Fidelity Research FR-64x

Dear @ibelchev:  Your alignment is rigth and better that use the Stevenson A.

Problem  when we use 247mm/250mm Löfgren A alignmemntb is not the tonearm/headshell but those cartridges you and other persons like: SPU or FR7. This is the real problem on alignment.

So all of you not only are not  hearing a top cartridge quality level performance through the FR7s and you can't have that top quality performance because inside the dedicated FR cartridge the wires/connectors to permit the signal pass through makes a severe degradation to the signal and this is part of what you like.
Additional the cartridge is mounted in a non-damped tonearm in a way resonannt one that additional comes with a VTF ringing mechanism and that if not enough with that using Stevenson A way higher developed distortions and tracking error.

At least you don't use Stevenson any more.

I'm not against of what you like it because that is your privilege.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.

@chakster : I don’t know where is your common sense because I know for sure you are not a stupid gentleman as other.

Look, you said that for you Stevenson A alignment is the way to go due that normally listen to 7" recordings and that’s why the need of that alignment. I don’t know who or how you arrived to that conclusion because even with 7" recordings your assumption about is totally wrong and let me explain it:

I own several 7" recordings that I don’t listen and these size of recordings comes with a surface recorded length of 30mm ( around it. ) and the inner most recorded groove stays at 55mm so using Stevenson A you can get a little lower distortion levels in the last 8mm of those recorded 30mm surface.


So you choiced to have a little lower distortion level in the 26.7% of the recording surface in favor to have higher overall distortions? makes sense to you to have higher distortions levels in the 73.3% of all those 7" recordings? ? ! ! !
Because is that what you have !!!!!!

You are listening everywhere higher distortions in your system and that’s what you like and said there is no problem.

That’s why sometimes when you made recomendations on inferior quality items against top ones I normally post to you that: have no idea of what you are talking about and obviously you can have because you are listening with higher distortions that almost all audiophiles around the Earth.

Btw,  "   It has no sound signature, ..."""   how is that? because passive or active everything has signature. Obviously that with all those higher distortions you are accustom to you can't detect that kind of " signature ".

R.

Raul, i have various tonearm and some of them designed with Baerwald like my Reed 3p "12, some of the others i can readjust easily with my Feickert. But as i said, i trust manufacturers. For example SONY PUA-7 has its own geometry and its own protractor, look here. I’m not so paranoic about distortion level in my system, but i want to learn (and i want to hear) why one geometry is better than another one. I have time to learn this process slowly with different arms and cartridges. If it’s clear for you it’s not clear for me yet.

Have you ever read Stevenson’s explanation about his method ?

P.S. Passive amps is easy to check for coloration, we can simply connect our source directly to the power amp to play some quiet tune, then we can add preamp in between to compare the sound signature. If we don’t need a buffer to solve impedance mismatch then there is even simplified device like the LightSpeed Attenuator. Using devices like First Watt B1 or LightSpeed Attenuator with a proper power amp we can save at least $2000 on active gain preamps. I like this concept, but i never tried the LightSpeed Attenuator, i use First Watt B1 passive buffer preamp. 

It’s not a passive preamp. It’s a buffer. Passive preamps are horrendous. They have massive distortion and completely bastardize the original signal. They are complete and utter nonsense. Connecting source directly to amp will sound horrendous. In all honesty, you should really get a real preamplifier as buffers only are not the best either.

There’s nothing transparent about passive preamps as the potentiometer will have a significant impact on sound. And most of these potentiometers are worthless garbage. Especially today. Good stuff is no longer made and eBay pots are all 100% fake Chinese trash.

Passive preamps are made by people who know 0% about electronics and how circuits work.

@invictus005 You’re right it’s a buffer, but it has no active gain!

I think you should read this thread first before talking about true passive preamps. Some users sold their $8k active preamps for passive $450 Lightspeed attenuator.

But I’m talking about Nelson Pass gear, i hope you know who it is and maybe you’re familiar with his innovative design of the amps.

We're going off topic here, i'm not gonna discuss it here

About First Watt B1:

"This suggests the possibility of using a high quality buffer in conjunction with a volume control. A buffer is still an active circuit using tubes or transistors, but it has no voltage gain – it only interposes itself to make a low impedance into a high impedance, or vice versa.

If you put a buffer in front of a volume control, the control’s low impedance looks like high impedance. If you put a buffer after a volume control, it makes the output impedance much lower. You can put buffers before and after a volume control if you want.

The thing here is to try to make a buffer that is very neutral. Given the simple task, it’s pretty easy to construct simple buffers with very low distortion and noise and very wide bandwidth, all without negative feedback." -Nelson Pass