Most people think of VTF in terms of stylus force. Because that's what they see, that's what wears, that's where all the action is, that must be what it's all about, right?
Wrong. Really VTF is all about what is going on at the other end of the cantilever.
Way up at the end inside the cartridge are the coils of your moving coil cartridge. Those coils are held within a powerful magnetic field. Its the coils moving within the field that generates the signal we amplify and hear.
Now this magnetic field, its not very big at all. Especially not the part of the field that has been engineered to be uniformly strong. If the coil moves too far off center one way or another its going to affect the linearity of the signal.
Got it?
So VTF is spec'd to place the coils within that field. How much it can move around and still be sonically up to spec depends on the particular details of each cartridge design.
Now other things being equal we could say Lyra has engineered a microscopically small uniform field area with near zero VTF tolerance. Or we could say they really do have about the same as everyone else but for whatever reason prefer to appear precise. Or others cut their customers more slack. Whatever. Point is you can't judge a darn thing from this number.
*For MM instead of MC, same deal, simply swap coil for magnet.
