Table/Cart Set Up - By Ear or Test Record?

Maybe this is rehashing old verbage, but it is becoming clear here that the experienced people use the tools for the initial set-up and then tweak or trim things in by ear. Listening is the final step of the process. Part of the reason why is simply the tolerances and accuracy of the tools we use. e.g. the stylus force gage. Unless your stylus force gage is calibrated and traceable back to the National Bureau of Standards, don't count on accuracy better than +/-10-15%. So if you are setting your VTF to 1.5 grams, the actual could range from 1.35-1.65 grams. The same with the protractors if you think about the accuracy of the printing on them as well as the accuracy of adjusting overhang and VTA by eye.

Do you not think that the cartridge designers know that the pivoting tonearm has only two tangency points? Look at the stylus designs. The have curved faces to allow for the changing angle through the arc of the pivot. I don't see a pivoting tonearm as a compromise.

That's because you're misinterpreting tracking angle distortion.

Tracking angle distortion does not result from the interface of ONE stylus face with ONE groove wall. It results when the TWO contact edges of a playback stylus hit the opposing groovewalls at DIFFERENT times then the two contact edges of the original cutting stylus... ie, when they're out of synch.

Imagine an LP groove with an identical sound cut onto both walls (a perfectly centered image on a stereo LP or any mono LP). The two groovewalls are mirror images of each other, right?

Now imagine playing that groove with a line contact or other modern stylus. If this stylus is not angled exactly the same as the (even sharper) cutting stylus, one contact edge will encounter the (supposedly identical) sound before the other contact edge. This puts the two channels out of phase and that muddies the sound. TA-DA!... tracking angle distortion.

A conical (aka, spherical) stylus will be less distorting (in this respect) than the radical, modern styli. Modern contact radii are much smaller and thus emphasize any errors in timing between the two groovewalls. This is why many mono catridges are fitted with conical styli. The reduction in tracking angle distortion somewhat compensates for the loss of HF extension that's inherent in styli with larger contact radii.

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Peter - thanks for checking... I think! lol. FWIW, I never move my arm anywhere near 2mm. My entire record collection falls in a range of a couple rotations of the VTA tower dial. Most fall in a much tighter range than that.


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Tonywinsc, I think your last post summarized it well. Trust tools to do the limited things they can do. Train your ears to do the fine tuning.

Listening is not only the final step of the process, it's the purpose for which we go through the process at all.

When do you listen to music, or do you test by ear with music. When I test by ear, I use test frequencies. This test by ear conversation in regard to TT's sounds good but it won't fly. There's too much subjective excrement flying around.

By rights you can use an oscilloscope to dial in all of the varibles of your turntable such as platter speed, tonearm and cartridge set up for complete piece of mind. But if you can't trust your own ears, what can you trust?

"But if you can't trust your ears, what can you trust"?

How do you adjust all the parameters of a TT and listen at the same time? Let's take the easiest adjustment, which isn't too easy on my TT bacause of the arm; but tracking force for example. Do you try it at 1 gram, sit down and listen, then 1.5, followed by 2 grams, and what are you listening to; what kind of music? Which music sounds best at what tracking force? What do the specs that came with the cartridge call for? As you stated, you can't even trust the accuracy of most gauges, so you're really using "Kentucky windage" at best, according to you; but you stop when and where it sounds best. I must admit, all of that "sounds" real good.