Is extremely accurate "VTA" adjustment necessary?

Rene,

I was going to post a link to Romy's site, because I find it quite amusing! But, there are some here who he pissed off big time. But at least we know he has a system! His rack description is a classic:

This would pretty much give an idea where is my TT lives. The stand was collaboration with Rix-Rax and was a custom solution to accommodate 14 components. The stand’s frame is metal, hollow and filled with a mix of sand and led shots, toped with heavy like hell, granite bridges. The turntable and the granite shelf are decoupled by a Vibraplane. The rack is as “dead” as it should be. To test is very simple: stop the platter lover a cartridge to the mat, turn the volume all the way up, and begin to jump in the room like a wounded in ass antelope. With .5mV cartridge output, 28dB gain in step-up, 55 db gain on preamp, 11db gain in preamp, 12 dB gain in power amp, with a LF-capable 109-sensitive speakers the woofers should not fly away… Also, in the left bottom corner you may see my beautiful Koshka who has hundreds light-years of space between Her ears…

And, to top it all off, I'm glad you actually did get something out of this thread!

Joe

Ha! I guess when you've been banned from about everyone site you're joined, the ultimate solution is to start your own..... Wish he would take as much time to describe what he likes instead of what he doesn't like. Romy - Mr. Half-Empty, himself.

Good thing he doesn't know what's in my system cause all my "brands" have gotten a pass! ;-)

It's not a bad site at all. Evidently he's made a big effort to find out what suits his taste. He also found a great niche photographing wedding$, which allows him all that spare cash. I'm wondering what would happen if he'd insert all Poiema cabling in his system...

I'm wondering what it would be like to replace my MSE Gen II's with Poiema, but there's that pesky cash issue.....

restock, thank you. being involved in audio for thirty years i already had this discussion. back when my eyes were good and my hand was steady, I spent long hours into the night trying to adjust vta. back then hardly anybody cared about vta. that meant very crude methods of lowering and raising tonearm height. beleive me i scratched up more than one of my favorite records trying to adjust vta while the record was playing. you can measure arm height to very small tolerances. you will have to go outside audio to find a device to do it. the manufacturer has designed the stylus so all things being equal and the cartridge body is parrallel to the record surface you will duplicate the intended contact patch of stylus to record. trust me. that is the intent of all these cartridge adjustments. think about it. any misalignment of the cartridge either shrinks the contact patch or skews that contact patch from the center of the grove. don't worry about the angle of the cutting head. it's varying record thickness that throws of the vta of your own setup.
the other parameters are not senstive to record thickness. thus they dont vary from record to record. having said all that. the final test of anyhting audio is in the listening. if you can't hear it it aint worth the trouble. Just remember the the first magazine article i read on vta was based on mathemical proof of the signifcance of vta which was then later confirmed by the golden ears. I pitty the poor soul who is trying to find the sweet spot by ear. even if it can be done, which i doubt, it has to be maddening.