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RE: Are you sick to death of hearing about "alignment null points" and "pivot to spindle distance"?

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In Reply to: RE: Are you sick to death of hearing about "alignment null points" and "pivot to spindle distance"? posted by flood2 on February 09, 2017 at 14:44:22

Thanks, that helps. I read additional pieces about linear trackers vs. conventional tonearms and there seems to be pros and cons to both, though clearly the conventional arm is preferred by most. It's apparently much more difficult and time consuming to set up a linear tracker.

I'm wondering though, if this new table, is a solution in search of a problem. The conventional arms today are so excellent, do we really need another alternative to achieve audio bliss? Of course, refinements in any field are inevitable and desirable but I guess the question will always remain how far up the ladder one has to climb to reach their personal audio Valhalla. As for me, I already out of breath!

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RE: Are you sick to death of hearing about "alignment null points" and "pivot to spindle distance"? - flood2 23:24:09 02/09/17 (1)
I would say that it is solving an "issue" (not really a problem) with Linear Trackers, by providing the advantages of the pivoted arm, giving you greater flexibility over your choice of cartridge and combining that with the theoretical advantage of the LT arm in terms of the theoretical elimination of tracking error.

Your question over whether there is any advantage over a conventional pivoted arm is an interesting one. The answer I believe is "Only if you get it right!". Otherwise you just get a "fixed" tracking error over the whole record and you may well end up with greater tracking distortion on the inner grooves compared to a pivoted arm.

Now the next part regarding whether the error we get with the arms today are in fact audible, again I would answer "Only if you get it right!".

The simple version is - yes you DO want to fuss over the alignment IF you want to have an inaudible level of distortion on the innermost grooves and you want to be able to play any record and not instantly know which part of the record is being played. It is possible to achieve that. However, I couldn't hand on heart say I have set the EXACT offset angle and overhang. All I can say is that I can achieve it with a sufficiently small error that I can't hear obvious tracking related distortion.

All the obsessing and arguing we do over "best geometry" is really more about satisfying our desire to ensure that we did the best job possible.

So the short answer is, I don't really think you will get any benefit from that new arm except the admiration of other enthusiasts.
My ELP has essentially perfect tracking and yet I don't hear the reduction in tracking distortion compared to my pivoted arm at all.

OK Stop reading now if you aren't interested in what I think the smallest realistic errors really are in setting the arm geometry.

Given what I said before about skewed cantilevers and the difficulty in aligning a relatively short cantilever (say 8mm), which is on a different plane, to the grid and you soon realise that it is VERY challenging to achieve perfection (as in "zero" error). I'm sure you will get people on this forum that will insist that they have no difficulty in aligning the cantilever "perfectly". I would challenge them to PROVE that they have achieved an error of "zero" (which is impossible) and ask them to clearly identify all the sources of error. I have access to extremely high precision and accurate ( <10um uncertainty) traceable equipment to minimise those errors, but based on my studies on repeatibiltiy, I wouldn't be able to say I do better than �0.1mm for overhang and probably no better than �0.35� for offset. This error gives a maximum deviation off the centreline of 0.05mm for an 8mm cantilever. Who here believes they can see this error by eye? Anyone doing this by eye on an arc protractor assuming that there arm has ZERO error in the mounting position is deluding themselves if they reckon they can achieve this level of accuracy. However, does it matter? Actually NO! You can tolerate surprisingly large errors except at the innermost grooves. Arguing over "best geometry" is pointless from a practical point of view as most people can't achieve anything close to the claimed theoretical tracking distortion anyway without accurate tools and high magnification (despite what they may believe!).

Regards Anthony

"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
- RE: Are you sick to death of hearing about "alignment null points" and "pivot to spindle distance"? - ecl876 03:40:08 02/10/17 (0)
  Good explanation. Appreciate your honesty and insight.

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