"Straight" talk

I've been all around the block with azimuth, aided and abetted by the fact that I own a Triplanar, which was once one of a very few tonearms that allowed precise adjustment of azimuth (albeit while messing up zenith).  (Nowadays, there are many tonearms or just headshells that offer this feature.)

Plus, I own a Signet Cartridge Analyzer, the grandfather of the Foz.  While obsessing over crosstalk using the Signet and the Triplanar, I found I was occasionally messing up the sound by canting the cartridge extremely to one side or the other in order to make the meter on the Signet happy.  This was the case in particular with my Koetsu Urushi, which was canted way over, like folkfreak said, in order to achieve best crosstalk numbers.  When I just gave up and set the Urushi so the cantilever was perpendicular, the sound was and is a lot better.  Maybe crosstalk isn't optimal, but all else is copacetic.  Now I have become a nihilist where azimuth is concerned.  I think a lot of this has to do with the perfection or lack thereof with which the coils of the cartridge are positioned inside the body, which is something one can not directly observe.  If the build was flawed, then pushing the azimuth to fix the problem is not without its cost to overall sound quality (and probably aberrant stylus wear).  I don't claim that it is not a good idea to have crosstalk maximally adjusted when possible.

Re results that end up canted. As I’ve posted before while I own a fozgometer I much prefer (and get better results from) aligning azimuth by ear using this method. 
http://www.durand-tonearms.com/Support/Support/azimuth.html

Folkfreak, At first reading, I find a few problems with the blurb on the Durand website.  First, correct azimuth is ideally as they say, with the stylus perfectly centered in the grooves (however vague that is).  But most cartridges are not perfectly constructed, and the issue of crosstalk is most related to how the cartridge "reads" the L and R channels.  Reading takes place at the other end of the cantilever, where the coil moves between stationary magnets, in the case of an MC type, or where the magnets move between stationary coils, in the case of an MM type.  If the interface between the stationary and moving parts is not perfectly symmetrical, that will cause unequal amounts of crosstalk.  Second, they imply that badly adjusted azimuth is a major cause of channel balance problems.  That is simply not the case, and you can prove it to yourself by playing with the azimuth adjustment.  I found that extremes of azimuth adjustment affect channel balance by about 1 db at most, using the Signet analyzer.  Moreover, most texts on this subject will agree with what I say.  Playing with azimuth is no way to treat channel imbalance.  Azimuth affects crosstalk. I recommend treatises by Victor Khomenko of BAT and by another guy whose name escapes me.  If you go on Vinyl Asylum and search on "azimuth", I think you'll find their lengthy posts on the subject.

@lewm not sure you read the entire piece, you need to click on the link "Tips to Set Azimuth" and Joel explains what to do and why his preferred approach using solo mono vocal differs slightly from the classic 1KHz/Foz approach (which has nothing to do with correcting for channel balance, and which also provides a link to the Khomenko work).

Dear @stringreen : All cartridge set up parameters are critical an important but the problem is that exist no-perfect cartridge building for we really can be sure of our set up.

Now, almost all parameters has a intrinsical relationship that when we make some changes in one parameter some other goes off. Example: when we change VTA/SRA the AZ changes too, when we make changes in VTF VTA/SRA changes too.
In the other side the imperfections in the LP surface makes that our set up almost never is mantained during playback due to those LP imperfections.

I agree that AZ is a must to have rigth but at the end all the set up must be setting up in the same way, not an easy task.

Because of that inherent relationship in between all the set up cartridge parameters I don't like those advises or tips to set up one single parameter. 
Few years ago I decided to have a repeateable " bullet proff " whole test process for room/system evaluation that obviously included the cartridge set up. Through the years I was refinning ( time to time. ) that process and till today is functioning very well and makes my audio life more easy.
Important part of that process is that the track LP recordings are almost the same and I said " almost " because time to time I add a new track deleting some other because the new one is more " informative ".
This evaluation process took me not a week or a month to have it but several months/years to stay where it's today.

Obviously that for a process of this kind be succsessfuly we need in deeep experiences with live MUSIC and with several and different audio systems and a deep self training with the overall evaluation process, so it's not plug and play.

That kind of process can permit to almost any one evaluation of a room/system  in no more than 1 hour because when doing that evaluation we know in precise way WHAT TO LOOK FOR and not what we like it.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.