Help me understand cartridge alignment

@gregchick0 Well, to keep the groove on thread and track, your sell-deprecation is admirable but I am not sure one has to have the hearing of a teenager to appreciate the sound of a great vinyl rig. I saw that you posted previously about cleaning records so you do have a turntable and yet you seem to mostly mention streaming. I take it your point is that access to all-important music is so [nearly] unlimited with streaming and that the music must come first for all of us, and particularly for you with old man's disease. My own belief system is that digital and vinyl will never sound alike. And contrary to the beliefs of some, it is not about so-called masking due to euphonic distortion. Instead it is simply due to radically different technologies and the amazing ability of most music lovers to discern differences over time. I am willing to venture a guess that with the right system you too would appreciate the SQ with an optimally set up table. IMHO, 70-80% of the time if you stream an album and compare it to playing the same album on a top vinyl rig the digital will win simply because having a great pressing is so vital and so hard to obtain-involving pure luck way too often. But that 20-30% of the time when you do have a great pressing of what you are in the mood for hearing, the vinyl version soars above. As it so happens, I have an exceptional pressing of Bitches Brew. 

fsonicsmith, don't get me wrong, I am not really happy streaming is muscling in.  Actually, your point on the "best" LP pressings is painfully accurate. But I read from some well-respected LP master pros, that is possible to correctly master digitally too.  So, the poor pressing LP's and not to mention those old Record Club pressings, are in my room, unlistenable.  

Yes! a good pressing of Bitches Brew is like the Holy Grail, especially after I upgraded my TT to an outboard Tube Box S2 Phono Preamp and good cartridge & stylus.   Actually, after doing such, half my recordings both LP and CD became annoying, unless just background music.  

Oh, the pain of having a good stereo!  Now I need wall treatment. 

Dear @lewm  : "" except everyone equates tracking angle error (the degrees by which the cantilever is not tangent to the groove) with “distortion”.  ""

Everyone but you? then you are just wrong. Which's your take?

I give you these measured examples in a 250mm EL pivoted tonearm Löfgren A IEC where is clear that as tracking error goes down as traking distortion goes down too as the cartridge is aproaching a null point or goes higher as the cartridge goes away of a null point:

at 66mm groove radius tracking error is zero and tracking distortion is 0.0001%

at 70mm tracking error is -0.359 and tracking distortion is 0.256%

at 90mm tracking error is -1.014 and tracking distortion ism 0.563%

at 115mm tracking error is -0.310 and tracking distortion is 0.135%

The measures was made at each mm and has a linear relationship between both calculated parameters.

R.

I think the arm must be off somehow. I've explored every option. Tomorrow I'm going to adjust the PTS by 2.5mm (I measure today) so an SPU will hit Baerwald exactly.

Raul, I just saw your post. What is "tracking distortion"? Are you talking about harmonic distortion, IM distortion, or what? Can you refer me to the source of your data, or have you yourself made these measurements? I am certainly willing to believe there is a relationship between tracking angle error and distortion of some kind, but I have not seen the data, until now possibly. My private hypothesis is that stylus overhang and headshell offset angle taken together are examples of the cure (for TAE) being worse than the disease. Invented 80 years ago by a few guys, who were more mathematicians than audio engineers, to drive us crazy. I realize that my view is not the norm, so I am not anxious to argue about it. But tell me how "tracking distortion" was measured, please. And thanks.