Tracking force affects SRA, so adjustments by ear are important, right?:
Stylus Force Guages - why extreme accuracy?
I am under the impression that, when setting up a phono cartridge, one sets the tracking force to the manufacturers recommended force, and then dial-in the final force by ear. If that is the case, then why are extremely accurate electronic stylus pressure gauges popular when the force is most likely going to change during final adjustment by ear? The Sure SFG-2, costing $25, has worked great for me to ball-park the initial tracking force before final tweaking. So, what benefit is the Winds ALM-01, costing $800, going to provide? Is it important to set the initial force to within a tenth of a gram, when that will change during final tweaking? What is the procedure those of you who own expensive gauges use for final adjustment by ear?
- ...
- 13 posts total
Jfrech - Me too. Sdcampbell - may depend on your particular components, but on the tables and carts I've played with, lighter tends toward a more detailed sound and heavier toward a more romantic presentation. My by ear adjustments have stayed within the manufacturers recomended range but sometimes at the heavy end and other times toward the lighter. |
Sdcampbell, Me three. Both VTF and VTA/SRA can be fine tuned by listening, assuming your rig and ears are interested of course. :-) Lloyd Walker's well-written guidelines are worth reading: http://www.walkeraudio.com/fine_tuning_your_turntable.htm FWIW, we also adjust antiskate, azimuth, impedance and even drive belt tension by ear. VTF changes are just as audible as changes to these other parameters. *** Seasoned, Metralla's explanation is also why I have a .01g scale. When the weather changes and/or I swap cartridges I want to dial in a baseline VTF quickly. On my tonearm I need to set VTF within .05g or so before I can use my fine VTF adjuster. For me a .1g scale would be too coarse. If it read (e.g.) 2.0g, all I'd know is that I'm "somewhere" between 1.95g and 2.05g. With many cartridges a range that wide is so vast you might as well not use a scale at all. My main cartridge has a sweet zone for VTF that is .02g wide at most. Setting it up without a good scale could take hours, instead of minutes. |
We've talked about this a number of times, and it appears that many seasoned audiophiles enjoy having highly accurate gauge in order to re-set the cartridge to a previously determined optimal tracking force. Reasons for this range from swapping cartridges and/or armtubes periodically to making VTA changes in arms that can have their tracking force thrown out inadvertantly in the handling process. Then, there are folks like me (and possibly you) who don't have these needs and rely on fine tuning by ear with a gauge like the Shure just to get us in the ball park to start that process. I follow Lloyd Walker's turntable fine tuning advice for iterative adjustments of VTA and VTF to do my fine tuning. Then I adjust VTA for each different record weight, leaving VTF fixed. (The small VTA adjustments between 150, 180 and 200 gram LPs are very noticeable and absolutely necessary for my ear and my system, but they don't interact enough with VTF to warrant changing the VTF for each of these subsequent VTA teakings.) Sdcambell, my experience has been that for setting up a tonearm/cartridge an iterative dialing process of changing VTF, then changing VTA, then changing VTF, is needed because of the interaction (just as Lloyd recommends). Thereafter, as noted above, I don't bother changing VTF when I adjust VTA between LPs because the difference truly is miniscule to unnoticeable at that point. . |
- 13 posts total