What is you tonearm’s Maximum Distortion?


I’ve been playing around with different cartridge mounting, as a Grace arm the plinth of my Lenco cannot be mounted at the recommended pivot-to-spindle distance of 222mm (closest it can get is 225mm).


My best figures in theory seem to be:
Max. Tracking Error: 3.51 degrees
Max. Distortion: 1.21 %
Average RMS Distortion: 0.73 %

This is with: P-t-s 225mm; overhang 11mm; offset angle 19 degrees.

What are your figures for your setup?

fusian

Right now I am using the HiFi news test LP protractor, just because it is handy. Does anyone know what alignment it is?

And I am mostly curious what the figures are for the tonearms of folks like you? Just because this is a new area of exploration for me and it might help me get a better overall concept of what is going on and how important the numbers are.

My ears are pretty good (professional orchestral musician who is a bit obsessed with tuning perfect intervals, including overtones). But my listening room has never been really ‘tuned’.

Does anyone have their tonearms’ figures, re: max. distortion % and max. error degrees?

Both you and Raul referenced the same algorithm on Vinyl Engine.  I see where it has a readout for distortion once you plug in the known values for any particular tonearm, but I have no idea how it comes up with distortion %, mathematically.  I guess it uses formulae first promulgated by the gods of alignment, Lofgren and Baerwald. Anyway, sorry I cannot respond to your actual question. My feeling is that distortion has to be measured, not predicted based on angular errors,

Good point, lewm. I will reword my question:

Does anyone have the theoretical figures for your tonearms’ maximum distortion % and maximum tracking error degrees, based on the vinylengine Overhang Shift Calculator?