful attention to mass-balancing, and then patient testing may be how these all come to terms with what is a little counter-intuitive in the first place...

But --- What's more steady and reliable as a platform to trace micro groove-modulations--- the deck of the ship, or the outboard platform ...?
And ---what's the tendency, where will heavy motor vibrations most often tend to travel to--- from a large central mass to a smaller outboard mass ? I think so.
(Conversely, travelling motor rumble will tend downwards if it meets continued resistance in the direction of the armboard, ie, if there is continuous high-mass material encountered in that direction. Tendency then would be, given 'lossy' footer scheme, downwards into the shelf or rack.)

Surrounding and balancing that mass with the same mass / rigidity that supports the rotating lp strikes me as the only way to assure reliable data retrieval from the spinning groove.

In all kinds of data-carrier-data-reader setups, sometimes people find that there's a little too much 'there' there, in the groove or pitted compact disc.
Or too much artifact, too much noisefloor, errors in tracking, timing, etc.
What come to mind as "remedies" are things like roll-off filters for lp use, or dither schemes for cd.
People even go to extremes with thick platter mats, sponge-inserts on cartridge mounts, or tonearm-mounts that are compliant or 'wriggle'.....

Although the initial impression may seem like they're beneficial, these fixes are add-on patches...
.. bandaids that indicate that the hardware/software interface was noticeably lacking in the first place.

Anyway, you can't judge anything from a photo, so no criticism meant of the table in the orig post...

But it's hard not to wonder, for example.... what's the best place to write a vacation postcard --from the solid footing of the swimming-pool deck, or, from the diving board..?

Assume, for the sake of the analogy, that they're having the Forbidden Lambada Dance Contest that night, so the whole hotel is pulsing, as if there were a big motor rumbling underfoot .......

What feels the underfoot rumble most intensely -- the deck, or the cantilevered platform of the diving board..?

And whats going to happen to your mango-rita-fuzzy-sunrise with the umbrella ?

J.D.

(( * the other I-don't-get-it thing about these well-regarded tables, though not the sme, is that they are top-heavy and some are even wider at the (rotating) top than they are at the base. Another solidity / rigidity / mass-balancing moment of huh ?..... In my opinion. ))

*
groove

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