tb1,
ahhh....the JE challenge...many moons ago (in 2007). a good time was had by all. and yes, the Rockport recording was from the linear tracker. there is no practical way to install a pivoted arm on the Rockport. you could remove the linear tracker and rig some sort of base for a pivoted arm i suppose.....but i never tried that.
Mike, I for one thought it was a very good exercise.
Within my system, I could easily hear the potential of your analog front end, in fact it remains one of the very best LP-CDRs I've heard (although not without fault) ... and I've heard plenty.
The problem with that scene was the "challenge" in which people HAD to consider that if you made one mistake that would "absolutely" indicate a win. To me, it was never about winning or losing.
I can safely state that my 16/44 cuts are not as good as my live 'table, and I certainly won't be fooled into thinking yours is either. That said, its certainly "good-enough" to show that a fine needle-drop is capable of copying even the highest quality analog system without "too-much" degradation.
That aspect of the challenge to me ... was the real "winner".
What made the exercise even more sillier was when certain people started to claim that JE drops of the same music was "superior" ... which certainly was not the case within my system (not even close). In fact, not only did JE drops not approach yours, but to this day I don't consider his nearly as good as he thinks, or worse ... should be.
(he recently sent me his 1200 drops, which I shared with others, and when I informed him that they were just "good" but certainly not "great" ... he started crying wolf)
I very much consider the sharing of needle-drops a very educational exercise.
tb1