Here's the thing, alone in sources, the trutable kicks out a relatively feeble output via the cartridge. The cartridge is vibrating in the groove and likewise the bearing will have some vibration of its own. Now, given both are, in the real world, both tiny signals we know that, should the bearing vibrate in certain manner that, it will in effect, cancel out some of the signal from the stylus. My experience with the tranquility is that, by lightening the load on the bearing, you are in reality, cutting out vibration and hey presto loads of detail previously lost now appears out of the old fruitbox. My conclusion is therefore that, Linn's Cirkus is a fairly "lossy" bearing as bearings go and that, that was one of the reasons people liked to pick certain aspects of the Linns sound apart, at the level of price being charged. All The Tranquility did was, show just how naff the Linn's bearing is at the price charged. That is the key, for the price being asked, the Linn's bearing was out of date and others have sailed past Linn.
The entire "Prat" whibble, was and still is, a completely fallacious concept that was actually a marketing ploy for the Linn's failings. I know my monitors inside out, I've used them for 10 years however, there are days when, everything sounds like it's being pulled apart and nothing, even my reference tracks sounds "right". I know that is inside my head, it's down to my mood combined with local temperature and humidity conditions. Primarily though, it's down to how I am hearing music on those days. It is my perception of how music sounds and I've tested this with other engineers with far greater experience than I.
The days of my red button Linn, Mission 774 are long gone, if you really want that era of Linn sound then buy an old well looked after one and have it regularly serviced and don't upgrade it It does something to vinyl where, the sum is greater than the parts even though, it is demonstrably not up to the performance levels of some, in relative terms, very modestly priced modern day TTs. So no, my contemporary LP12 does not sound like an "Old Linn" it does however sound a lot more like what was recorded in the first place and that's what I expect it to do and, if the beat that was recorded has a groove, I expect it to convey that as well. I don't tap my feet when I'm listening to say, John Martyn Bless The Weather, I do however expect my TT to render his performance with something of a convincing air and it does.
You see, you can't have it both ways despite what certain TT manufacturers would have you believe. Any TT that renders every disc you throw on it "listenable" is quite plainly "inaccurate", there are some albums that are just bloody awful recordings, mastered as to emasculate them or, victims of a run of truly duff pressings. Given all this, can we please, just stop pretending that there is anything resembling the mythical "prat" and just admit like grown ups, it was marketing twaddle to excuse a certain manufacturers weaknesses?
Of the plethora of videos about just about every aspect of recording and mixing, one that I haven't seen really done in depth is on "Masking". There's a classic example of how people do not understand the ramifications of "masking" on Rick Beatos channel where he tries to copy the snare sound of Alex Van Halen. There's numerous comments about how "Alex's snare" has much less bass in it". The reality is, Rick's vast experience means he knows that, actually Alex's snare does have that level of bass in it when you hear the kit soloed, the moment you add the bass, the guitar and the vocals, it is to a degree, "masked" because the other instruments combine to create a form of phasing that to our ears, make the snare sound brighter and less bass heavy than it really is. It's one of the reasons why upmarket mixing desks introduced what is known as "Solo In place" and many of the best mixers in the business, mute rather than solo tracks. Go and have listen to a few of Rick Beato's "What makes this song great" series of videos where you often hear the individual constituents of the mix for the first time and how different they sound in isolation to how they sound in the track. To certain degree, the interface between stylus, record , record and bearing in TT will have the same effect. Think back , if you're of a certain age, to those tin plate humming tops we had as kids. How, if you very gently rested a fingernail against the edge as it span, it would change the pitch of the hum. In simplistic terms that's akin to the interface between TT bearing and a stylus.
I'm as guilty as anyone, even more so given what i do, I have chucked serious money at a replay method which I know is inherently flawed. If we were rational about it, none of us would own TTs, we're not though, music has this damnably inconvenient "emotional aspect" about it and that, reaches into the kit we all play it on. Our hifis are reflective of how we view music emotionally as much as anything else, we buy kit we "like" the sound of, we with TTs, have no real right whatsoever to claim any sort of "moral superiority" for whatever TT we choose to use. Essentially we' arguing that my outdated mechanical system is better than your outdated mechanical system. We might as well being disagreeing over Walschaerts versus Caprotti valve gear.