JV's Walker turntable review.
rwortman -- Fri, 03/12/2010 - 17:52
I know that JV has been in love with this thing for decades so it I was not expecting any sort of neutral perspective. On the other hand it can't be perfect at everything unless all your vinyl is perfectly pressed. An awful lot of my record collection has the spindle hole slightly eccentric to the record groove. Some more than a little. When playing this sort of thing on an air bearing linear tracker the stylus in the groove must drag the entire arm assembly back and forth every revolution. This is the entire mass of the tonearm and air bearing and is hugely greater than the effective mass of a pivoted arm. Surely this causes worse distortions than the tiny bit of tangential misalignment in a pivoted arm. I don't dispute for a second that this turntable might be the perfect way to play a perfect record but when you put something less than perfect on there the advantages are not as clear. Why not at least mention this in the review?
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rwort,
If you'd bothered to read my review (or even look at one of the photographs of the Walker), you'd know that you DON'T "drag...the entire mass of the tonearm and the air bearing" with every revolution of an eccentric records when you use a Walker. The air bearing is fixed and adds no mass to the tonearm. Moreover, the Walker arm is viscously damped at its pivot (another little thing you would've learned if you'd read the review). No record player, save for that farchachdat thing that REG once swore by, will truly "fix" the eccentricity of eccentric records. Happily my experience, contrary to yours, apparently, is that most records are only mildly eccentric--not wildly so. I hear no advantage in this regard with the best pvioted arms (and I believe I've heard most of the best in my home). Indeed, you show me a pivoted arm that sounds more neutral, more lifelike, and as fundamentally THE SAME as the Walker does from the start of the record to the inner grooves, and I'll switch allegiances. Until then, I'll stand by what I wrote--and what I've heard in my home (and you obviously haven't).
JV
Every bearing has two parts. One fixed and one moving. One part of the bearing is fixed to the tonearm and does get dragged around. I don't have the money to play in that class. Nor do I have a job that causes people to loan me $30,000 turntables for decades. Others that do have pointed out the compromises involved in both linear tracking and pivoted arms and have chosen the pivoted arm as their reference. There are quite a few competent tonearm designers around. If the air bearing linear tracker was so obviously the perfect choice, I would think most of them would offer one. Different strokes. I just thought it might have been appropriate to discuss the tradeoffs in your review. Making fun of my name is hardly necessary to this discussion.
What gets moved in the Walker is the arm/spindle; the bearing proper is fixed. This is an important distinction because there are many linear-trackers, such as the Kuzma or the old Versa Dynamics, where the bearing did "travel" with the tonearm (and the spindle was stationary) and that do not use viscous-damping or allow for adjustments of the arm's center of gravity (and effective mass).
And as i said, if you'd read my review you'd know that I DID talk about why "everyone doesn't use a linear-tracking arm." Although record eccentricity was not a reason (nor should it be, IMO), relative finickiness, higher maintenance, greater complexity, and higher cost are. If you read my reviews of the AAS Gabriel/Da Vinci 'table and Grandezza arm or the TW Acustic Raven AC-3 with Graham and Dynavector arms you'll know that I don't just listen to or extol linear-trackers.
I didn't mean to make fun of your name, BTW. I was just using short-hand.
"If you bothered to read my review" "If you'd read my review"
Are you trying to be condescending? Why would I bother to comment if I didn't read it? The only performance drawback I think you mentioned was a possible sensitivity to dirt on the bearing surface. I just think there are more compromises than are mentioned and that the fact that the effective mass in the horizontal plane is massively greater than in the vertical plane is one of them. I also read the accompanying interview wherein one of the designers guaranteed that you can "easily hear" a 0.001 inch adjustment to VTA. I would sure like to see that assertion put to the test. Hey, if I had the money to play in that arena, (or your job) I would probably figure out a way to have this table if for no other reason that it looks so cool.
rwortman,
Let's start over.
No, I'm not trying to be condescending and apologize if I came off that way. I'm trying to understand the point you are trying to make about tracking eccentric records. Let me be as clear as possible: I am far from an expert on the physics of tonearms. But I do know people who are. Here is what they have told me: While it is true that linear-tracking arms can and often do have greater mass in the horizontal plane than pivoted arms (they can also have lower mass in the vertical plane), that greater mass does not necessarily mean that a linear-tracker has far greater effective moving mass in the horizontal plane than a pivoted arm, since, as I understand it (and I may not), a pivoted arm's effective moving mass relates to the polar moment of inertia (which is not just the sum of the masses of the parts of the arm but that sum multiplied by the square of the distances of those various masses--in front of and behind the bearing--from the pivot point).
What I AM sure of is this: Linear-trackers are not subject to skating force and air-bearing linear-trackers have to contend with less friction that conventional-bearing ones. The moment you drop a pivoted arm onto a disc, the stylus/arm is fighting against the torsional force pulling it toward the center of the record. Talk about an impediment to tracking off-center discs! The stylus isn't just rocking back and forth (at a 20-degree angle BTW with a pivoted arm) between the walls of the groove due to a disc's eccentricity; it is also constantly fighting against being pulled against the inner walls of the grooves because of skating force, which varies constantly from the lead-in grooves of a record to the run-out grooves.
The problem--and the so-called advantage that you claim a pivoted arm has over an air-bearing linear-tracker with off-centered records--just doesn't seem to be as simple or clear-cut as you've made it out to be. At least if I'm understanding what you're saying and the way the problem has been explained to me by much smarter guys than I am. Moreover, and more importantly since I am an observational reviewer, I have never HEARD a problem with eccentric records with the Walker turntable, which, as noted, sounds more "the same" from run-in grooves to lead-out grooves and even on tough-to-negotiate inner grooves than any other arm I've tried (thus far). To me this suggests exemplary tracking and tracing.
Anyway, we can agree that the Walker is a gorgeous turntable.
JV
Well I think we agree but from different directions. I was just pointing out that the advantages of linear tracking aren't as clear cut as I though you made them out to be. No matter. I can only hope that one day I can hear one of those babies for myself.
Hey JV, great review! BTW, when discussing the locus of contol regarding the eccentricity of the Walker table...it sits squarely in the lap of Lloyd. Now Lloyd in drag, that would be eccentric! VK
Thank you, VK!
My experience with the Walker in my system is very close to JV's. The only thing I wish the Walker did better is a way to dial in the azimuth without disrupting the overhang setting of the tone arm.
Atul,
Hey, man! You've got a great record player.
I've found that if you're VERY careful (and just loosen one or two of the screws, leaving the others snug but not fully tight) you can rotate the arm without screwing up overhang.
Jon
Thanks.
Yes. it's do-able, but pretty primitive. I wish Lloyd would come up with a jig/tools that would enable fine azimuth adjustments to allow users to fully utilize things like the Feickert Adjust+.
Walker-Zanden-ASR II-Nola Towedrs+Valhalla = BLISS
Cheers,
-atul
Heck, I use Adjust+ all the time with the Walker! (Although it is time-consuming.)
That's a helluva system, kiddo. I'd like to hear it someday! (It was great running into you at CES, BTW.)
Testing...
Well, I decided to emerge from my cave and visit a city with a proper yuppie bookstore that, much to my surprise, had both Absolute Sound and Stereophile magazines. I picked up both, got a large french roast at their cafe and sat down to read. I hadn't read printed copies of either in about 4-5 years. I have three observations that I want to share with everyone here.
1. Sex: I was surprised and pleased to see a beautiful woman in a full page ad for Vincent amps (IIRC) in Absolute Sound. It made me smile and put me in a good mood. There was also a full page dealer ad in Stereophile with the silhouette of a naked woman, shot from behind. I mean the photo was shot, not the woman. I liked that too. Other than that, both layouts were incredibly boring, Stereophile perhaps the more boring.
2. Absolute Sound is Magic...oh! One of the primary reasons for my visit was to listen a couple of pairs of Magicos. I've heard them before and they are great speakers without a question, perhaps some of the best around. However, they are NOT as far ahead of the competition as can be inferred from the reviews. When I thumbed through the magazine, it could have almost passed for a Magico brochure with all the Magico ads and articles combined. Hmmmm...
3. Jonathan's Walker turntable review. I don't know Jonathan personally but he comes across like a good guy and I'm certainly not a hater although we do not seem to share some basic premises about things audio. I consider that normal. But does it really take several pages to describe what a turntable sounds like? Really, does it? To be honest, I started skipping paragraphs and went to the summary of features section. It did not learn whether the Walker had a 78 rpm speed. I was disappointed because I'm in the process of trying to find a top notch TT that covers pretty much all the rpms out there.
And if you think that I'm picking on Absolute Sound and specifically Jonathan here, suffice it to say that I don't even (honestly) remember what Fremer was writing about. Please consider this an attempt at constructive feedback.
All the best,
Bo
PS. I left both magazines at the store and picked up Spector's Back to Mono box that they were basically giving away.
testing....