getting azimuth right

Excellent report. Glad you're hearing and enjoying improved sound!

To address your question, "Is this unusual", the answer is "no". In fact it's common.

Jcarr of Lyra once posted about the technical challenge of affixing styli to cantilevers at precise 90 degree angles. It's difficult, costly and the reject rate climbs rapidly if a manufacturer insists on "perfection". Therefore, several degrees of tolerance are typical for all but the very costliest cartridges. That's the reality and we users must deal with it. Of course if a new cartridge is badly out of spec we should expect a repair or replacement, but small deviations do exist.

There are more reasons. Adjusting azimuth by levelling the headshell naively assumes that all the following are perfect:
- angle of headshell top surface to bottom surface
- angle of headshell bottom surface to cartridge top surface
- angle of cartridge top surface to the interior surface the suspension is mounted on
- squareness of the suspension material itself (which happens to be elastic)
- angle of suspension to cantilever
- angle of cantilever to stylus (as mentioned by jcarr)
Of course nothing is perfect and this list identifies at least six opportunities for error. If you're lucky, some inaccuracies will counteract others. If you're not...

The optimal way to start any adjustment is simple: ALWAYS adjust the parameter that's (i) as close as possible to what you're actually concerned about while (ii) being readily visible or measurable. With azimuth our prime concern is the angle of the stylus to the groove when viewed from the front. That's readily visible, especially with a Mint, so that's where we should start.

Since eyeballing azimuth is so easy, levelling anything else is foolish (sorry). Manufacturers like VPI, who even offer little rods to help level headshells, do a disservice to their customers. Levelling the cartridge body as a proxy for azimuth makes no more sense than squaring the cartridge body as a proxy for zenith. We don't play grooves with a cartridge's body.

Once you've got the stylus looking vertical, fine tune by ear using VERY tiny adjustments. A small fraction of one degree is audible in a good system. Tightness and focus of high pitched instruments or vocals is probably the single easiest thing to listen for, though azimuth affects everything you described.

Again, congrats and enjoy!

I ve used the ear method to adjust azimuth and have enjoyed a lot of music with my labor and time to set azimuth this way. A friend lent me his Fozgometer I was surprised that my low output cartridge .23mv worked straight into the meter. I was with in 1db of equal on the meter for left and right channels and decided to get both channels equal for a sound check.

Well i'm glad i did it took all of 3 minutes to set both channels equal and the results of this are a big step up from before the use of this fine vinyl tool on my rig. I spend a fair amount of cash on my system but for the results i am hearing i believe the price of a Fozgometer is well worth its cost. If you want to tweak from the equal point on the meter at least you have a benchmark to work with.

The cartridge is a Benz H2.

I'm interested in this software as I use a digital RIAA implementation and have all the hardware, and really the means to do most of what the software can. Still, I'm interested.

I see you can use Source>WAV and load wav files? I would need to do so after applying the RIAA curve to my files (or maybe not with 1kHz tone). Can anyone verify I can run all tests and plots from wav file source?

thanks!

What does the fozgometer measure? Are you going for equal crosstalk level? The fact is cartridges show a level difference between L and R. Adjusting azimuth for equal crosstalk is not a useful and accurate method.