Feel Silly Asking This Question Alignment Parameters


I feel silly asking this question, but here it goes. Most of the arms I have owned over the years have came with proprietary protractors, and certain ones like the SME are really just overhang gauges. For other ones I have bought custom generated arc protractors for the specific arm. I will probably do so again with this Origin Live arm. However in the mean time i decided to set up using their provided protractor. 

When I went to install a cartridge on the table, I found I was not wild about using their protractor, so I decided to generate a Conrad H arc protractor till I made an order for an Accutrak one. What I found odd is that Lofgren A had the longest overhang at 16.8 mm and  Lofgren B at 16.3mm. The Origin Live shows 17.5 mm. Is the Rega type alignment that much different than Lofgren or Stevenson? I also noticed with the OL alignment that cartridge offset in the headshell was noticeably greater. 

What is also noticeable is the sonics of each alignment is different. To be honest, I like the overall sound of the OL alignment, but I also have this nagging feeling that it does not track as well. 

 

I always felt at this stage of my audio journey I knew how to align a cartridge. I have been doing it since I was in my 20's! Now I have a large degree of uncertainty of which alignment to choose, and what the implications are if i choose wrong. This arm is a long term keeper for me, so its a matter of wanting to get this set up optimized. 

 

Any insights you might pass along is greatly appreciated. Do have a good chuckle at my expense as it seems that I get into these moments of self doubt, and trying to find the way out of the forest of audio can be quite comical. 

neonknight

@rauliruegas Absolutely, the difference is probably not easily audible. It is a technical superiority. These technical issues do add up over an entire system, looking at 100s of small issues like this.......in theory. I do have a rather fine sounding system....I think.

@pinwa  No, that is not Zenith error, twisting the cartridge ( cantilever) is induced tracking error. Zenith error is the stylus twisted in the cantilever. Frankly, I have yet to see an example of this, although given the errors I have seen I am sure it happens. You need very strong magnification to see it which most audiophiles do not have. It is great for JR's business, the ghost in the machine. The cartridge is stupid in this regard. As long as there are two contact patches in contact with the groove the cartridge will make music. If you study the geometry of the stylus tip there would have to be a huge zenith error before it would interfere with tracking. The phase error might interfere with proper imaging, might. The cantilever out of alignment is a far more serious issue. 

@neonknight I forgot to mention. The most common mistake I see when setting up a cartridge is the technician does not neutralize the antiskating mechanism before setting the overhang and offset. This will substantially angle the cantilever when you set the stylus down. The cantilever should never change angles from its resting position even when playing a record. If it does something is wrong. 

@mijostyn : It’s inconsequential.

 

" Professor Erik Löfgren [6] of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, and is the earliest work known to the author which gives an analytical treatment of tracking distortion and develops a new optimum alignment method to minimise it. Löfgren provided mathematical equations to the distortion model developed by Olney, and undertook a Fourier analysis on them. The results confirm the relationship postulated by Olney, which translates into the distortion being proportional to the tracking error and inversely proportional to the groove radius. The tracking error divided by the radius has become known as the Weighted Tracking Error (WTE). Löfgren then sought to minimise the tracking distortion by minimising the WTE. Löfgren developed an optimisation method which involved applying the minimax principle (as used by Wilson) to the WTE. The maximum level of the distortion is then represented by the slope of the tracking error graph rather than by the level of the tracking error. This method results in less tracking error at the inner grooves where the wavelengths are shorter. The introduction of this inverse radius weighting complicates the analytical solution, and Löfgren uses an approximation method which relies on the error angle being small. This is a reasonable mathematical approach, and incurs very little error. An interesting feature of the optimisation method is that the null radii will later be shown to be the same as those provided by the later authors. The optimum solution from Löfgren provides for an offset angle and overhang which minimises and equalises the three resulting WTE peaks across the record playing surface. This three-point, equal-WTE solution has continued to be applied to the present day, and I refer to this as the ’Löfgren A’ solution.

"An objection that could be raised against the [Löfgren A] calculations is that the three maximum values of the parameter δ/r (ie, WTE) are not of the same importance. A greater importance should actually be attached to the maximum at r* than to the maxima at the inner and outer recorded radii r1 and r2, first because δ/r changes only slowly in the vicinity of r*, while in contrast δ/r changes very rapidly at r1 and r2. Secondly, the inner and outer radii r1 and r2 are not necessarily utilised with each record. Because of this consideration one should permit somewhat larger values of δ/r at r1 and r2 than at r*.". Clearly, Löfgren was concerned with the extended period of slowly-changing distortion between the null radii. Thus, the central WTE (and distortion) peak should be lowered, while allowing for short periods of higher WTE (and distortion) at the inner and outer groove radii. "

 

In any standard calculator you can read these:

Maximum error always be: Löfgren B , Maximum distortion always be Löfgren B and Average RMS Distortion always be Löfgren A by around 0.04% that has no consequence in what you listen.

You know that there is nothing perfect and only trade-off choices. You prefer B no problem.

R.

@pinwa

Although it has been over a decade since I last aligned a cartridge, I am curious about how AlignmentProtractor.com accounts for the errors induced by the printer, its settings and the media you print on? I spent my career in the print industry and there is always some amount of stretching or distorting with any flexible media such as paper.

I downloaded a "printable ruler pdf file", set my printer to print at 100% and over a 9" length there was a little more than 1/32" of stretching. Oddly, the print was accurate up to 5", but in the next 4" it gained 1/32+".

I assume that a deviance of around 1/32" might alter the expected sonic results.

Actually @rauliruegas I prefer tangential tracking, or as close as you can reasonably get. The two arms that have my attention are the Reed 5T and the Schroder LT. I have specific requirements in a turntable that few tables meet in total. Sota is re-designing the Millenium. My current plan is to take a Millenium, strip it of it's suspension, mount a Reed 5T on it and place the whole rig on a Minus K platform. I may also mount an LT. The Millennium's stock suspension can not handle the weight of the 5T and the LT is so long it will require an outrigger of some sort. Nothing like a science project.

@tony1954 The Alignment Protractor that is generated includes 190 mm vertical and horizontal distances that you measure after printing and then you adjust the scaling on the web page and generate another protractor and remeasure etc..  I have had no problem getting them within 0.1mm which is a negligible error over 190mm.