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Using Test LP - curious observations

I've been tremendously enjoying my Lyra Delos with the Classic for about 1.5 yrs now, and just recently remembered I had the Hi-Fi News Analogue Test LP and got the urge to test my setup.
Here are some of my observations that came as a surprise to me:
1) Anti-skate (Bands 6,7,8,9 on side one) - the cartridge "passed" the test on Band 6 without any anti-skate, but there was audible buzzing coming from the right channel at higher amplitudes. Applying anti-skate made NO difference whatsoever to the results, whether on setting 1, 2 or 3 (most anti-skate). I prefer the sound without anti-skate so this only seemed to confirm that applying anti-skate arguably does nothing to improve the sound and likely makes it worse. It also seems to shed some light on why Harry doesn't like anti-skate.
2) Azimuth (Band 5 on side two) - My preamp has a mono switch so this seemed pretty straightforward. According to the instructions, there should be minimal (if any) mono output if the cartridge was aligned perfectly. Well, there was certainly some output, which immediately worried me, but what really left me scratching my head was the fact that no adjustment appeared to correct it, or make a significant difference. I use the Soundsmith's Counter Intuitive to fine-adjust VTF and azimuth, and after about 2 hours of a wide range of adjustments in azimuth through the CI, it was virtually impossible to determine the optimal azimuth setting, i.e., the output seemed consistently the same regardless of adjustments.

Please free to comment, share your experiences or explain my curious results. Or are they not curious?
actusreus
moonglum
619 posts
 
A degree of anti-skate is essential.
Recordings such as soprano with piano accompaniment can be useful. The soprano is usually well centred and will produce sustained notes not dissimilar to a test tone. In this way you adjust against any "edginess" on the most intense signals.
The idea is that it should barely handle these real world signals and no more.

You may find after doing this that Band 1 just happens to sound ok also - if it doesn't sound 100% clean don't worry about it. I've had several copies of the HFN/RR and yet to find one where the spindle hole is centred with 2-3mm.
Although there are those who scorn anti-skate altogether I don't think tonearm designers add A/S mechanisms for fun.
Just my tuppence worth...
moonglum
619 posts
 
BTW "Band 1" means Band 6.
tonywinsc
583 posts
 
In a different post talking about tt speed accuracy, I was feeling ambitious one day and did some measurements and the impact of the record hole center on Wow and Flutter. My test record has about 0.8mm of eccentricity between the center hole and the center of the grooves. That resulted in a +/-2Hz variation in the 440Hz test tone on this record. The tonearm position was 3.5 inches from center.
actusreus OP
733 posts
 
Great feedback! I wholeheartedly agree with Doug and others who rely on actual music and their ears to set up their analog fronts. I guess, in the perfect world it'd be great to have your setup confirmed by objective tests, just like an amp or speaker getting a rave review in Stereophile and then measures perfectly on Atkinson's test bench, but we don't live a perfect world, do we?
As a comment to Nanbil's post, I don't quite understand how a better phono preamp should fix anti-skating issues. Skating is essentially a problem affecting the stylus' interaction with the record surface/grooves, not sound transmission. As an analogy, if your cartridge is misaligned, or wired out of phase, a better amp or a preamp should not fix the problem; in fact, it should actually make the errors more pronounced. A better preamp should only amplify the signal, not modify it.
Another thought on anti-skate is that reading the posts of those who use anti-skate, I should not prefer the sound without it, but I actually do. Music sounds more open and has more air to my ears than with any anti-skate applied. A friend of mine with a much more sophisticated equipment in his system also prefers his Classic without anti-skate. If it's such an objectively verifiable problem, why do some (and that's Harry Weisfeld included) don't hear any improvement with anti-skate applied? Does it mean our ears are not as sophisticated as others' who do?
manitunc
795 posts
 
I suppose if the distortion was causing an input overload on the phono preamp, then a different preamp with a higher input tolerance would seem to fix the anti skating problem.
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