2. analog
  3. 142703-12450

Vinyl heresy-overhang induced distortion is not that important

I have learned and am of the opinion that the quality of the drive unit, the quality of the tonearm, the quality of the cartridge and phono stage and compatibility/setting of all these things (other than setting overhang) and the setting of proper VTF, VTA, SRA, and azimuth are far more important than worrying about how much arc-induced and overhang- induced (the two are related) distortion one has. I learned this the hard way. I will not go into details but please trust me-I am talking about my new ~15K of turntable components for the deck itself and excluding cartridge and phono stage. I have experimented with simply slamming a cartridge all the way forward in the headshell, placing the cartridge mid-way along the headshell slots, and slammed all the way back, each time re-setting VTF, VTA, SRA, and azimuth. I would defy anyone to pick out the differences. I have 30K of tube separates, a Manley Steelhead, and DeVore O/93's. I submit that any differences in distortion due to sub-optimum arcs and deviations from the two null points and where they are located (those peaks in distortion) are masked several times over by distortion imposed by my tubed gear and my loudspeakers. To believe that your electronics and loudspeakers have less distortion than arc-induced distortion is unrealistic. I have heard startling dynamics, soundstaging, and detail with all three set-ups. It is outright fun to listen to and far preferable to my very good digital rig with all three set-ups. 
My point is that getting perfect alignment is often, not always, like putting lipstick on a pig, I think back on my days on owning a VPI Classic and then a VPI Prime and my having Yip of Mint Protractors fashion custom-made protractors for each of these decks and my many hours of sitting all bent over with eye to jewelers loop staring down horizontal twist among parallax channels and getting overhang on the exact spots of two grids and yet never hearing anything close to the level of sound I get now. Same cartridges, same phono stage, only my turntable/arm combination has changed. I kept thinking the answer had to be in perfect alignment when it was clearly everything else but.
Thoughts? I am sure I will get all kinds of flack. But for those that do tell me I am nuts, try my experiment sometime with a top-tier deck/arm combination and report back. 
128x128fsonicsmith
fsonicsmith's avatar
fsonicsmith OP
334 posts
 
Raul;
I try to read your posts. For a man that has submitted almost 9,000 posts, almost all of them long, you surely have had ample time to learn and practice your English skills. You still write the way Yoda talks. Object-subject-verb. By now you should know that we who speak English place our verb before the object and not after. Your object, subject, verb way of speaking must surely be on purpose.
 I am a 59 year old lawyer who writes and reads for a living. I don't have any more patience for trying to decipher your messages. Further, the content I can glean from your sentence structure is often rambling and fails to follow a  linear path of logic. Most of us write in paragraphs even on the internet. Each paragraph contains sentences that build on the former sentence in a linear train of thought. Yoda talk notwithstanding, you write as if each sentence were a card from a poker deck and you threw them all up in the air and then picked them up randomly-what we in the States call 52 Card Pick-up. I apologize in advance for my ad-hominem remarks but until you try half as hard to communicate as you do to argue, I will ignore your responses. 
Ag insider logo xs@2x
rauliruegas
9,123 posts
 
Dear @fsonicsmith : You can ignore what you want it that's  your privilege but your thread says you are wrong no maters what.

The fact that you can't be aware ( for whatever reasons. ) of the real and true differences in an accurated cartridge/tonearm alignment against one at random speaks for it self and can't say in any way you are rigth.

I respect what you like it and respect you as a human been but at analog/audio/MUSIC levels you are way wrong. Period.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.
wlutke
294 posts
 
Raul may be abrasive, insistent and condescending at times but I have never seen an intentional personal attack from him.
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
324 posts
 
fonicsmith, my wife from Russia is. Talk like Yoda she does. You meant what I understand, she says. Often tell her I do: Do! Or do not! There is no try! Die hard old habits do.

Possible it is sense to make grammar regardless. 

Provided of course there is sense to begin with.

Chuck
fsonicsmith's avatar
fsonicsmith OP
334 posts
 
Yeah, I know it was a bit unkind to bring this up but if Raul is going to post, Yoda-talk aside, make a point in linear fashion and stop throwing darts at four different walls leaving it up to us to draw the lines (lots of metaphors there). Yes, Raul is obviously very knowledgeable. That just makes it more frustrating. If he knew nothing, I would not waste my time responding to him or trying to read his posts. 
Raul, your by-line is "enjoy the Music Not Distortions". So I will make my point again since you seem to ignore it. You can work on reducing distortion but you can not eliminate it. You can work on maximizing the relatively benign distortions (odd order) and minimizing the more harmful even order distortion (and yes, there are many other types of distortion including the type we are discussing), but you CAN NOT eliminate distortion Raul! Your listening room adds distortion. Do you use headphones? Well the transducers add distortion. I don't give a rat's pa-toot if you use solid state or tubed electronics, you are adding distortion. Digital gear-distortion! Better tubed gear has less harmful/unwanted even order distortion than solid state but tubes bring their own set of problems/shortcomings so you gotta pick your poison, no amp is perfect or even close. And Raul, there is distortion recorded into the master tape from the microphones, the recording booth, the recording electronics, and more. And Raul, you're listening to a facsimile of the real thing-the minute you make a recording of anything real and try to play it back, you are working on creating a very rough illusion of reality. In real life, we don't hear in Stereo or multichannel. Human ears/brains hear real sound differently than recorded and reproduced sound. 
And the conclusion to be drawn as I set forth in my OP is that overhang-arc induced vinyl playback distortion is minimal in comparison to so many others.  Let me draw this analogy since I have to go on a dreaded cruise in May that I don't really want to go on-dwelling on perfect cartridge alignment is like scraping barnacles off a cruise ship hoping it will sail faster as a result. I am in favor of getting as close as you can. Doesn't hurt. But like I said, VTA, SRA, VTF, azimuth, and quality of the drive and tonearm are more important. 
More to discover