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Using Test LP - curious observations

I've been tremendously enjoying my Lyra Delos with the Classic for about 1.5 yrs now, and just recently remembered I had the Hi-Fi News Analogue Test LP and got the urge to test my setup.
Here are some of my observations that came as a surprise to me:
1) Anti-skate (Bands 6,7,8,9 on side one) - the cartridge "passed" the test on Band 6 without any anti-skate, but there was audible buzzing coming from the right channel at higher amplitudes. Applying anti-skate made NO difference whatsoever to the results, whether on setting 1, 2 or 3 (most anti-skate). I prefer the sound without anti-skate so this only seemed to confirm that applying anti-skate arguably does nothing to improve the sound and likely makes it worse. It also seems to shed some light on why Harry doesn't like anti-skate.
2) Azimuth (Band 5 on side two) - My preamp has a mono switch so this seemed pretty straightforward. According to the instructions, there should be minimal (if any) mono output if the cartridge was aligned perfectly. Well, there was certainly some output, which immediately worried me, but what really left me scratching my head was the fact that no adjustment appeared to correct it, or make a significant difference. I use the Soundsmith's Counter Intuitive to fine-adjust VTF and azimuth, and after about 2 hours of a wide range of adjustments in azimuth through the CI, it was virtually impossible to determine the optimal azimuth setting, i.e., the output seemed consistently the same regardless of adjustments.

Please free to comment, share your experiences or explain my curious results. Or are they not curious?
actusreus

Showing 2 responses by actusreus

actusreus OP
733 posts
 
Great feedback! I wholeheartedly agree with Doug and others who rely on actual music and their ears to set up their analog fronts. I guess, in the perfect world it'd be great to have your setup confirmed by objective tests, just like an amp or speaker getting a rave review in Stereophile and then measures perfectly on Atkinson's test bench, but we don't live a perfect world, do we?
As a comment to Nanbil's post, I don't quite understand how a better phono preamp should fix anti-skating issues. Skating is essentially a problem affecting the stylus' interaction with the record surface/grooves, not sound transmission. As an analogy, if your cartridge is misaligned, or wired out of phase, a better amp or a preamp should not fix the problem; in fact, it should actually make the errors more pronounced. A better preamp should only amplify the signal, not modify it.
Another thought on anti-skate is that reading the posts of those who use anti-skate, I should not prefer the sound without it, but I actually do. Music sounds more open and has more air to my ears than with any anti-skate applied. A friend of mine with a much more sophisticated equipment in his system also prefers his Classic without anti-skate. If it's such an objectively verifiable problem, why do some (and that's Harry Weisfeld included) don't hear any improvement with anti-skate applied? Does it mean our ears are not as sophisticated as others' who do?
actusreus OP
733 posts
 
Doug,
You're right on the money, as usual. That's precisely what I would describe: apparent benefit only to be ultimately offset by detriment to the overall sound. To answer my own question regarding why I might prefer the sound without anti-skate, I'd like to quote a post by Stringreen from a thread discussing anti-skate that I think succinctly summarized the issue:

"The force that one corrects with anti-skate is constantly changing with distance the cartridge is from the spindle, the angle of the cartridge relative to the groove, the loudness of that particular area of the record, the lightly or heavily scoring of that particular area of the record, and I'm sure other factors as well. There are those that also say that anti-skate mechanisms themselves can adversly affect tonearm performance, and that they should be disabled."

Amen.
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