Vinyl heresy-overhang induced distortion is not that important


I have learned and am of the opinion that the quality of the drive unit, the quality of the tonearm, the quality of the cartridge and phono stage and compatibility/setting of all these things (other than setting overhang) and the setting of proper VTF, VTA, SRA, and azimuth are far more important than worrying about how much arc-induced and overhang- induced (the two are related) distortion one has. I learned this the hard way. I will not go into details but please trust me-I am talking about my new ~15K of turntable components for the deck itself and excluding cartridge and phono stage. I have experimented with simply slamming a cartridge all the way forward in the headshell, placing the cartridge mid-way along the headshell slots, and slammed all the way back, each time re-setting VTF, VTA, SRA, and azimuth. I would defy anyone to pick out the differences. I have 30K of tube separates, a Manley Steelhead, and DeVore O/93's. I submit that any differences in distortion due to sub-optimum arcs and deviations from the two null points and where they are located (those peaks in distortion) are masked several times over by distortion imposed by my tubed gear and my loudspeakers. To believe that your electronics and loudspeakers have less distortion than arc-induced distortion is unrealistic. I have heard startling dynamics, soundstaging, and detail with all three set-ups. It is outright fun to listen to and far preferable to my very good digital rig with all three set-ups. 
My point is that getting perfect alignment is often, not always, like putting lipstick on a pig, I think back on my days on owning a VPI Classic and then a VPI Prime and my having Yip of Mint Protractors fashion custom-made protractors for each of these decks and my many hours of sitting all bent over with eye to jewelers loop staring down horizontal twist among parallax channels and getting overhang on the exact spots of two grids and yet never hearing anything close to the level of sound I get now. Same cartridges, same phono stage, only my turntable/arm combination has changed. I kept thinking the answer had to be in perfect alignment when it was clearly everything else but.
Thoughts? I am sure I will get all kinds of flack. But for those that do tell me I am nuts, try my experiment sometime with a top-tier deck/arm combination and report back. 
128x128fsonicsmith
Dear @fsonicsmith : You can ignore what you want it that's  your privilege but your thread says you are wrong no maters what.

The fact that you can't be aware ( for whatever reasons. ) of the real and true differences in an accurated cartridge/tonearm alignment against one at random speaks for it self and can't say in any way you are rigth.

I respect what you like it and respect you as a human been but at analog/audio/MUSIC levels you are way wrong. Period.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.
Raul may be abrasive, insistent and condescending at times but I have never seen an intentional personal attack from him.
fonicsmith, my wife from Russia is. Talk like Yoda she does. You meant what I understand, she says. Often tell her I do: Do! Or do not! There is no try! Die hard old habits do.

Possible it is sense to make grammar regardless. 

Provided of course there is sense to begin with.

Chuck
Yeah, I know it was a bit unkind to bring this up but if Raul is going to post, Yoda-talk aside, make a point in linear fashion and stop throwing darts at four different walls leaving it up to us to draw the lines (lots of metaphors there). Yes, Raul is obviously very knowledgeable. That just makes it more frustrating. If he knew nothing, I would not waste my time responding to him or trying to read his posts. 
Raul, your by-line is "enjoy the Music Not Distortions". So I will make my point again since you seem to ignore it. You can work on reducing distortion but you can not eliminate it. You can work on maximizing the relatively benign distortions (odd order) and minimizing the more harmful even order distortion (and yes, there are many other types of distortion including the type we are discussing), but you CAN NOT eliminate distortion Raul! Your listening room adds distortion. Do you use headphones? Well the transducers add distortion. I don't give a rat's pa-toot if you use solid state or tubed electronics, you are adding distortion. Digital gear-distortion! Better tubed gear has less harmful/unwanted even order distortion than solid state but tubes bring their own set of problems/shortcomings so you gotta pick your poison, no amp is perfect or even close. And Raul, there is distortion recorded into the master tape from the microphones, the recording booth, the recording electronics, and more. And Raul, you're listening to a facsimile of the real thing-the minute you make a recording of anything real and try to play it back, you are working on creating a very rough illusion of reality. In real life, we don't hear in Stereo or multichannel. Human ears/brains hear real sound differently than recorded and reproduced sound. 
And the conclusion to be drawn as I set forth in my OP is that overhang-arc induced vinyl playback distortion is minimal in comparison to so many others.  Let me draw this analogy since I have to go on a dreaded cruise in May that I don't really want to go on-dwelling on perfect cartridge alignment is like scraping barnacles off a cruise ship hoping it will sail faster as a result. I am in favor of getting as close as you can. Doesn't hurt. But like I said, VTA, SRA, VTF, azimuth, and quality of the drive and tonearm are more important. 
The odd thing is that Raul's native language is Spanish, or I assume it to be.  In Spanish and other Romance languages, the verb usually does not come last in a sentence.  Truth be told, I usually understand Raul, but I did not understand all the nuances of his latest diatribe against me, as noted above.  I just tried to get the gist of it. 

What Raul was saying is:
I (LewM) cannot hear the differences afforded by exact proper alignment, because:
(1) I use "tubes". (Note that he is essentially incorrect regarding my Beveridge system.)
(2) Raul once owned an underhung tonearm (the RS Labs RS-A1).  He didn't like it.
(2) I am not a trained listener, as he is.  None of us is trained, but Raul is trained.  He trained himself.
(3) We should enjoy the "music", even though we are not worthy.

So, I ask Raul or anyone else to produce data to support his underlying assumption that proper alignment according to one of the three standard algorithms (Lofgren, Baerwald, Stevenson) produces less or lower audio signal distortion over the course of playing a typical LP than would be the case if the alignment did not conform to any of those standards. Here we have to be careful, because, as I noted, it is fairly easy to misalign the cartridge to such a degree that there are no/zero null points achieved across the entire surface of an LP.  Whereas, there are probably un-documented alignments that do result in 2 null points.  So, we have to decide on what alignments to compare. I have done an internet search to find out whether there is a published paper on this subject, from the AES, for example, and I don't find any.  Baerwald's alignment was published in 1941!!!  What one would do is to measure THD at the output of a phono stage vs time (t) from the start of play to the run-out grooves, using a test LP that encodes a single pure tone.  Then plot THD vs t for two or more alignments.  If alignment is critical, then THD should be minimal at the exact moment when the cantilever is tangent to the groove, etc.  The time-based data could be converted to THD vs distance from outermost groove to innermost groove.

The funny thing is, I had the serendipitous experience that leads me to question the need for precise alignment using Baerwald, Lofgren, or Stevenson, only about 2 weeks ago.  And it was unexpected. But I'd like to know "the truth", or a better approximation of it.