Schroder sq and the new talea

Atmasphere, your position in these two matters is perfectly fine with me. But I do not have to agree - my position is different and - at least as far as I am concerned for good reason.
Back in the last days in german high school I encountered thoughts similar to the ones you posted above among some of my fellow schoolmates.
In the interim more than 3 decades have passed and my perspective as well as my awareness of things have changed and much to the better.
The great minds of the past were far less selfish then we are today. Most of the great human minds lived in times when authority and religion had an all-present impact on everyones life which none of us today can estimate (well - maybe some of the Taliban get an idea about it ....).
They created the thoughts we are musing about now from a distant and kind of irrational perspective.
I must admit that I feel much more comfortable with the "thoughts" of Canam, Nandric, Asa, Dgarretson to name a few here.
My driving force was and always will be the spirit of humanism ( NOT in the philanthropic sense ... ;-) ... ) which freed the human soul, lead to secularism and ultimately enabled man to live.

Dgarretson, it might be helpful to look at how a record is cut. A worm drive advances the cutter across the record- so to play back, it seems as if a linear tracking device will be needed, although there are some interesting approaches that use radial arm systems, like the Thales arm.

You have the issue of warps and bass- this means, to prevent variation in tracking pressure, that the arm bearings be in the same plane as the vinyl. When the bearings are above the LP surface, the tracking pressure will decrease with bass or warps.

The azimuth must not change during playback either. A gimbaled bearing will work for this and may not be the only means.

A short pivot will not work, as it forces the bearings to be above the LP surface, and makes for audible speed variation as warps are negotiated.

Air bearings don't seem to work either, as it will be seen that the more air pressure is used, the better they work. There are mechanical bearings that have no 'slop' or play in the bearings; play at this point is critical as any (even microscopic) movement is interpreted as a signal by the transducer. You want the motion of the needle to be paramount, without editorial by other parts of the system.

Now it will be seen by some that my comments might appear inflammatory to some. But I am simply outlining what appears to be needed. The digression of opinion is likely based on philosophy rather than anything tangible. That is how wide open the tone arm arena still is.

Though I appreciate the philosophy lesson and agree with Dertonarm that this is a very interesting discussion, I would like to ask a question about these two tonearms.

Forgive my naivete, but how can a unipivot arm with one bearing point maintain azimuth? I've seen magnets used to "stabilize" this rocking motion, but when I move a unipivot over from the armrest to the lead-in groove, the arm wobbles all over the place. Compared to my gimbaled-bearing arm, these seem very unstable. I've heard the Talea sound very good in a friend's system, but I don't understand how azimuth can't be changing constantly. What am I missing?

Atmasphere, I had in mind a short tangential headshell that instead of pivoting vertically to navigate warps, would rise and fall in parallel with the record surface via some sort of servo mechanism, possibly guided by a laser to measure the fluctuating distance between headshell and LP. I wouldn't rule out an air bearing. If the moving mass is kept light and of a design such as Ladegaard/Trans-Fi, the bearing actually works better at lightest feasible pressure. I'm not really trying to push one approach or another. It's more interesting to rank the key variables as a basis for trade-offs in design.

Atmasphere: This is from Wikipedia's description of "The Power of Now" - "he prefers Being as "an open concept," something "it is impossible to form a mental image of" and which "does not reduce the infinite invisible to a finite entity."
It also states "the book avoids intellectual discussion and argument. He tries not merely to present the reader's mind with information, which the mind might find interesting, or might not, which it might agree with, or disagree with".

And it says the author hopes it will "play its part in … the transformation of human consciousness,"

Just from reading this description I can see that this book is a product of modern philosophy - it commits all the same errors. For one, the notion of something beyond reality (as perceived and understood by man's consciousness) with no evidence or argument supporting this notion, which implies that man's mind (reason) is impotent and we should blindly accept this "Being". And what does he mean when he states he wants to "transform consciousness"? Humans are entities of a specific nature - as with all entities the law of identity applies (Aristotle)to us - including our consciousness which operates by specific means (concepts) to understand reality. How is he going to "transform" that?

I consider philosophy to be the most important of subjects - it is the forest whereas the special sciences are the trees. But modern philosophy is in a terrible state. As an antidote, I suggest you read Ayn Rand.