Is extremely accurate "VTA" adjustment necessary?

for you young whippersnappers. you may look up back issues of the audio critic by peter acel. He broke the story on vta. He gives a detailed analysis of vta, overhang and and antiskating.
while i think vta is important, i never took anyone seriously who cliamed to do it by ear or by eye. check michael fremers colum in stereophile for the necessary tools.

first hand experience? try thirty years as an audiophile. I have heard or owned most of the major turntable, tonearm, cartridge combinations. i currently own a vpi aries 2,sme 4 and benz glider. I have old sota star waiting as a back up.
As far as Michael Fremer is concerned, while I am a fan of his, it is a fact that he reviewed a set of tools that take the guess work out cartridge tonearm alignment. A stylus is so small that even the smallest movement has an effect. anyone claiming to be able to get those adjustments right by eye strains crdebility!

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.

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.

ok, here's what you want with respect to vta. the stylus manufacturer has decided stylus stip shape. maybe spherical, eliptical, micro line,etc. your goal is to have that stylus tip rest in the grove exactly as the manufacutrer intended. thus you will achieve maximum contact of the stylus as was intended. thus you need to have the cartridge aligned perfectly in all planes. Also correct antiskating force is essential.
If vta is off it will cause the tip to tilt forward or backward giving less than optimum contact. Take a good record get the vta right. tonearm parrallel to the record surface while stylus is resting in the grove with correct tracking force and anti skating force. then you need only measure the width of each record and adjust tonearm height for the difference. don't measure the thickness from the lip of the record but from the middle part of the record.

ok then i concede that the cutting angle varies form lp to lp with no real way to tell. so let's suppose using my method you landed at 22 degrees as optimum. that would leave you with a +/-2 degrees window for any given record.
Let us be generous and say by the golden ear method you are using a one minute passage of music to find the vta.
I could be mean, but I will not. Since you don't want to measure, I assume you have a contioulsy variable method of varying tonearm height. That would mean there is infinite number of settings and assuming you did not get lucky, you could be left sampling an infinite number of settings with no way to repeat them or even be sure you were listening to them all with any real consitency. If you remeber the abx comparator box one of the problems was sonic memory. But let's be nice and assume you have an arm which allows you to divide each degree into tenths. Again assuming you did not get lucky and have it "snap into focus" right away you would have to pick one setting and compare it to the 39 others. it would take atleast forty minutes to do that. That also assumes you were satisfied with only one pass, that you had the sonic memory to allow you to make just one pass and remember where the best one was. Since you don't measure, even if you could remeber the one you like ,how could you find it. I could go on, but i think you see why i am skeptical of the golden ear method.

restock, thank you. being involved in audio for thirty years i already had this discussion. back when my eyes were good and my hand was steady, I spent long hours into the night trying to adjust vta. back then hardly anybody cared about vta. that meant very crude methods of lowering and raising tonearm height. beleive me i scratched up more than one of my favorite records trying to adjust vta while the record was playing. you can measure arm height to very small tolerances. you will have to go outside audio to find a device to do it. the manufacturer has designed the stylus so all things being equal and the cartridge body is parrallel to the record surface you will duplicate the intended contact patch of stylus to record. trust me. that is the intent of all these cartridge adjustments. think about it. any misalignment of the cartridge either shrinks the contact patch or skews that contact patch from the center of the grove. don't worry about the angle of the cutting head. it's varying record thickness that throws of the vta of your own setup.
the other parameters are not senstive to record thickness. thus they dont vary from record to record. having said all that. the final test of anyhting audio is in the listening. if you can't hear it it aint worth the trouble. Just remember the the first magazine article i read on vta was based on mathemical proof of the signifcance of vta which was then later confirmed by the golden ears. I pitty the poor soul who is trying to find the sweet spot by ear. even if it can be done, which i doubt, it has to be maddening.

dougdeacon. as long as you dont move the bdoy of the cartridge, pivot to stylus distance is a constant. you are however right in that you have alterered the overhang points. i think what you meant to say is that raising or lowering causes the stylus to fall on a different spot on the circumference of the record. it will then describe a different arc from than the one you used to optimize overhang.

does'nt this mean you also changed the distance when you put on records of different thicknes? by re leveling the arm you have brought it back into alignment.

Okay! I seemed to have lost this argument. It just seems to me that your record could care less what angle the record was cut at. I'm sure you all have seen pictures of a stylus contact point. Maximize it and you'll get the most out of your cartridge. It just happens that vta was the last and most difficult alignment that has to be done. The fact that it constantly changes only adds to the myth. I owned the martin logan cls, one of the most ruthlessly revealing speakers ever made. I can say that vta was just one of the many things that affect sound. You can't ignore it but you don't need to worship its alter.

so much for having the last word on this subject.
I did not say perfect vta was theoretcical.
I said those who claimed they could find it easily and repeatedly by ear were highly suspect. A claim that offended many.
There is a perfect vta and that can be and has been proven mathematically.
I have yet to hear anything "snap into focus". Improvements were significant enoguh to justify the effort, however.
You are dealing with a very tiny stylus riding in a very narrow grove. I contend that the stylus is affected by movements so small most human eyes and fingers are incapable of making them. diamond cutters and jewleres exempt. Both diamond cutters and jewelers use very acuurate tools and magnifying devices as aids.
I read a lot of stero magazines in my day. I threw most of them away. My recollection of the first vta article was science based and not golden ear based. I beleive it was in the late seventys. Like most tweaks I was a skeptic. It was only 'till I got a system capable of resolving the difference did I beleive. Maybe (dougdeacon) you and others had already discovered it.
My comment about "worshipping at the alter of vta" was tongue and cheek. Come on, reread some of the descriptions in this thread about the benefits of correct vta. Don't you think they exagerate just a little.
If you really want gorgeuos sound get some triodes and electrostaics with a Koetsu rosewood signature.(okay!okay! adjust the koetsu for proper vta. by ear if you like)