Zero Antiskate vs Stylus Wear

Dear Moonglum: There is no doubt that we have to take in deep care on the right TT/tonearm/cartridge set up mainly recovery all the grooves recorded information and to degraded the audio signal the less.

Sometimes we fail on that " perfect " set up and if not we the analog medium is in charge to, due to its multiple imperfections, make it fails.

We can have a perfect set up but the off center LP has to much to " say " and the non-flat LPs full of waves makes that our " perfect " set up goes down changing all the time the VTF/VTA/overhang during playback and we can't do almost nothing to stop it.

There are so many set up parameters that always affect the cartridge traking/ride that in some way we are at " random " for what the analog medium " decide " it self.

The analog medium in theory could be exact like mathematics but on playback we experienced many times that that analog set up parameters theory is not acomplished. Imperfection is the name of the game.

Anyway, I always try to be as accurate as the medium permit me.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Raul, your point is well taken. That is what makes vinyl playback so interesting. Perfection gets boring after a while. Something so special or romantic about the glow of the preamp tubes, the spinning platter and those golden tones- with a little background crackle :)

Dear Raul,
I cannot agree more.
Like you say, perfection can only ever be a theoretical one. Adjusting factors e.g. on a per record basis would be soul destroying because one factor offsets others – which in turn would require correction. Such levels of technicality would quench the spirit and defeat the very purpose of listening to music.
It’s eminently more sensible to spend many days and many records advancing the setup to a happy medium then simply enjoying it. Perfectionism is only useful insofar as achieving the working ideal for one’s own turntable/s whilst in full realisation that temperature, humidity, record warps, manufacturing errors, stylus cleanliness, record cleanliness, etc are the Devil’s way of making sure it doesn’t always run smoothly.

It’s true, we can change our ambient temp or VTA or VTF seasonally to compensate for Summer-Winter changes, depending on which is easier, and we may clean our styli at different intervals, and if we have easy VTA adjustable arms we can alter the level of the arm from 120g -180g as easily as throwing a switch - thereby keeping that idealised relationship unaltered but when it comes right down to it, it’s all about maintaining a reasonable equilibrium.

Regarding your comments about record warps, I do find it interesting that if we introduce a 120g to 180g VTA offset we can clearly hear it and quantify it, yet our ears can be extraordinarily forgiving when it comes to warped LPs (which affects all LPs to at least some degree). Perhaps the ear/brain interface actually compares average rather than instantaneous values? :^)

Speaking of mis-drilling : one of the most obvious examples of wrongly produced vinyl is the HFN/RR test disc. I’ve owned a couple of samples of this and the centre was always drilled 1 or 2mm off centre.
This would result in a wavering effect when using it to adjust bias, with associated intermittent cyclic mistracking on the more severe tracks.
(Personally, I only use music to adjust bias but if one must use an HFN/RR I would advise only to focus on the fadeout of the 12db tone. With some carts of varied trackability and in various states of wear, I’ve heard the tone pulling to one side as the signal level falls to zero instead of remaining centred…although don’t be surprised if your cart shows no difference at your ”ideal” setting.)
Best regards…

Thanks for bringing that old study to our attention. I don't recall whether I ever read it the first time around. I could summarize my response with three statements:
(1) I don't know who ever promulgated the idea of increasing VTF to compensate for skating force without applying AS, but it's ridiculous on the face of it, since skating force will go up as VTF goes up (because friction of the stylus in the groove will also go up).
(2) We all know, and you guys have accurately restated, the pitfalls and inadequacies of the AS mechanisms on a typical tonearm, but the study would suggest that imperfect application of AS is better than no AS at all, unless one applies far too much AS, in which case one has created a new problem.
(3) So best compromise is to use AS but use it conservatively.

By the way, Raul, in passing you wrote something that suggested that headshell offset angle is a culprit in causing skating force, but even a straight tonearm with no headshell offset will generate skating force, so long as the cartridge is aligned with the stylus tip overhanging the spindle, because in that case the cartridge/cantilever is never tangent to the groove. (Not Newton in this case; Pythagorus is responsible.) The RS-A1 tonearm attempts to mitigate the problem by using UNDER-hang; the stylus tip is recommended to be about 20mm short of the spindle. (I am really testing this idea out, about the effect of overhang, but it seems correct to me.)

First let me thank moonglum for posting the link, the paper was very interesting as were some of the others listed on the Audomods site.

I would have to agree with Raul, skating force is a direct result of offset angle, the greater the angle, the greater the vector force created. That is the angle the stylus is offset from line drawn between the stylus and the pivot point of the tonearm, regardless of the shape of the arm.

Here is a video by Wally Malewicz that explains the theory and demonstrates the ill effects of poorly set AS.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=iEVuP6-zYLE&feature=plcp

Don't get me wrong, the Points raised by Kogen are valid they are just secondary. As i see it, if you could line up the stylus in the same plane as the tonearm then there would be no skating forces. Of course this would cause enormous tracking error, so it remains a hypothetical scenario.