zyx universe cartr.- ideal weight -ideal vta ,

Doug, are you still calling minimal anti-skating on the Triplanar 5 O-rings? I did that and dynamics improved quite a bit. Do I have to set my anti-skating to zero to dial in my Atmos or is leaving the 5 O-rings on ok?

As always, a great post.

I am using 1.95 VTF. Anything below and you can hear it. As far as VTA I run a tiny bit negative. I tried parallel but it sounded better in my system just down a little. I use it in Schroder SQ arm.

Leave it to Doug to call us all out. On my lesser ZYX, I run it at 1.86 =/-.01. Much less and there added sibilance and much more is a bit congested. My situation is a bit different in that I use a linear arm on an LT-30 (which Doug has seen through pics). Maybe someday I can play in your UNIverse. Enjoy.

Doug, I liked the way you've said that, "Smothers Responsiveness". You analogy makes much logical sense to me about VTA, and Anti-Skate. Your words hit home, thank you for putting it into words than even I can understand.

So many disbelievers seem to speak about "fairies dancing on a head of a pin", and whatnot when speaking about all things "analog".

Your logical suggestions, and advice we have talked about in private.

My Benz Ruby 3 is finally starting to sound like a good Cartridge, it's not sounding "quite so broken" anymore, and sometime soon, I will try your suggestions of O-rings as well, lessening VTF, try to ignore the Digital VTF Scale (within reason), and let my ears be the final judge.

Makes mucho sense that excessive VTF, and Anti-Skate, even if ever so slight, may not serve much benefit.

Doug, are you still calling minimal anti-skating on the Triplanar 5 O-rings?

I am using 1.95 VTF. Anything below and you can hear it.

On my lesser ZYX, I run it at 1.86 =/-.01. Much less and there added sibilance and much more is a bit congested.

I'm responding to Marisplunge, Dgad and Mt10425 together because they're all talking about, "Where do you play right now?"

A funny thing happened with our UNIverse this summer. Until then both our UNIverses (we're on #2) performed best in a VTF range between 1.90g (in the summer) and 2.15g (in the winter). Our changeable climate causes changes in any cartridge and that's been the range for the UNIverses. With anti-skating we were always between 4 and 6 O-rings, varying with VTF and also with individual LP's.

This June or July the mistracking point suddenly began dropping and the sweet spot dropped right along with it. Last year if I'd tried to play a record below 1.90 I'd have gotten mistracking for sure. Yet all of a sudden I found myself using VTF's of 1.85, 1.80, 1.75 and even 1.70! I was also able to reduce antiskating to 3 O-rings, then 2.

What's going on?! The cartridge has 1,000+ hours on it and all of a sudden it's breaking in? I guess that's possible. In June we switched to AIVS from another cleaning fluid that left a lubricant film in the grooves. This film acted as a shock absorber for the stylus. Since the stylus wasn't reaching full extension (and it wasn't, our dynamics with AIVS are hugely improved) the suspension wasn't being fully excercised. I think getting the grooves truly clean has finally allowed our cartridge to fully break in.

Last night, despite temps that would have required 2.00g and 5-6 O-rings a year ago, I played fairly dynamic LP's successfully (gloriously) at 1.65g of VTF and just 1 O-ring! When we played one of our toughest tracking LP's (Ashkenazy/Beethoven sonata #1/London) I finally had to use a bit more force. I moved VTF "up" to 1.68g and used 2 O-rings for antiskating. Result? The best tracking and playing performance we've ever had on this LP.

So, if your records are really clean then at some point in your ZYX's life it may start tracking better at lower VTF's and with less antiskating than you've come to expect. The sonic result is a further improvement, so we fairies all have to stay on our toes to balance on that pin! ;-)