Regarding VTA

FWIW...In order to get the tonearm parallel on my Philips 212 I had to shim the cartridge(Shure M97xE) and put a 3/16" cork mat on the platter but it didn't sound better than running the shimmed cartridge without any mats. If anything it sounded worse. Plus that 3/16" mat almost uses up the whole spindle. I think I have somewhat critical ears so I'm a little surprised that a level tone arm and cartridge doesn't seem to improve sound quality on my setup. I'm inclined to believe this has more to do with the limitations of my equipment than anything else. Also it's a tedious pursuit to change shims, mats, realign the cartridge every time, etc...

 

Of course that's not true. Everything you can read on this forum nowadays was unknown to me (and the general public) in the first 20 years that I owned turntables.

IMO there are 3 reasons why things were different:

- Turntables were a commodity product. The Grundig table (in a cabinet, with a radio) I got from my granddad had a plastic arm with no adjustment possible at all. I'm not even shure if the stylus was replaceable. My first new table, a Sony PL LX-1 had a replaceable stylus, but the cartridge itself was completely integrated in the arm, and nothing at the table could be set up by the user. Many tables were like that.

- There were no big (online) stores where you could buy a turntable and set it up yourself. You just went to a small (or mid sized) store nearby and they would install the table for you. That's how my father bought his Dual 1225 in 1976. And when I talked about setting it up some 2 years ago, he didn't know how it was done. He was even surprised when I told him it was all explained in the user manual that he kept with the table for 40 years. He only knew about the transport screws.

- There was no information available. The only people knowing how to set up a turntable were trained technicians. And they were trained because it was their job to set up turntables (and other audio equipment). Fretting over one's vinyl experience wasn't a hobby, listening to records was the hobby. Setting up a turntable was a job.

 

My first turntable was a Dual 1209. What they considered a semi-automatic because you could push start and it would start the table raise and move the tone arm to the record and slowly drop it. Or, you had the option to do it all manually. He brought it home for my birthday and connected it to my stereo as a surprise. I never touched anything on it for the whole time I owned it. I think he bought it at Stereo Hi-Fi center when we lived in SoCal. They set it up, whatever that meant at the time, and I just played my vinyl. Life was much simpler back then.

 

Most people starting out with vinyl today still do the same thing, plug and play. Hasn't changed much, except as audiophiles in the modern world, we've found through places like this, there is much more information available than in those simpler times. It's not new information, there's always been great turntables and tonearms that have all the adjustments you could ever want, and people that knew how to use them to get the most from their records. I think it's just a lot easier to talk with those people now, and hear the experience of others, and so it seems like this is all new. But I think @missan is probably right, in his comment up above. Some of the old vintage audiophile tables are engineering marvels, with tonearms rivalling the best available today.

 

what do you mean by phantom image?

 

Center imaging

 

What about the SRA? I don' even know what that is, still...

 

And yet, there's no doubt to me in my experience that moving the tonearm up and down those fractions of an inch DOES change the sound in exactly the ways people have long described -- too high and the high end gets quiet bright, too low and it's dark and muffled, just right and somehow the image focus becomes more stable and precise and the frequency balance more, well, balanced.

I've experienced it plenty, and just last week again. I've been doing some system and set up tweaking and in the end came to feel like my turntable was much brighter than the sound I was getting from any other sources -- CD, DAP, radio, all much warmer in similar ways. The turntable performance was super detailed, but, say, tenor saxophones were all leading edge and harmonics but missing the body and umph on the low register that they have in real life, and recordings that on the bright side, like Ornette Coleman's Croydon concert on Arista/Freedom, or some of the Mercury Living Presence orchestral recordings, were on the edgy side. It was most noticeable in direct comparison to any other source. So in the end, after mucking around with a bunch of things, I lowered the VTA slightly (actually I think the setup had been very slightly tilted up from cartridge parallel maybe in the course of some mucking around with the table I had been doing, so I just moved it to cartridge body parallel), and the tonal balance changed significantly in terms of those issues of body and edginess. I wasn't sure it was an improvement for the better at first, those it did bring the system more in line with the warmer sound I was getting from every other source, but I started to notice longer ambient reverb trails on recordings and that instrument size and location in recordings seems more, I dunno how to put it, properly sized and definitely more stable and focused. Night-and-day difference? I'm not sure. What seems to be a night-and-day difference to one person doesn't seem that big and meaningful sometimes to others. But a substantial, meaningful difference for sure.

 

VTA is the angle of the cantilever relative to the record surface; stylus rake angle is the angle of the stylus relative to the groove. They're obviously related in that the stylus is fixed in the cantilever so if you change the cantilever angle you'll change the stylus angle. But most carts are made with the stylus mounted at whatever angle the manufacturer deemed correct for the cantilever angle at whatever the suspension deflection will be at the recommended tracking force. Usually you'll see a VTA spec in the cart specs of something like 21 degrees or 23 degrees. Whatever that is, you want to start by setting up the cart with that VTA, because that's what the cart was built to operate at.

 

Actually to be perfectly precise, the VTA is the angle made between the disk and a line drawn between the stylus contact point and the attachment of the cantilever from which it rotates. Not a big difference, to be sure (though a larger difference with shorter cantilevers), but one which more nearly emulates the VTA of the cutting stylus--which is the point.

Similarly, the SRA is not the angle of the stylus with the groove but the angle of the stylus rake with the groove. The rake may or may not be parallel to the long line, or axis, of the stylus. With many styli it is clearly not. Spherical styli have no rake, hence no SRA.

Given that the stylus has a rake, and all but spherical styli do, proper setting of the rake is considered the more critical setting, as compared to VTA--though they do, of course, march together. Adjusting the SRA has been compared to aligning a tape head to the recorded waves on the magnetic tape: you want them to be totally parallel with one another. The more strongly defined the rake, the more critical is the SRA setting, and perhaps the more easily found correct one. One reason most Denon 103 cartridges have found favor is that with their spherical styli set-up is less critical.

 

sublime, I understand what you are saying about record thickness varying, but the situation is more complicated than you sate in your post. First, the lacquers that are used with the cutting lathe should all be close to the same thickness thus the SRA/VTA of the cutting lathe should be almost constant. I calculated the change in the SRA for a 1/16" change in the height of the tonearm pivot point referenced to the stylus resting in the record groove and it varies from 0.3 degrees to 0.4 degrees change for a 12" arm to a 9" arm. Thus if one sets the correct SRA for a 150 gram record then the variation in SRA if you play a 180 gram record or a 120 gram record without resetting the SRA would be about +/- 0.15 degrees for a 12" tonearm. I am not going to comment on whether or not that change in SRA is audible or not, since I think it depends on the listener and the system as to how audible that change might be.

The complicated part here is getting the SRA right for any given cartridge in any given TT for the average record. To the best of my knowledge there is no industry standard for what the vertical distance is between the top of a cartridge (the part that fits against the tonearm head shell) and the tip of the stylus. I would not be surprised if that distance varied by 1/4" over the range of cartridges available to the consumer. This is where I think having a VTA adjustment is important. If you can get the SRA right for the average record then all your records will sound better.

 

Thanks, that's what I thought but wasn't sure. Never tried to adjust azimuth yet because I looks good on inspection and I did not think it affected the position of the center image.
Do you happen to remember which way to tilt the stylus to affect the right or left speaker?
For example, if you rotate the stylus to the right of vertical, which way does the image shift?

 

I used a 3" bubble level on the top of the headshell. I don't know how accurate this method is, but it was fun to play around with it and it did make a difference (as well as messing with my antiskate, which sounds better with the weighted line completely removed).

When I used the bubble level, I always kept the bubble within the two lines but turned it slightly to the right (looking at it from the front). The center image seemed to move a bit more into the center from the left.

Honestly, I have a difficult time with my center image, and I believe it is the room: it is an L-shaped room with the left speaker being about 2.5' from the back and side wall and the right speaker being about 2.5' from the back wall yet open on the side. Speaker toe-in experiments have helped, but the center image still shifts to the left for me. Messing with the azimuth appeared to help.

If adjusting azimuth technically has no effect on center imaging, then it may be something else I am doing. For what it is worth, I used Joni Mitchell's "Help Me" track because I believe her voice is dead center in the mix.

 

Thanks, I am willing to start adjusting azimuth but wanted to know which direction I was heading because I will have to use shims and re-align the cartridge because my arm does not have azimuth adjustment.
My image shifts to the left too and I need balance control to center it but it is different for turntable and digital. I want to align my turntable with the digital source so I don't have to keep adjusting the balance.

 

I don't think you will adjust channel balance by adjusting azimuth. Azimuth should be set just for minimum cross-talk. With your ART-9 I'm guessing that if the front horizontal line of the cartridge is parallel to its reflection on the disk you will be very close if not at the optimum. Checking the verticality of the stylus from the front with a loupe should verify, though I know that there are those who swear by instruments that measure. It is quite common for a vinyl set up to be just out of balance and is due to a tiny balance issue in cartridge or phono pre. You can check your pre by exchanging the channels.

I gather that you are looking to shim under the cartridge. Many people think that the preferred way is to shim under the arm base. That way you don't have to realign with each small change.

 

but there are different cutting heads that can all be aligned differently and we have know way to know what that alignment was at the time a give lacquer was cut. combined with thickness, let's say it could result in a +/- .5 degree difference in the way it is cut. plus many records are not perfectly flat. so as they play, the SRA will be changing. if minute adjustments in this were so audible, even slight warps would be intolerable. Now, it may come down tot he arm or cartridge. Or if you are talking about vta adjustments of more than 5 mm or whatnot. but my experience with various steups is that the difference is pretty small. it also could be that i am lazy and satisfied with the sound of my tt without too much dinkering about.

 

I don't think he was taking about "us" as in the consumers, but "us" as a whole. I HIGHLY doubt that today's turntable designers know more than the engineers at Garrard and Thorens of the 1950's. A modern speaker designer that would out do Peter Walker or Paul Klipsch? Doubtful. We've certainly advanced in some areas (tonearms I'd say, probably due to better materials and tighter tolerances more than know how) , but I don't believe turntable design is one of those areas.

 

As you said before "YMMV". I do not think most facilities routine change out cutting heads and it is my understanding the industry standard for the cutting heads is the 92 degrees. You are absolutely right about warped records.

 

Jtycho, I have no idea what your background or education is, but as a retired physicist who worked for over a decade as more of a material scientist than a physicist, you cannot be more wrong about how much better today's TT's. cartridges, tonearms and yes even speakers are than they were back in the heyday or Garrard and Thorens. The advances in material science has produced so many new high performance materials that have that have superior mechanical properties, techniques such as 3D printing and SLM (selective laser melting) make designs possible that could not be made 50 years ago. FEA (finite element analysis) makes designs so much more rigorous than standard ME principles that were used 50 years ago. Is it cool to have a vintage system? Yes, of course, it is, it brings back fond memories. But for top notch sound use the stuff that has modern materials and engineering.

 

Well my education is in music and I own a small sandwich shop, so I'm most unqualified. As we both said, yes we've absolutely seen advancements in materials. Really though it doesn't take any education at all to hear that a 50 year old Garrard 301 (running to spec), a 35 year old Micro Seiki, 60 year old Quad's or 80 year old Siemen Bionor horns will (subjectively of course!) run circles around the vast majority of "more sophisticated" modern gear.

 

ok

 

That stuff was state of the art when manufactured. The average music listener had nothing even close to that level. The really excellent stuff still sounds good, but its not state of the art now. A 60 year old Quad isnt going to win a battle with a new Soundlab model, or one of the top line Martin Logans. As good as the Micro Seiki was for its time, don't run it up against one of todays super tables. Those Siemen horns were for theater use, they have been adapted for home use today, but they are so rare you have a better chance of seeing Bigfoot than seeing a working set. Not sure they are going to win a battle with state of the art Horns built today.

That being said, I doubt there are going to be many folks on this forum that can afford the stuff I listed, hell, I couldn't pay the sales tax on some of it. But, its no different from 50-60 years ago. The average music lover thought the quads were a space heater.

 

It would be slightly unfair to pin the Micro Seiki or Quads against modern state of the art considering the ever escalating prices of top manufactures. Vintage state of the art was never geared towards the uber-wealthy, unlike today's million dollar speakers. Within the realm of relatively sane prices, the pieces I mentioned absolutely do hold their own. Ever hear a Neumann DST cartridge? There may be NO current cartridge that competes. MM cartridges of the 70s and 80s? Better than today's.

I've owned wonderful, new $15,000 speakers that Quad ESL's wipe the floor with, I own a $25,000 Kuzma that's easily matched by a Garrard 301 and SME 3012R, and I've heard 50 year old valve amps that will run neck and neck with Lamm amps. I can't help but to conclude that we actually haven't come all that far.

 

How about, the stuff that I can afford now is a hell of a lot better than the stuff I could afford 30-40 years ago.

 

I'm with you on that! Sorry OP, back to your subject...