Listen to Doug and Raul, and while you're at it, learn to play a musical instrument or to sing. This will help you to trust the most important component in your hi-fi system - the "ear-brain"
I spend more time in my conversations with customers on this topic of musical appreciation and how you approach setting up your system.
Most mainstream dealers/manufacturers would pose the following question to you: "who are you going to trust - the reviewers (and the specs) or your lying ears?".
I vote for training your "lying ears".
Take some basic music lessons. For the price of an interconnect, you can buy a keyboard or an imported guitar. A harmonica is even cheaper.
This will open up entire new worlds of musical enjoyment as you learn to understand how musical patterns unfold.
This azimuth thread is a prime example of my experiences of demonstrating azimuth setting to customers.
I'll demonstrate the process using a mono Ella Fitzgerald record. One particular cut I use is her version of "I Love Paris".
When everything is dialed in right, the distortion drops away, the bandwidth increases, AND her body takes on a robust, 3-D image - instead of sounding like an isolated cardboard cutout in space.
There's a sudden physicality in the performance when everything snaps into focus.
Some folks I demonstrate this to get it immediately.
Others (poor souls), notice an increase in surface noise, and think that the setting is off.
Guess what? You're picking up the noise from both groove walls, and yes ... a correct azimuth setting is ultimately about getting the stylus aligned orthogonally with the record.
The technical treatment of azimuth by Victor Khomenko is absolutely correct, and I even link to one of his Vinyl Asylum threads in the Tri-Planar section of my forum, but I'm having doubts about leaving that link in place.
Drawing attention to the theory runs the risk of taking people's focus away from what they're trying to accomplish. It serves those of us who are technically inclined, but most people begin to trust themselves and their ears less.
In your hi-fi travels, if you listen with musical values, you'll be a happy boy.
If you listen like an audiophile, you're doomed to misery.
You get to choose.
Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier