Lyra Titan i - in focus?

That cartridge (like the majority of Lyra carts) is designed to move any energy from the tracking process via its body into the Headshell / Arm. Based on this, the Titan i is like a race car, it simply show you what kind of driver is inside. It simply works best with Arms who have superior energy transfer and solid bearing. With regular arms it will never work at its maximum, no matter what setting is done. all you can do is to try what is the best position for your Arm and that's it. I use for it a Graham Phantom supreme but the Fr-64s is a much better arm for it for example. No matter in what position the cartridge, it is better from sonics compared to the Graham and the Graham is a really good Arm. A sonic disaster is for example SME 3012, Triplanar VII and some more...The Titan is one of those very, very rare carts which have no limit, the better your System is, the Titan will follow. I know from a dealer who has a customer who bought a expensive Brinkmann turntable, Thales simplicity and Lyra Atlas and he was totally frustrated. The hope expensive+expensive+expensive=excellent didn't work. It was quite the opposite. The Titan i is for ME one of those carts which never stop to amaze me. When done right it is among the best carts ever made.

Thank you, Jfrech and Syntax. I agree with your comments. My arm may not be the best but it should be good enough, the SME V. I fully agree with you Syntax, the Titan i is so good that tweaks continue to amaze. For example, I got considerable improvement, first, modifying my VPI HW-19, including a Bright Star sand box supported by bicycle tires (!), and lately, changing to a Hanss T-30 player with magnetic suspension.

I hope we get some "click-in" enthusiasts into this thread, describing "just the right" VTA-SRA tonearm (or shell) adjustment. If no one shows up, my preliminary verdict is that even if overall setup is very important, the VTA/SRA is not that critical. But this is obviously a topic that needs more illumination.

O-holter, What alignment protractor are you using? I used to own an SME V and now have the SME V-12. In each case, I had a Mint LP protractor made for my specific arm/cartridge combination and found that it does improve alignment over the standard SME template.

Have you also played with cartridge loading and gain on your phono stage? These and VTF can also effect results.

To Syntax's point, the SME V is effective at draining energy away from the cartridge down the arm tube and into the armboard. I also removed the finger lift from my arm which in theory at least can introduce additional vibration at a very bad location.

Thanks Peterayer. Did the Mint protractor measurement make you move the arm forwards or backwards in the base compared to the SME protractor?

Very slightly forward on the V and very slightly back in the V-12. But perhaps more importantly, it showed at the null points that the cantilever was not quite tangent to the groove, so I had to twist the cartridge in the headshell and it made a real difference.