Anti skate. I think something's wrong

now, now boys......what I say is that a/s can never be adjusted properly,.. and does harm to the end result than to use it. It produces a force which prevents the stylus from being free to respond to the undulations of the record, and thus closes in the sound. The absence of a/s opens the sound and I certainly can hear it on my system. I wrote what I did to encourage people to listen with and without to determine what’s best for you. Soundsmith proposes using it because he fixes cartridges and it seems right for him. Harry builds turntables and doesn’t use a/s on his tables, but includes the mechanism because of market wishes. I don’t use Harry’s twist method which is another means of using anti-skate. I don’t care if anyone uses it or not...only recommend listening and deciding for yourself. That’s what these pages are for. I can tell you that with my system if I use my Ortofon, Benz, or Dyna cartridges, they all sound better with no a/s....and not only is the sound better, but I never have tracking issues with any of the cartridges...no sibilant S's, no unexpected fuzzy sound in the louder sections... nothing.

...what I say is that a/s can never be adjusted properly...

And therefore any anti-skating setting, including zero, is a compromise.  Which says nothing as to whether zero may be a better compromise or a worse compromise than any other.

As I mentioned earlier, I have no experience with low compliance cartridges.  But I can say that with cartridges having compliances in the higher parts of the spectrum setting anti-skating to zero would result in cantilever deflection toward the outer edge of the record that upon close visual examination is so severe that it would seem to me to be absurd to even try such a setting.

Yogiboy, thanks for the link.  Very informative article, from an unimpeachable source as you implied.  I note, btw, that in Mr. Ledermann's reference in the article to looking at cantilever deflection he limits its usefulness to cartridges having medium to high compliance.  Although he is addressing its usefulness as a check for gross error, rather than with respect to the adjustment procedure I described above.

Regards,
-- Al
 

Dear lewm: Agree, AZ per se ( normal conditions. ) can't change the SPL on one channel, perhaps on " extreme conditions of a very bad AZ set up. Same with AS.
Now, what I was thinking is that in a wrong set up exist an accumulation of " errors " on diferent parameters that even if the SPL is not impaired we can perceive the sound as unbalanced one.

I think that  blueranger can take the " short/path/road " to fix the problem:

- listen in the same analog rig a diferent cartridge looking if exist the same unbalanced quality sound.
Here he can discern if the problem is in the Ortofon Cadenza Bronze or not

- Listen to his CD player looking for that channels unbalanced sound. If persist then is not a cartridge problem or phono stage problem but: line stage/amplifiers or speakers or even some kind of problem in the tonearm.

From here, he has to follow tests on each of those single system chain links.

Now, we can follow give any kind of advise to blueranger but it's not easy for any one of us to say with precission where is the real trouble.


Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Dear friends: On the whole AS subject I think that no one of use has the " bible " about.

By the physics laws AS always exist in a pivoted tonearm, so we can dissapears it only because we can't detect its " microscopic " influence in what we are listening. Like is the case of SG and some of us. Example, I change to often of cartridges and is a " pain in the ass " the AS set up that is related with all the oother cartridge set up parameters. So I decided for some time forget about but I know is not " right ".

Problem with the AS subject is that we don't know yet ( at least me. ) a precise methodology to set up the " Right " AS because several obstacles: is changing all over the LP surface ( iws not static but dynamic. ), we don't know on each LP recording its diferent recorded velocities over the LP surface and the difference in cartridge stylus shape has influence too on the amount of AS ( in this regard I remember at least one of my tonearms AT where its AS mechanism noted diferent AS position for: sherical, ellipthical and line contact stylus shapes. ).

So, AS set ub is a night mare for say the least.

Today and only for a " mind in calm " I use AS at minimum posible. How knew it's at minimum? I did not.

Cero or at " minimum " is wrong but everythink we make about is wrong. Maybe the real subject could be which kind of AS set up makes the less " damages ".

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Someone else mentioned the room. I had a channel imbalance after tweaking everything over and over I still had it.  Last but not least I moved a bookcase a couple inches and that was the ticket.