Is extremely accurate "VTA" adjustment necessary?
dekay, i see, you took my comments as a personal assult on your golden ears. that explains everything. i stand by my position that vta adjustments require such minute adjustments that they require they assistance of very accurate measuring devices. if you are lucky, the tonearm designer incorporates it in your tonearmarm. if i was inclined,how do i prove you personnally are not acurately setting vta by ear? i'll leave that alone. maybe your ears are better than mine. If you are one those mechanically gifted persons who can repeatedly make micro adjustments by eye god bless you. I'm not. nor have i seen anyone else do it. what you are really talking about is rocking the tip of a micro fine stylus back and forth in the groove(raising the arm pitches it forward-lowering the arm pitches it backward) until it reaches a theoretical optimum position. putting aside a discussion of whether that optimum position actually exists,finding it by ear is a hit or miss proposition. Indeed finding it with the aid of tools is also extremely difficult. At least with the aid of tools you can be sure you're actually changeing the height of the arm in a predictable repeatable way. with my sme 4 I have some success with a vernier caliper and other drafting tools. As far as you being nice. we need more people who are not afriad to speak thier mind. |
Gregadd, for VTA I suppose I'm in the adjust by ear camp (but not by eye!). For azimuth, I totally agree with you about using some additional mechanical/electical aid to the process. For setting both VTA and VTF, I've learned from Lloyd Walker's approach, and I find that, with an appropriately designed tonearm that gives one a way to make highly controlled micro-adjustments to the VTA, doing it by ear is the only way to get done well. (Trying to insert shims would be the death of me, though. :-) ) Here is Walker's explanation of the fine tuning process for any who have an interest: http://www.walkeraudio.com/fine_tuning_your_turntable.htm . |
of course any adjustment to your sytem should result in some improvement of sound or mechanical function. what is the purpose vta adjustment? some say it is to duplicate the angle of the cutting head. If you accomplish that you have got it right. other's adjust vta for the "best sound". the latter of course is a subjective determination and by definition must be assessed by ear. However, I contend the actual arm height adjustments must be measured either by using the tonearm manufacturers built in device, a la wheaton triplanar, or some other extremely accurate measuring device. Only then can you be sure of what you are doing and to be able to repeat your efforts. the more sticky issue is duplicating the angle of the original cutting head, assuming one could determine what that is. Of course you would need some fancy protractor to adjust your tonearm to achieve that angle. then of course what do you when your golden ears tell you that some other vta produces "better sound"? I don't know. in a perfect world we would hope that the angle of the original cutting head and the "sweet spot" as determined by our golden ears would be the same. not likley. |
Addressing the issue of "golden ears" here, for a minute, I'd suggest that everyone has "golden ears", and by this I mean that everyone has an idea of what they think it the best sound performance in their own systems. So, in this respect, each person can decide which settings are most pleasing to them. There is no "perfection", so everything is some kind of compromise. Even with the most accurate measuring equipment, there is an accuracy tolerance which will allow error, even if small. Some might say that the ears are flawed as measuring devices. Others would say they are the most meaningful measuring device for audio systems. Regardless of your measurement techniques, getting the audible results that you desire is the end goal. I know that opinions vary greatly on this issue, and there are some who don't want to accept any compromise, while some will easily accept compromise for ease of use. To each his own. If measuring everything precisely with meters and gauges makes your experience more satisfying, then by all means, go to it. If just simple "set it and forget it" adjustments make you feel better, then that's fine too. It is all in what you want as a listener. I think many of the above posts gave excellent information for people who are trying to maximize the performance of their systems. |
