Is your image centred?

Dear Luna: In normal conditions I never experienced that trouble, the voice always ( almost ) is dead center on my system and if it is not then something is faulty every where on my system.

+++++ " . If your image is moving around, it's a fault and I would look at your setup. " +++++

so I agree with Stringreen.

When the image " suffer " a shift to one side then I know that something is wrong ( it happen to me more than one time ): sometimes a loose headshell wire, a loose internal tonearm cable, that the tonearm or headshell wires are connected ( by mistake ) in different way than left+/white, right+/red, left-/blue and right-/green , even a phono stage failure on differences on gain between channels, cartridge out of specs, tonearm internal wiring, that the tonearm/phono stage cable is wired in a wrong way, etc, etc.

Your analog rig was out of work for many years as the phono stage so IMHO you have a fault elsewhere, it is not normal what you are " suffering " about.

Well that's is MHO and my experiences about.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Raul, when the image shifts differently while the LP is playing and differently from LP to LP, to me that does not act like loose wires or worn caps. Have you never heard a singer's voice centered at one point in the soundstage and then shift to somewhere else during another passage of the song? Not just LPs, I have many CDs that are mastered this way. But we don't really know exactly what Luna is experiencing without hearing it for ourselves, so it doesn't hurt to check everything.

I'm with Dan_ed on this one, this is soundstaging. Images are never always going to be centered, producers and engineers fool with this stuff all the time. If a hard or medium panned image was centered this would be wrong.

Also, these images often shift within a song, a voice on the right side may shift to the left side over the length of the song. Cds do this as well.

On the other hand, one may have issues with a weak center image, this is generally due to room interaction issues. It could also be setup or electronic issues.

I think Luna is experiencing mixing anomalies on lps. If he never has a strong center image then it is something else. The one thing I don't get, is why he doesn't seem to have this issue with his digital.

Hi Sns,
Thanks for your comments,
I do have good imaging with my set up. In fact, very good! I noticed there were imperfections in CD mixings as well but most of my CD collections are newer than my LPs. Well, only a small amount of CDs are like that. On the other hand, I noticed many of the Lps have problems. That is why I start questioning my analogue rig. I have to confess that I had abandoned my turntable for many years, I had it stored up. Lately, I have got a chance to buy a whole lot of good quality Lps of the 60s, 70s and 80s, so I am giving my turntable another go. May be the recordings of that time were the problem?
During these few days, I have been playing around with the set up and brought some improvements. Azimuth does make a different, Anti-staking only slightly. Even what is under the turntable helps with imaging! I was using some cones at the bottom but when I took them off and used a marble platform, the imaging is more solid. Some of the imagers that were way off before are now much closer to the centre. One interesting thing I found is that on those disks, the tracks at the middle seems less affected than the first few ones! (note: not all disks, some played good from start to finish)!

Your variations from track to track point to cartridge alignment issues, you should have very little variation within a single LP. I suggest if you're going to keep your present turntable for some time, get the MintLp Tractor alignment device, about $100, your deck will sound a lot better. I found it better than VPI alignment jig and DB protractor. Just google MintLp tractor.