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Supatrac: the world's best tonearm?

When the arms are compared, level matched, with the same cartridge, then the test is worth listening to.
In the meantime, it's a bit of fun. The review itself is great, and any audiophile should support a one-man business that has designed something new, and seems to provide continuous development and excellent service.
If I were in the market, it is a direction I would look in, for sure.
 
Lurch said:
@sonddek
Richard as an ex manufacturing systems engineer would you like me to come up and review your processes? I may be able spot some easy wins for you and also a few jigging opportunities. Being close to something sometimes means you can't always see the wood for the trees.
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That's incredibly kind and I will take you up on it as soon as I've settled into my new workshop. At the moment I'm in the process of moving to a room where two people can get past each other. The back garden corridor has done its turn.
 
epo1 said:
Richard, that thundering noise you hear in the distance is the sound of inbound orders. Expectation management is key and it may help to put the lead time on your website.

If working capital might become an issue perhaps consider crowd funding, I for one would be happy to invest in your future success.
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That is also incredibly kind. I can't get my head around this. I ought to be able to because I spent many years writing software, but borrowing makes me very nervous in such an uncertain market. I wouldn't want to budge an inch in the direction of a certain DAC developer. I aim to grow organically and deliver with increasing promptness through back-breaking hard work. Borrowing "dulls the edge of husbandry".
 
I'm pleased that David Ellwood and others spotted the timing and tune coherence in recording A. The superior clarity that several people have spoken of in recording B might be down to the more expensive cartridge. Musical intelligibility matters more to me than acoustic realism.

Roy Gregory spoke of metronomic timing, in a good way, in his review. Perhaps my determination to fix the arm more firmly in the record's time axis has paid off.

I'm looking forward to the next round where cartridge discrepancies will hopefully be eliminated and we can each decide for ourselves whether a £3k tone-arm outperforms an £80k tone-arm, albeit via a compressed needle-drop.
 
I'm amazed that A turned out to be the Supatrac - congratulations, Richard! Turns the law of diminishing returns on its head, so Michael Fremer must be feeling a little embarrassed for endorsing the ridiculously expensive SAT arm!

So will those of us who guessed/hoped correctly get bumped up the waiting list when we place an order?;)
 
Tony L said:
One thing I’m surprised no one has picked up on yet is the files look different. I’ve no opinion on sound (iPad), and if I had I’d not post as I don’t do reviews, but clicking through to Soundcloud and you can see differences.

Some of this will be down to Michael Fremer, he is notoriously bad at level-matching, so the median and peak levels are different, but there is more to be seen than that even in the very rough Soundcloud graphic representation of the wave file. I don’t know if he has enabled downloads. If so it might be interesting to actually compare stuff in an editor such as Audacity and try and figure out what is additive, subtractive etc.
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I suspect that the Soundcloud wave-form bears little relation to reality. If I were programming it I would massively undersample to minimise server load. If you were to cut half a second off the start of a file, I suspect it would look vastly different from itself in the simple low-rez graphic of the wave-form. In other words, I suspect it tells us absolutely nothing about the actual differences between these two very similar files.
 
vesuvian said:
I'm amazed that A turned out to be the Supatrac - congratulations, Richard!
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Thank you!
vesuvian said:
Turns the law of diminishing returns on its head, so Michael Fremer must be feeling a little embarrassed for endorsing the ridiculously expensive SAT arm!
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I don't think so. He has done a lot of listening, and it may be that the SAT arm was the best available until 2021.
vesuvian said:
So will those of us who guessed/hoped correctly get bumped up the waiting list when we place an order?;)
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I would love to offer that, but the B-fanciers are all rushing off to buy a SAT, so my waiting list hasn't really changed ;-)
 
sonddek said:
I suspect that the Soundcloud wave-form bears little relation to reality.
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You are very likely right. I just found it interesting that they actually looked different.

If I was a tonearm designer I’d probably be quite curious to get hold of the raw files for Fremer’s next test, and to line them up in an editor and null them along with other things. This one will be far more interesting as long as MF doesn’t alter the level settings (which he shouldn’t as it is the same cartridge) as it may give an indication of addition/subtraction, resonance/damping etc. There may be some actual data to be assessed there.
 
Tony L said:
You are very likely right. I just found it interesting that they actually looked different.

If I was a tonearm designer I’d probably be quite curious to get hold of the raw files for Fremer’s next test, and to line them up in an editor and null them along with other things. This one will be far more interesting as long as MF doesn’t alter the level settings (which he shouldn’t as it is the same cartridge) as it may give an indication of addition/subtraction, resonance/damping etc. There may be some actual data to be assessed there.
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This is a very good suggestion - thank you. In fact, even if the levels aren't exactly the same, the bit depth of raw recordings is probably deep enough that normalising will still tell you a lot. Hopefully the speed of the K3 deck is so consistent that time alignment of the two files will be pretty accurate, and as you say, real information can be got. I would expect that the differing rigidities and torque reactions of the arms would lead to microdesynchronisation (made up!) even with a deck like the K3. The two playsback should differ in recorded length by some miniscule amount due to the different arms' different reactions to the signal even if the downforce and bias could be set identically, which it can't.

Remember also that Fremer has admitted that he expects the two arm positions on his deck to sound different, because one has fluid damping and the other doesn't. I doubt that is as large a factor as the signatures of two very different arms.

The SUPA bearing is at the very beginning of its journey, whereas the low tolerance gimbal arm has been around for a hundred years or more. I will not stop here. If I have to make a better arm to challenge the SAT at a realistic price, I will do so.
 
I'm pleased that David Ellwood and others spotted the timing and tune coherence in recording A
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I feel that somewhat misrepresents my comment. It would be more accurate to say I spotted the timing and tune incoherence in recording B. What’s needed is a decent reference, which the SAT clearly is not.
 
david ellwood said:
It doesn’t really matter as there will always be those that have a preference for aspects of the performance that tick their boxes.

There are lots that don’t get the whole tune/timing thing and perceive A&B as largely similar.

And then there are people who simply buy what gets a good review.
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There are also those who will buy the SAT because it is one of the most expensive tonearms in the world. Performance rarely comes into the buying process for these individuals...
 
david ellwood said:
I feel that somewhat misrepresents my comment. It would be more accurate to say I spotted the timing and tune incoherence in recording B. What’s needed is a decent reference, which the SAT clearly is not.
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My original reference for comparison was my Ekos 2, which I still have. It's a great arm, but what it principally lacks compared to the Blackbird, in my experience, is 'punch' and drama. I also think the Blackbird has greater presence, instrument separation, a wider more credible sound stage, more heft and detail, and, above all, more rational timing so that complex beats and phrasing seem to make more sense. In my experience.
 
GT said:
There are also those who will buy the SAT because it is one of the most expensive tonearms in the world. Performance rarely comes into the buying process for these individuals...
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They may be not that many. I think some buyers send their Jeeves to get the best one in the world, regardless of cost. If a consensus points to not the most expensive one, so what? I agree that some want to brag about the price, but many just want the best by some measure.

Anyway, I can always put the price up once the tightwads have had their chance ;-)
 
Perhaps. I heard on the grapevine that while most of us recoil in confusion at the price of a SAT arm, one customer bought fourteen of them for multiple systems in multiple residences. That's not for bragging, it's because he wants a particular standard of vinyl playback across multiple rooms and he doesn't have to worry too much about the expense.

If it were for bragging, why not just buy ten? Ten would outgun the cheapskates who only buy five.
 
I finally got round to listening to the A & B on the Tracking Angle site switching between them every 30s or so. I thought A made more sense of the music and rhythms leaving hifi language aside. If I understand correctly that’s Richard’s tonearm, I’m unlikely to be a customer this year but I may see how it compares with the RB2000 on my RP10 at some point in the future. Or get along to a show after a 40 year absence.
 
sonddek said:
My original reference for comparison was my Ekos 2, which I still have. It's a great arm, but what it principally lacks compared to the Blackbird, in my experience, is 'punch' and drama. I also think the Blackbird has greater presence, instrument separation, a wider more credible sound stage, more heft and detail, and, above all, more rational timing so that complex beats and phrasing seem to make more sense. In my experience
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I look forward to soundcloud AB of Supatrac Vs Ekos2 on an LP12 with an AT95 in each.
 
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