To antiskate or not antiskate

@iseland 

Sorry, I did not pick up that your preferred Claraudio arm was a tangential tracker, especially when the topic is about anti-skating!

In Australia, the TT3 arm alone is about the price of a complete Holbo turntable and integrated tangential tone arm!

The Holbo arm is not even mechanically coupled - it rides on a 10-micron layer of low-pressure air which virtually eliminates friction and should reduce the transmission of vibrations in the same way a double glazed window reduces noise.

The 5-kg platter also rides on air.  Reviews suggest this is a reference-level turntable selling for a fraction of the price of its competitors!  

The Holbo sounds like a reincarnation of the late lamented Maple Knoll turntables once made in the US.

But as to the issue of vibration, isn’t it possible for an air bearing to vibrate due to any pulsatile quality of the air supply? Some air bearings employ various strategies to counter act that issue, or so I thought. (Never owned an air bearing TT or tonearm.)

PS. I can’t understand why the idea to set AS using a blank (groove less) LP will not die the natural death it deserves. The reason it might “work” or appear to do so is in my opinion because setting AS is such an inexact science to begin with. 

With respect to the Wally Skater, my personal experience is quite limited and not entirely satisfactory.  Recently upon the acquisition of AnalogMagik software I have corrected the antiskate setting on a turntable that I was informed had been adjusted using a Wally Skater.  There is no way to know if it had been done correctly or not.  As lewm has correctly stated, however, setting AS is anything but an exact science.  It can literally vary from record to record, or from the inside to the outside of the same record.  Contrary to suggestions to the contrary this is an extremely difficult subject, there are no easy answers, Wally Skater or otherwise.

@billstevenson  yes skating forces are not constant—they vary with groove modulation, stylus geometry, tracking force, and record eccentricity—thus, anti-skating compensation represents an averaged corrective force intended to minimize the net lateral load over the duration of playback.  Without “any” anti- skate, the magnitude of the error is enhanced.