Is extremely accurate "VTA" adjustment necessary?

Thanks again to everyone for their responses and back to the original topic of discussion. I think many of the posts have been very informative and really helped a lot in answering the question of importance of micro adjustments of vta/sra. Sorry for not responding for quite a while. Here’s a collection of answers to various posts that occurred during my absence (dating back to 10/8/04)

Doug – Thanks for you very much for your responses and thanks for going back to the article and for taking a fresh and more neutral look at the article. Thanks for trying to answer my earlier question on why don't we hear the variation in VTA as the LP rotates, since this variation is much bigger than changing the arm height by .005'. I agree that it is very difficult to find a satisfactory answer to this question, in particular since you and many others do have systems that are able to resolve very small differences in vta adjustments via arm height. I am quite convinced that it is the actual minor change in the vta or sra angle that causes the audible differences, but I agree that the answer in the article seems not very convincing either. Your observations are no explainable by mechanical rigidity arguments, since changes in the sound that are due to the arm height change would not be as repeatable as they are if mechanical resonance behavior would be the answer. Also the construction of the TriPlanar arm seems to address the mechanical stability question already.

Thomas – I agree that azimuth is an issue that needs to be addressed in fine-tuning much more than vta. In particular since it is not even a question on which angle to choose. Too bad most companies choose to only hand you a mirror. I think there’s probably more people out there arguing and finding solutions to vta that finding good approaches to azimuth adjustments. Maybe a good time to start a new thread about azimuth…

Eldartford – I did not quite understand you comment on measuring the different critical parameters by reversing wires in one channel. Would you mind elaborating on that some more or eventually giving references?

Decay and Greggadd – Thanks for you discussion of measurement vs. adjustment by ear. In my opinion objective and accurate measurements seem almost not possible in this case. The missing knowledge of the correct cutting angle for each record as well as the inability to measure angles to an accuracy of less than a tenth of a degree seems to make accurate measurements impossible. Remember that I was talking about changes in arm height on the order or less than 1/10mm. Although measurements might give a good starting point but the ultimate measurement in this case seems to be the ear. Also one more question that you might be able to help me out: If one tries to adjust for a 2 degree variation in cutting angle, would that not correspond to a change in arm height by about 6mm? These are huge changes compared to the ones we were talking about earlier.

Again thanks to everyone for his or her answers.

Best wishes,

Rene

Rene,

I was going to post a link to Romy's site, because I find it quite amusing! But, there are some here who he pissed off big time. But at least we know he has a system! His rack description is a classic:

This would pretty much give an idea where is my TT lives. The stand was collaboration with Rix-Rax and was a custom solution to accommodate 14 components. The stand’s frame is metal, hollow and filled with a mix of sand and led shots, toped with heavy like hell, granite bridges. The turntable and the granite shelf are decoupled by a Vibraplane. The rack is as “dead” as it should be. To test is very simple: stop the platter lover a cartridge to the mat, turn the volume all the way up, and begin to jump in the room like a wounded in ass antelope. With .5mV cartridge output, 28dB gain in step-up, 55 db gain on preamp, 11db gain in preamp, 12 dB gain in power amp, with a LF-capable 109-sensitive speakers the woofers should not fly away… Also, in the left bottom corner you may see my beautiful Koshka who has hundreds light-years of space between Her ears…

And, to top it all off, I'm glad you actually did get something out of this thread!

Joe

Ha! I guess when you've been banned from about everyone site you're joined, the ultimate solution is to start your own..... Wish he would take as much time to describe what he likes instead of what he doesn't like. Romy - Mr. Half-Empty, himself.

Good thing he doesn't know what's in my system cause all my "brands" have gotten a pass! ;-)

It's not a bad site at all. Evidently he's made a big effort to find out what suits his taste. He also found a great niche photographing wedding$, which allows him all that spare cash. I'm wondering what would happen if he'd insert all Poiema cabling in his system...

I'm wondering what it would be like to replace my MSE Gen II's with Poiema, but there's that pesky cash issue.....