A Copernican View of the Turntable System

No. I will stick with Stevenson for DV. In fact, this experience (Baerwald vs Stevenson on the DV505) was a good lesson for me on the importance of geometry.

And now, back to your local Copernican view. And as Thuchan says, "all in fun".

Dear Daniel, I don't like to use the 'Greek way out': knowledge beginns by knowing to not know. My point is much more simpler. If you know that you are ignorant about something you should ask questions and not bother about your own 'knowledge status'. Because I got the impression that we are free to choose where we want the least distortion on the record radius, irrespective of the tonearm kind or lenght (aka 'zero points') I thought that
the tonearm design and its 'own geometry' is, say, a 'different animal'. I still remember this issue about the 'optimal effective lenght' of the FR-64S. Was Ikeda san wrong, the user manual or who or what? In the same article by Kessler/Pisha I read: by the overhang of 15mm the only effective lenght that will be optimal is 274 mm, a lenght larger than many TT bases can accommodate. The authors also refer to Bauer and Seagrave (56/57) and not only to Bearwald btw. I have no idea when first stereo LP
was produced but assume, after reading you contribution, that their basic premise was Bearwald from 1941. And then to think , as I deed, that after my high school I was liberated from math. for the rest of my life.

Kind regards,

Dear Nandric, In regards to your post of 08-10-11, I think that the maker of the tonearm, by selecting the offset angle of the headshell and by selecting an upper and lower limit for effective length (the margins for this being equal to the length of the parallel slots in the headshell that permit fore and aft movement of the cartridge), has pari passu selected for us an optimal geometry. We (the end user) are largely denied the luxury of deciding for ourselves where we want our null points with respect to innermost vs outermost grooves. Unless of course one wants to put up with distortions created by forcing an inappropriate geometry to be made to "work". In my experience of N=1 it is best to go with the tonearm designer.

Dear Lew, The math was alas my worst subject at school
but I thougt in terms of 'variables' and 'constants'in this context. I know that the term 'variable' has no sense in the math (thanks to Frege)but we are used, so to speak,
to use those terms. Well if we are free to choose the 'zero points' as we like or depending where we want the the least distortion than this means to me something that is 'variable'. So consequently there must be 'something' which should be constant. So I thought that
this must be the tonearm 'on its own'. I am sorry for my terminology but that is what I thought. From your statements I 'see' or deduce that we have no choice at all in the sense mentioned. Ie the designer of the tonearm in casu predeterminated our 'choice' in advance , so to speak. Ergo we have no 'free choice' at all? What an hobby!

Regards,

Dear Nandric, dear Lewm, I am happy to talk in length about tangential curve and tonearm(s) "on their own", but we should do this in a separate thread.
Because - IMHO - this will soon leave Copernican view and separate arm pods ....
So much for now - no, you can't choose your zero points freely (at least not on a 12" record ...) - not if you want any decent positive results from tracking the signal in the groove.
Cheers,
D.