Antiskating .... The last analog secret

I haven't used Antiskating on any of the tonearms that I've used for the past 20 years. These include Triplanar VII, Moerch DP-6, VPI JMW-10, AQ PT-6 and Sumiko FT-4. I tried each of these arms with all levels of antiskating and preferred the sound with no antiskating. (VPI didn't have A/S so technically I didn't try it with A/S). In all cases, the A/S adds an annoying brightness and is just not as coherent and musical as the arm sounds without the A/S.

I don't know whether the lack of A/S may have affected my cartridges' tracking ability on loud passages. Perhaps it did, I don't know. But IF it did, that is a fair price to pay for the better sound quality during the 99.9% of the record playing time where tracking ability was not critical.

Dave

All this talk of setting A/S with a test record makes sense if all you do is play test records. In the real world, the proper test is what setup sounds better on records with music, and by that measure I have found that no A/S sounds best. Keep in mind that if you use A/S, it is operating at all times, not just on those loud climaxes that resemble the torture track on your test record. And, in my experience, I can always hear when the A/S is engaged, and that isn't worth the theoretical advantage of being able to track the torture track more cleanly. I say "theoretical" because I don't have any tracking problems when I play records without A/S.

I recall what Ed Villchur, the designer of the AR table, said back in the 1960's when he was asked why his arm didn't have any A/S. He said it wasn't necessary; all you had to do was set the tracking force about 10% higher and you would get the same tracking benefit as A/S.

Dave