Is extremely accurate "VTA" adjustment necessary?

Gregad,

as long as you dont move the bdoy of the cartridge, pivot to stylus distance is a constant

I worded my post very carefully. If you read it again you'll note I said the stylus-to-arm mount distance would change. Stylus-to-pivot is fixed, as you say, unless the armtube is made of rubber or the cartridge moves in the headshell.

does'nt this mean you also changed the distance when you put on records of different thicknes? by re leveling the arm you have brought it back into alignment.

Point covered, re-read my 6th paragraph.

We're not disagreeing, just awkward stuff to describe in words rather than pictures.

Twl,
Totally agree. Of course obsessing about minute details is the point of this thread, so I'm right at home! ;-)

I have a recent experience that causes me to reopen this thread. I got a new Shindo Labs mat to replace my cork mat on the Garrard 501. Although these mats are both 3 mm. thick. The mat makes an incredible change in sound. As one of these changes is greater body to the sound but diminished sparkle in the top end. I have spent three hours so far adjusting the vta, asmuth, anti-skate, and even dampening on the Schroeder Reference. All of these have proven quite important to what I am hearing and the new mat clearly has superior bass and is quieter. I think I have found the correct asmuth by way of the equal transparency of both channels. Today, I will try the tracking weight and vta some more. The overhang is right on as is the anti-skate.

Anyone who suggests that setting up a tt is easy is crazy.

The high frequency waveform inscribed on an LP can cycle up to fifty thousand times in each second. The cutterhead can only travel in one path. It may sound ok to not have perfect VTA, and I am sure that many will settle for this, but it is not coming closest to replicating the original signal, and it certainly is not extracting the maximum information from the groove walls. As far as other factors swamping the effects of proper VTA, I am not convinced. Distortions are generally additive, one not masking the others, warped records excepted, as they audibly change vta as well as having varied effects on the low frequency resonance of the arm/cartridge combination.

Viridian, I agree entirely. No one who has ever heard the magic of the right VTA would ever understate its impact.

I think those who've heard "the magic of right VTA", which obviously includes me, must concede that achieving it regularly requires a degree of effort and/or record-keeping that some just find too bothersome.

We don't mind doing it. Our ears seem to demand it, so we chose our tonearm with easy, accurate, repeatable and on-the-fly height adjustment. That was priority #1. No arm without that feature even made the shopping list, which of course kept the list both short and costly!

Yellow stickies with best arm heights are on each LP, so every play after the first is literally a two second adjustment. I dial in arm height while my Teres platter is spinning up to speed, so it takes no useful time at all.

Last night we spun the Classic 45rpm reissue of the Dorati/Firebird for the first time in many months. I wasn't recording arm heights when last we played it, so I guessed a setting typical for other 200g/45rpm Classic reissues. Gotta start somewhere.

The first half of side 1 was ghastly. Shrill to the point of pain. We'd never played this record with the TriPlanar/ZYX, but it never sounded this bad with the OL Silver/Shelter. WTF?

Throwing preconceived notions aside I started dialing the arm down, 1/4 turn at a time (that's a huge adjustment BTW). I finally got things tamed a full revolution (0.7mm) lower than normal for this type of record. Once my ears recovered from cowering behind the sofa I was able to dial it in to the usual sweet spot. Clearly Mr. Grundman & Co. were confused when they cut that lacquer. It's a fabulous record but the cutting head was set far lower than normal.