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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
fsonicsmith's avatar
fsonicsmith OP
962 posts
 
Lewm;
Great post. I believe that there have been some scholarly articles published in Stereophile on the subject. The popular alignments do a fairly good job of minimizing average distortion over the course of the side depending upon multiple factors; primarily inner groove circumference and whether crescendos toward the end of the side-if you are a classical music fan-should be optimized. 
I totally buy into the notion that having two null points and having them strategically placed apart from each other with the lowest possible distortion in between and beyond them is preferable in an abstract world. My OP was to discuss relativity of this topic in a real-world audio system. 
chayro
2,998 posts
 
I think we all knee jerk into conflating distortion with noise or some other objectionable sound.  In reality, distortion is only the difference between the input and the output of a device.  A parametric equalizer, which virtually every mastering engineer uses, technically distorts the sound, but in a way that the engineer believes will make it more pleasing to the ear, not less.  So when a cartridge is not optimally aligned, while I agree there may be more distortion over the arc, it may well be preferable to the listener, unless it causes mistracking, which I would think everyone would find objectionable.  Most turntable manufacturers and recognized experts, for whatever that's worth, seem to say that the sound will be better with as close-to-perfect alignment as possible.  Once you get to a certain level in this hobby, "better" becomes very subjective.  Even if distortion is measurably higher in a given component, one may prefer the sound to another better-measuring component.  
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,318 posts
 
Actually, Spanish has considerable fluidity w.r.t. Subject Verb and Object.

Just about any combination of SVO is possible, depending on which part of the utterance you're putting the emphasis on. Not too much room for ambiguity, given common sense construal of the sentence and particularly if a "personal a" is involved, indicating which is the Object.
lewm
13,169 posts
 
fsonic et al, What is measured is the tracking angle error, the degree to which the cantilever deviates from tangency.  All the plots I have ever seen plot distance from outer groove to inner groove as a function of the angle by which the cantilever is not tangent.  Thus you see a horizontal line representing the x-axis, labeled "0", to indicate zero tracking angle error.  Then you have on the y-axis positive numbers above the x-axis and negative numbers below the x-axis, to indicate that the tracking angle error can go either positive or negative with respect to its vector direction.  Then we audiophiles conflate these data with audio signal distortion.  But I have never seen any experimental proof that the two are linearly correlated.  In the modern era, there is no one who would bother to do that, because we live in the era of BS rules.  In the era from the 50s through most of the 70s, there were reputable audio companies and publications that might have conducted such work.  Shure, for example, published beautiful treatises on cartridge design and performance, in those days.  Early Stereophile did some nice stuff, and so did Audio Magazine.  Then there is/was the Audio Engineering Society.  

Certainly, it makes sense to maintain tangency as much as possible. I don't dispute that that is an attractive idea.  
lewm
13,169 posts
 
So, has anyone ever owned, seen, or heard of a test LP that encodes a single frequency test tone from outermost to innermost grooves, on at least one of its two sides?
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