Azimuth 2020
@cleeds, "Your claim can only be accurate if the pickup arm (or turntable) itself is not "true." That is, the arm cannot be raised or lowered while also remaining absolutely perpendicular to the turntable platter. Or perhaps, like mijostyn, you don't understand what these angles define." Often wrong, but never in doubt. In the first place, the arm perpendicular to the platter? Let me make it easy for you. Make believe that instead of the usual offset, the cartridge had a 90 degree offset from the arm. Of course this would never be, but play along for a moment. Surely then if you raised the arm the azimuth would change. Right? Now consider changing the offset angle a bit towards a reasonable one. Then the arm being raised would change the azimuth, but a bit less and would continue to do so less and less until the cartridge was lined up with the arm, no offset. Can you see it now? |
@fuzztone, You don’t need Puffin. You don’t need a test record. People have been doing it essentially that way for decades. All you need is any old mono record. You flip the wires on one channel of your cartridge. You are then playing the mono record out of phase and listening for the least sound. Just saved you $500 for the test record and Puffin. I used to do it differently, using an early stereo record called Persuasive Percussion*, which was elevator music played on one side at a time. Turned off one side using balance control, and then the other, in each case listening for the track not played and made adjustment. These days I take a good classical recording with a huge sound stage and adjust for the max. No need to buy Fozgometer and record. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBK2nuAKzlA Most important thing in setting azimuth, IMO, is the ease of making fine adjustments to the cartridge. Without that it’s hopeless. Using the VPI dual pivot makes it crazy easy. |
It's interesting when one compares "industrial" cartridges with hand-made ones. Generally speaking the industrial ones like Audio Technica, for example, will usually line up symmetrically very well and generally better than the hand-made ones. With my AT Art-9 I always begin by making a horizontal line of the cartridge and its reflection on a disk to be parallel. That's just the starting point. After that, it's all by ear, and only a minute adjustment is required, so no "terrible cant." As i noted earlier, it's critical that you have an easy method of tiny arm adjustments for azimuth. But that's not very common at all. |
Ii don't think the korfaudio article says very much. For example: "Consequently, any tonearm that does not have azimuth adjustment is severely deficient". I would say that if it doesn't have an EASY adjustment it is defective. In my experience that would include VPI pivoted arms. It can be done with those arms but it is a major pain in the neck. Adding the dual pivot makes the adjustment very easy, and IMO makes that accessory a necessity. Also I find the article incredibly naive in its expectation that a cartridge can be so correctly assembled (in the real world) as to not require an adjustment. Not to mention the possibility of the slightest non-parallelism between the arm board and the platter. |
@cleeds "When I stated that azimuth is a completely different angle than VTA and that adjusting one doesn’t alter the other, I should have added "in a properly designed, manufactured and installed pickup arm." I’ll be more careful with that next time. Thank you!" No, you are still incorrect if you are talking about a pivoted arm with an offset. |
