Dear Dover, thank you for the kind comment. I must admit, that the positive correspondence with Audiogoners far outnumbers - and out-weights the unimportant negative feedback and insults by people whom - based on their style as well as their apparent lack of background - I can't take serious anyway.
Especially so, as there still are a lot of seasoned audiophiles who do take their passion really serious in a positive way and strive for real improvement.
It can't be a mistake to try to take as many points into account as possible when trying to get the maximum of performance out of any set-up.
In analog front-end there still are way too many "uncertainties" and aziumth adjustment - as well as anti-skating and the back ground of skating force - is IMHO taken way too easy.
My reservations here are a matter of "field experience".
There are just too many used cartridges out there with disorientated cantilever to believe that the correct application of anti-skating is a solved issue.
And there are way too many cartridges - and I mean cartridges from manufacturers where I KNOW that the stylus is correct placed - "azimuth corrected" mounted (i.e. NOT in parallel to the record's surface in front view).
I would bet that a good portion of those cartridges is mounted in good faith with "azimuth correction", but in fact the motivation was raised by sample inherent channel in-balance and/or misalignment.
We do not need to turn to DaVinci here.
The SME V is a real reference standard since 30 years now.
Robert Atkinson's team had some real good engineers around.
They knew what they were doing.
And they knew why they did not include aziumth adjustment as a feature.
It was discussed widely back then when the eagerly awaited SME V was finally introduced.
From the engineer's point of view the concept was correct.
You assume that the tires you are buying for your car are round - if they aren't, you can't blame the car for not having an adjustment to adapt for that.
You insist on a perfect round tyre which is just as easy a task as a perfect 90° stylus on a cantilever.
So why accepting it in analog audio?
I still think it is a valid request to accept any new cartridge with a dead 90° stylus only.
And I think that manufacturer's who really care about their product - Jonathan Carr for instance - will agree.
Especially so, as there still are a lot of seasoned audiophiles who do take their passion really serious in a positive way and strive for real improvement.
It can't be a mistake to try to take as many points into account as possible when trying to get the maximum of performance out of any set-up.
In analog front-end there still are way too many "uncertainties" and aziumth adjustment - as well as anti-skating and the back ground of skating force - is IMHO taken way too easy.
My reservations here are a matter of "field experience".
There are just too many used cartridges out there with disorientated cantilever to believe that the correct application of anti-skating is a solved issue.
And there are way too many cartridges - and I mean cartridges from manufacturers where I KNOW that the stylus is correct placed - "azimuth corrected" mounted (i.e. NOT in parallel to the record's surface in front view).
I would bet that a good portion of those cartridges is mounted in good faith with "azimuth correction", but in fact the motivation was raised by sample inherent channel in-balance and/or misalignment.
We do not need to turn to DaVinci here.
The SME V is a real reference standard since 30 years now.
Robert Atkinson's team had some real good engineers around.
They knew what they were doing.
And they knew why they did not include aziumth adjustment as a feature.
It was discussed widely back then when the eagerly awaited SME V was finally introduced.
From the engineer's point of view the concept was correct.
You assume that the tires you are buying for your car are round - if they aren't, you can't blame the car for not having an adjustment to adapt for that.
You insist on a perfect round tyre which is just as easy a task as a perfect 90° stylus on a cantilever.
So why accepting it in analog audio?
I still think it is a valid request to accept any new cartridge with a dead 90° stylus only.
And I think that manufacturer's who really care about their product - Jonathan Carr for instance - will agree.