Do You Have a Favorite Disk to Set VTA/SRA?

During the cutting process, the cutting needle lasts about 10 hours and then must be replaced. A worn needle cuts a noisy groove. Many people don't know this but if the cutter needle is set up right, the resulting lacquer cut is so quiet that no matter how quiet your playback electronics are, they define the noise floor.

As a result the cutter head must be removed and the needle replaced fairly frequently. Then it has to be reinstalled, aligned and then one goes through the process of getting it to cut correctly. This is the case regardless of the fact that the settings of the cutter head were previously recorded.

The issue is that every cutting stylus is slightly different. As a result, the 92 degree cutting angle can be regarded as an average and not an absolute as the mastering engineer is looking to get the machine to cut properly and is not aiming for 92 degrees. This means that every LP is cut at a slightly different angle. IOW its not just the thickness of the LP that is a variable. Even if they were all the same thickness to get ideal playback the VTA/SRA would have to be adjusted.

Hence the utility of the VTA tower pioneered by Triplanar. There are several arms now that use a similar design; if you really want to hear everything on the LP such adjust-ability is really handy!

I don't generally change the VTA once I have it in the right area (IOW, proper tonality, no breakup). The arm/cartridge resonance is far more important IMO; once that is right and you have otherwise proper setup, the SRA is not going to be particularly critical. If you set up for 92 degrees you will have a good average.

The really important thing here is that there are cartridges where the stylus is installed improperly in the cantilever; if this is the case you will never get the cartridge to work correctly as it is defective. So actually working to get the 92 degree angle is a good idea even if the LPs themselves are not cut exactly at that angle.

The amazing thing about the LP is how well they work, especially since so many aspects about them are compromises. Overhang is a good example, and SRA is another.