Is elliptical the best stylus profile

bimasta

Aligning the stylus has more to do with the record groove than the stylus. There is one position, and one angle, in the groove where the most information can be extracted, with the most accuracy, regardless of stylus shape

That may be mostly true, but it's not that simple. Consider that with a spherical stylus, there's really no such thing as VTA because the angle is the same regardless of the height of the pickup arm. As you advance to an elliptical stylus, VTA obviously becomes a factor in proper alignment. As you climb the scale to fine-line styli, hyper-elliptical, Shibata styli and other more refined shapes, some have established that SRA is the more critical angle. Of course, as you adjust SRA you also change VTA, but you can only optimize for one! So aligning for SRA may be the most important angle to optimize for some special stylus shapes, while VTA may be what you optimize for others.

To correct my own post above ▲▲▲▲▲▲ it was not quite accurate to say there's no VTA when using a conical stylus, because VTA describes the cantilever more than the stylus. What I should have said is that because of the conical stylus shape, there is no effect when changing the VTA, because it doesn't change the stylus' contact with the groove. (Of course, when you change the VTA by raising or lowering the pickup arm, you are changing the overhang, however slightly.)

Dear @cleeds :                                                                                               "" is there any correlation between stylus shape and a specific alignment method for setting up the cart? In other words, did you ever notice if baerwald or lofgren tends to work better with a given styli? ""

luisfcoimbra was refering to Löfgren A and B alignment and not the overall cartridge set up. 
bimasta goes a step beyond it where your answer was opotune.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.