Analog Corner: how big is the tonearm's contribution to a TT's sound?

Guys,

As I am about to upgrade my TT tonearm (courtesy of a friend), I have been delving into a bit of tonearm science lately. One thing that I've seen and heard oft repeated by reviewers and enthusiasts alike is that the tonearm contributes between 65% to 80% of a TT's sound. These quoted contribution percentages depend on who one speaks to or which reviewer's rantings one subscribes to but the lowest figure I have seen written or heard mentioned was 65%. Now those are pretty high numbers in my book but are they justified? Assuming that those figures were correct and using 65% as a conservative estimate, then it means that the TT deck and cartridge only contribute around 35% between them. Also, where does that leave the phono stage which I feel should also be included in that 35%? Somehow I find the figures quoted for tonearm contribution hard to believe so are there, perhaps, enthusiasts on this board who support those figures?

I agree that the tonearm does make a significant contribution as recent tests (conducted with friends) of a stock Rega RB300, an Incognito rewired RB300, Origin Live Silver, SME 309 and SME IV tonearms have revealed but does that tonearm contribution amount to 65% on the low side and 80% on the high side? Any opinions?




Enjoy the music,

Lawrie

 

Figures like that are meaningless. The turntable is supposed to make the biggest contribution in "flat earth" circles, but those people usually have compromised systems and almost always have crap speakers, so they can't really hear differences with kit.

I personally think that the support is the most important thing.

 

I'm no expert, Lawrie, but I would have thought that the nature of the cartridge hanging on the end would be at least as important. The arm certainly has a major job, holding the stylus in the groove with the right pressure and sufficiently rigidly to allow the small undulations to be picked up, yet sufficiently freely to allow it to track the record - I believe the perfect arm is infinitely rigid and has zero mass! However, the cartridge is the actual transducer bit, where vibration is converted to electrical signal, and its design is critical to the whole shebang. I'd rate the cartridge just in front of the arm, with the turntable itself last by a long way.

 

i read shomewhere that in terms of influence it goes

deck arm and lastly cart. Could be right - could be wrong. who knows

 

Exactly the reverse of what I would have expected! Interesting...wonder why?

 

In the days when Linn cared to demonstrate this sort of stuff they could easily show that the importance was,

PSU, Deck, Arm, Cart

IOW a Lingo/LP12/Akito beats Valhalla/LP12/Ekos etc.

Stands obviously matter too, but not as much assuming you have a respectably light and rigid table. Mana is a different ballgame, I suspect that it cannot make up for equipment deficiency (!).

Paul

 

It's like this a good tt with crap arm will give you a crap deck.

An ok tt with an ok arm will give you ok sound

A good TT and a good arm will give you more than the sum of the parts.

This assumes that theirs not a complete mis match.

You then need to look at which TT and which arm.

All the tone arms you have considered are in the good to very good range, its a pity you didn't mention which TT your using.

If your using a project look at the lower end of the arm prices....if your using an orb or better then the top end arms need consideration.


To buck the trend the RB300 will give arms of two or three times the price a run for there money.

 

Hi Lawrie,

A turntable is exposed to lot of vibration and resonances. Also some of these come from within the turntable itself.

The tonearm is connected to the deck & will pick these up. The arm will inturn add it's own vibration and resonances. This will effect the stabilty of the cartridge. The sound quality depends on the relationship between the movement of the stylus & the cartridge. As the stylus moves the cartridge needs to be stable. If the arm is vibrating then the cartridge is not held stable and the information is lost or corrupted.

A better turntable will hold the arm more stable & allow the arm to vibrate less & do it's job better. It will hold the cartridge more stable and you will get better info from the record.

If you have a better arm on the better turntable, the cartridge will be even more stable allow more info to be had of the record.

A better cartridge will add pick up a higher level of imformation.

For a cartridge to perform at it's potential it needs a quality turntable & quality arm.

If you had a high quality turntable & high quality cartridge & a low quality tonearm, the arm will be supported well be the deck. But the poor vibrations & performance of the arm will cloud the cartridge performance. The extra cost of the cartridge will be wasted. The resultant sound quality may be no better than the same setup with cheaper cartridge.

The way of thinking by a number of people is turntable, tonearm then Cartridge for importance. Linn help popularize this line of thinking with LP12. In the hayday they had a LP12 which cost more than a Ittock tonearm which cost more than the Asaka cartridge.

I would go for the Turntable quality, then arm Quality then cartridge quality route. Don't think that quality always goes up with price. I would go on the design of the items to define their quality.

For tonearms they need to provided a vibration free, rigid support for the cartridge. Also they need to be able to allow the cartridge to follow the groove spiral. The downside is that they do vibrate over the audio range. The vibrations can come from the cartridge, the turntable & airbourne Also the ultimate quality of the bearings can vary. The design, construction and materials involved all add to the sound quality. The better the tonearm the more it can handle any extra infomation from the cartridge & deal with the other vibrations.

I would go for the Turntable quality, then arm Quality then cartridge quality route. Don't think that quality always goes up with price. I would go on the design of the items to define their quality.

Also don't over look what you turntable is placed on & power/drive of the platter on the turntable.

I agree with Mr Devil, figures are meaningless. You have to listen to get an idea.

Lawrie, Do you have a Rega arm on your Gyrodek? Why not go for the Orbe upgrades. (platter/ motor mods). What you get would be better pitch control. Notes will stop & start better. You will get better separation & clarity between the strands in the music. Also dynamic range will increase, making the most of your records.

Don't get me wrong a new tonearm will alter the sound quality, the right one will give you the step in the right direction. The main fundementials in the music will be controlled by the turntable's performance.

SCIDB

 

Guys,

Some good responses there. I mainly threw in the question to get the views of some enthusiasts on this board and not because I am undecided as to which tonearm to go for. I realise that numbers don't tell the complete story but perhaps the guys quoting the numbers were trying to emphasise the importance of the tonearm and it's effect on the sound. Already it appears that different people perceive different parts of the TT as the most important to them be it in the order of cartridge, arm, deck or deck, arm, cartridge etc which could even indicate how and what they upgrade first on a TT. As for me, I am on the side of the deck, arm, cartridge and in that order.

As mentioned before, we (friends and I) have been testing a lot of tonearms lately using a Rega P25, and Michell Gyro SE (which I own) and there are clearly big differences to be heard between them. Contrary to the hype, the Origin Live Silver sounded only a touch better than my Incognito RB300 tonearm. We clearly expected it to be blown away completely by the OL Silver but it wasn't. One thing that we did establish however, was that the Origin Live Silver was not a match for the SME 309 let alone an SME IV, the latter which was ordered from new by a friend with higher grade silver internal wiring than that found even in the SME V. Who said silver cable sounded bright? The final upshot is that it is the 2 year old SME IV tonearm (with all the bearings in tip-top condition) which my friend is selling for an absolutely splendid price (what are friends for?) in November that would be partnering my Michell Gyro SE at some point in that month. With the SME IV at the controls, everything about the sound of the deck got a serious lift in performance.

SCIDB - great response as usual. My Gyro SE came with the latest DC motor and I am also using a Trichord VC power supply. The deck is also well set-up and isolated. The Orbe upgrades will probably be the last piece of the puzzle but not yet anyway.




Enjoy the music,

Lawrie

 

A friend has a Morch unipivot on an Orbe, well worth checking out IMO, but I like unipivot tonearms.

Paul Ranson listed the TT components in the correct order of importance. Probably!

 

Deck arm cartridge seems to be the accepted order, and has worked for me. I agree with Dean, an Orbe platter and VC or Never Connected PSU would be a good place to start. The PSU makes a big difference in my experience.

-- Ian

 

think thats what I'll do one day Ian... orbe platter new PSU, and eventually a better arm..

its all ££££ though, thats the problem... and then theres the new transport to look at..


Interesting you thought the silver was no better than a re-wired rb300 lawrie.. interesting also Deans point about a better deck showing up the differences more.. makes you think a bit.

How much better did the IV sound than the 309 to your ears? - theres a helluva difference in price normally...


Chris

 

Lawrie - Just out of curiosity, your friend whose currently got the SME IV, what's he upgrading to?

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Another vote for the t/t and in particular its motor and power supply from me. During times when the mains power supply is at its worst, not only does overall sound from the system get worse, but I've also noticed that the motor on the t/t is also much noiser - normally it's silent but actually gets noisey during times of bad mains quality. Now, you can't really hear this noise from the motor breaking through and getting picked up, but I'm sure it's still having an insidious affect on the final sound. So a motor and associated power supply with better regulation is an upgrade that's definitely on the cards as my next t/t upgrade (but mainly because it's chepaer than a new phono stage ).

This week, I also changed over the posh kettle lead that was supplying juice to the phono stage to another (different and better) posh kettle lead and attained some worthwhile gains there.

 

Hey Bottleneck,

As I mentioned, the OL Silver was better than the Incognito RB300 but the OL Silver did not blow the Incognito RB300 into the weeds. Maybe a better deck than the Gyro SE would have shown-up the differences better but it was the very same deck that showed very clear differences between the SME 309 and the OL Silver. The SME 309 just did everything better than the OL Silver and exhibited better control at all freqency extremes including much better bass performance. The SME IV, on the other hand, took all that the SME 309 had to offer and just made it sound better. If the deck was capable of showing up such differences between the two SMEs and the OL Silver, then I think it was also capable of accurately reflecting the differences between the Incognito RB300 and the OL Silver and yes, the OL Silver was better but not by a great deal. It would have been interesting to add the new Michell Technoweight to the Incognito RB300 to see if that eroded the OL Silver's lead over the Incognito arm. However, we did not have a Technoweight available. It is something I would urge prospective OL Silver buyers to try as that combination is not only cheaper than the OL Silver's GBP 600.00 asking price but might just outperform it. Another option would be to compare the new Michell Technoarm (RB250) to the OL Silver to determine whether the OL Silver is worth the extra GBP 260.00. At the end of the year, SME will be releasing a new tonearm that should retail for around the GBP 550.00 mark. Now pricewise, the new SME arm would be in OL Silver territory so potential buyers in that price range would have yet another arm to consider.

Btw, the excellent price at which I am getting the SME IV (which is actually 1 year and 9 months old) makes it a no brainer instead of going for the Orbe upgrades. Well priced and affordable SME IV tonearms don't come round every day so it made sense to grab it whilst the offer was available. The interesting thing about the SME IV is that for GBP 160.00 (rather expensive IMO), it can be upgraded with the FD-IV tonearm lateral damping kit which is designed to optimize cartridge performance even further and also yielding yet, tighter bass. The SME V comes with the FD-IV as standard.

Henry - my friend is upgrading to a Graham 2.2 Unipivot which should be ready in November. He is having it finished in silver (at no extra cost) instead of the more popular gold finishing. He first used the SME IV on a Gyro SE but replaced the Gyro SE with an Oracle Delphi Mk V whilst still using the SME IV. So the Graham 2.2 is for the Oracle deck.


Oracle Delphi Mk V


Graham 2.2 Unipivot




Enjoy the music,

Lawrie

 

can't go wrong with an sme 4...my mind would tell me the cartridge is the business end, as that is the active bit that is reading the info....the arm just keeps it stable, however, energy is dumped into the arm bearings from vibrations one thing to bear in mind is that everything vibrates...the motor, the platter, the supension, and the sonic signature is the complex sum total of all effects...vibrations come under the floor, through the air, hence the massive platter philosophies...make it SOOO heavy it doen'st affect it...

all this lot goes into the bearing which transmits into the platter, and record to get read by the pickup and dumped into the arm bearings which transmit it around again ad infinitum...

personally I would rather have a £2k cartidge on a rega p2 than say a linn with a not brilliant arm and a £50 quid cartridge...

a more balanced view is that its the sum total, and bear in mind everything affects everything else...go for decent all....

I have a rega 250, and recent ol rega, and yes its quite astounding....definite tighter firmer bass is the obvious difference..big effect...so it seems arms do affect..

as to the source first, remember that is proffered by a TT maker to sell TTs, and ought to be treated with due scepticism until categorically proven,...

 

That TT maker demonstrated 'source first' countless times. It is clear and simple with the PSU/TT/arm/cart heirarchy.

Paul

 

I think that's TT/PSU/arm/cart – an Armageddon on a P2 ain't going to see off a LP12 / Valhalla.

In my experience the PSU effects pitch and timing the most, the arm and cart bring the other areas. The cartridge being a transducer tends to have the most character with massive differences in presentation available at any given price point, more possibly than any other component. Cartridges are incredibly subjective.

A good arm will allow the cartridge to really deliver the goods – it is amazing how much things like surface noise and tracking improve with a good arm upgrade. Arms are really important, I've upgraded from a Ittok via a Mission 774SM to a Zeta over the past year or so and each was a pretty profound improvement over its predecessor.

Tony.

 

I am with Tony, the power supply is less important than the deck. An LP12 Basic power supply sees off a Planar3 with a serious power supply.


Somebody said:
as to the source first, remember that is proffered by a TT maker to sell TTs, and ought to be treated with due scepticism until categorically proven,...


Linn have been known to produce the odd arm and cartridge as well. In the past all of there dealers would happily demonstrate that an LP12 + Basik + K9 would beat a fully loaded Axis or other lesser deck.


What is interesting to me is that I now take source first even urther after the Well Tempered with a £500 cartridge completely beat my Naimed LP12 with £1800 cartridge.


Cheers

Jason

 

Hey Data,

Interesting comments and approach there dude and one that is not too dissimilar to that of Tones. So basically, what you are saying is a deck of reasonable competence mated to a very good arm and cartridge would outperform a very good deck mated to a basic arm and cartridge? Interesting!!



Enjoy the music,

Lawrie

 

Personaly I always find the a decent PSU adds more to the deck,Phono stage, along with cart/arm combo's, but then I know zip about TT's, so I use me ears, tells a lot does that