if the tonearm is aligned to closer to zero tracking error at the inner grove you should not hear any distortion or mistaking if you stylus has a good polish, cartridge suspension is good and tonearm is good mechanical match for the cartridge. Mastering engineers usually compress the dynamic range of inner tracks or put low dynamics tracks there. The limitation is obvious: they have to fit same time of music into less linear grove distance. I noticed that modern productions cartridges are not coping very well with problems of inner grove. I'm attributing this problem to much lesser styli quality today even at the highest price levels that it was in 70x-80x even at pedestrian level prices. There are obviously always exceptions today, such as Denon. Just to give you some examples: my Technics EPC-200CIIL, Micro Acoustics 630MP, Audio Technica AT20SS and half a dozen other MM and MC cartridges don't show any distortion.
Tracking error distortion audibility
I recently unpacked my turntable from a couple of years of storage. It still sounds very good. Several times during playback of the first few albums I literally jumped from my chair to see which track was playing as it sounded so great. After a while I realized the "great" sound was always at one of the "null" points. They seem to occur at the approximately the proper place (about 125mm from spindle) and near the lead out groove. Questions:
Is this common? I have improved the resolution of my system since the table's been in storage but I don't remember hearing this before.
All others geometric sources of alignment error not defined by the null points (VTA, azimuth etc.) are essentially constant through out the arc correct? If so they should cancel out. I assume the remedy is a linear tracking arm but I am surprised at how obviously better the sound is at these two points.
Table - AR ES-1, Arm - Sumiko MMT, Cart. - Benz Glider, Pre - Audible Illusions, Speakers - Innersound electrostatic hybrid
Do linear arms really sound as good across the whole record as I hear at only the nulls with my set-up?
Is this common? I have improved the resolution of my system since the table's been in storage but I don't remember hearing this before.
All others geometric sources of alignment error not defined by the null points (VTA, azimuth etc.) are essentially constant through out the arc correct? If so they should cancel out. I assume the remedy is a linear tracking arm but I am surprised at how obviously better the sound is at these two points.
Table - AR ES-1, Arm - Sumiko MMT, Cart. - Benz Glider, Pre - Audible Illusions, Speakers - Innersound electrostatic hybrid
Do linear arms really sound as good across the whole record as I hear at only the nulls with my set-up?
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- 139 posts total
- 139 posts total