GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Analog Playback
In the Thread: Tonearm Alignment Method

Post Subject: It is just a theory.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 8/8/2013

Well, I guess the Tchaikovsky Pathetique symphony with its slow gloomy decay will be out of picture to play on TT with Stevenson's alignment….
Well, as I said I would argue any alignment theory that relates alignment with music type. So naturally I disagree with the idea above that in classical music the demanding passages are at the end of the record and therefore the arm need to be aligned differently. On surface it makes sense but let look in the subject a slightly deeper.

If your cartridge/arms are aligned properly by any methodology then you shall not hear too much distortion in the demanding passages. It is not that if your arm was set by Baerwald then during the faunal blow of the Mahler 6 your needle shall jump out of groove. If the needle is toss or if you have too heavy distortion then you have problems way more severe than the differences between the alignment types. You might have very MINOR sonic difference between the alignment types but the true difference you will see only after you inspect your cartridge after let say 500 hour of use under a microscope. You will have a typical right leaf wearing coming from anti-scatting and you will have some very minor side-asymmetrical wearing coming from alignment.

Now the biggest question I ask myself what I think about those things: which part of record I play more beginning or end. With my reference arm I play records usually to the end but with my dally arm I frequently if I do not like record then I do not play it more than half. So, with my reference arm I alight two null points and care about the whole records surface. However, my dally arm I alight only for null point beginning of record. The same with anti-scatting: on my ref arms I use 2/3 of record surface point but with the the dally arm I use a good inch or two earlier.

I do not feel comfortable to comment about sound and alignment types. With proper alignment you shall not be bothered by differences, even though they do exists. I have seen cartridges that might not be aligned in second point and I have seen those that require wrong arm mount to alight them properly. I do feel that ambiguity between the cartridge and frequent bad user alignment is far more severe problem then the difference between the alignment types.

You might have a perfect alignment and then you accidently punish the lowered needle across records. We unfortunately all did it. So my question: how much your cantilever get bent during this disaster and do you re-align your cartridge after the incident?

The caT

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