TW-Acustic Raven 10.5 or DaVinci Grandezza??

Coming back to the universal acceptance of faulty produced cartridges - i.e. cartridges with a stylus not 90° dead center.
If any one reading this thread has had the experience lately ( the last years ...) that he/she/it bought a cartridge new in the shop, took it home, mounted it and found that it needed azimuth adjustment - I would like to know two things:

a) what was the "sonic" reason or evidence for the assumption that it was indeed a misplaced stylus which asked for azimuth adjustment ?

b) why wasn't it returned it to the dealer for refund/exchange but accepted "as is" ?

And - I don't mean cartridges bought second hand like "demo" sample or with "50 hours only - hardly broken in - as new !".

I have no doubt that a hell of a lot of cartridges out there do need azimuth adjustment NOW.
But they did not need it when they were "new out of the box".
They were raped, twisted and misaligned/-orientated by faulty set-up.
After 50 hours playing with way too high anti-skating no cantilever is orientated anymore the way it left the factory.
After 50 hours playing in a tonearm which has ledge and isn't level you certainly need azimuth to correct the now disorientated stylus.
These two aren't the only, but the 2 most prominent and frequent scenarios.

No - don't get me wrong.
I certainly accept that there are misplaced stylus out there which can still perform decent when the azimuth is corrected.
I just state that this can not/shall not/shall not be acceptable with a NEW cartridge.
Not on the price level we are talking about.
No one of us would accept this kind of product quality in any other part of his life ( well, maybe in countries where "quality" isn't really a common phrase ...).

By requesting azimuth adjustment in a tonearm we imply, that we either:

a) use cartridges which we bought second hand - and found out (surprise !) that they need adjustment in that plane.

b) do happily accept low quality control and faulty product for our cash.

c ) believe that this world is an imperfect one in the sense that a simple industrial stylus can't be glued/drilled/placed in place but by dump luck.
That in the times when laser guidance is long an industry standard.

Sorry - but that would mean being badly informed about the subject.
Which isn't necessary in the hey-days of the web we so widely use.

It is about whether I do accept an evitable product fault in the first or not.
It is only in the first matter, that the specific tonearm needs azimuth adjustment.

Dear Glai, Dear Tdaudio,

Thanks for your efforts to share with us your impressions about this tonearms.

Glay, as usual, you make perfect description. You are the man who clear say: "I tried both toneararms on my Raven AC, on my system and my impressions are the following...".

Tdaudio, I wish you to catch the Talea (or the new Virtu) and be able to compare it with 10.5 TW.

Luna, do you make your choice and how useful was this thread?

Happy listening.

Lyubo

Dear Dover, agreed - level of both platter and tonearm board is an issue in a good portion of turntables.
As we are dealing with pretty "small" (quantified in relative ..;-) ..) forces in tonearm alignment, full plane horizontal level is mandatory to ensure the absence of "parasite" forces which will alter the result and thus lead to misalignment.
Anti-skating rarely if ever is applied in any correct form.
Especially so, since skating force itself first is not linear over the groove AND depends on stylus shape, off-set angle and VTF.
Now add an armboard which isn't level ( I would estimate 90+% of all turntables out there ) and/or a turntable which' platter isn't level (talking about speed accuracy ...).

Key problem here is, that really a good bubble/spirit level is both - a bit more expensive but foremost: pretty heavy.
If you are looking for a precision aluminum level with say 0.6 mm/m accuracy for technical purpose, you are looking a something which itself already has a mass in excess of 1 lbs and is 8" long.
If you want to go further/do better - say 0.1 mm/m accuracy and a frame level which you can put nicely around the center of your platter and thus avoid leveling error by the instrument's mass - than we are talking US$500+ and a mass of 2.5-4.8 lbs with precision smoothed contact surface.
That will be accurate, but the sheer mass of the leveling instrument will falsify the result - at least on all turntables which are suspended with pretty low mass.
The spirit levels we see sold for audio purpose are only jokes.
A good way to go is the use of special architectural and measurement laser equipment which "draws" precise leveled lines on objects.
Thus armboards and platters can be leveled without additional mass.

OK, so a few of those incredible Italian industrial designers slipped across the border from Italy into Switzerland. Perhaps politics had something to do with that. One can see many Ferrari's zipping around Alpine roads. I was once overtaken by a 250GT on a downhill heading into Ventimiglia, at a speed never to be forgotten. First, a dot in my rear view mirror, then in an instant passing me, then in another instant a dot on the horizon. Alas, I was driving a rented Fiat.

If armboard is not plane parallel to platter, I would fix that not with azimuth adjust. Even if it made any sense to do it that way, azimuth adjust could only correct for one kind of error in the alignment, along one arc. Whereas, the error in armboard/platter alignment could describe any one of an infinite family of arcs.

Dear Lewm, of course you wouldn't fix a non-plane parallel to platter armboard with azimuth.
But there are enough audiophile who do - by error.
I was referring to this because I have found many situations with "azimuth corrected" cartridges which in reality was not a misplaced stylus but a ledge of the armboard towards the platter.
But as the level wasn't checked - precisely or at all - the "apparent" wrong azimuth was "corrected".
This was mentioned, to illustrate the point that "apparent wrong" azimuth isn't always what it seems on first sight.