This 3rd and final installment of the Turntable Setup Guide will build on the information presented in Part 1 and Part 2. If you’ve not yet read these first two parts, I’d recommend you do so before continuing with this one.
Also, this guide is for those of you who have tonearms that, like the Triplanar U2 tonearm I use, feature an adjustment for azimuth. If your tonearm does not have such an adjustment, then I suggest that Parts 1 & 2 of my guide should be enough to approach the full performance potential of your tonearm and cartridge.
Alternatively, WAM Engineering offers a service where they will analyze your cartridge and build a custom shim to be installed between the cartridge and the headshell. This shim is built to optimize your cartridige’s performance, including adjusting for azimuth. Therefore it is possible that even without a tonearm with an azimuth adjustment, you could very well improve the performance of your cartridge and tonearm beyond what you’ll be able to achieve with Part 1 of my setup guide.
But it’s going to cost you. Besides the time and effort it takes to remove your cartridge, box it up and send it to Santa Rosa, California, the cost of the service is just under $500. Also, in order to provide WAM Eng. with the data they’ll need to build your shim, you must also buy the WallyReference tool, and that tool costs another $275, plus shipping.
So to go this route, which, I should add, I have not done myself, the price is whatever time it takes you and at least $800, depending on the cost of shipping your cartridge back and forth to California. I’m not saying this to discourage you or anyone else from trying this service. On the contrary, please do try it and share your experience with me. I’d be very interested! I’m just laying out the facts.
And here’s one more fact to consider – the cantilever on your cartridge will soften and bend with use. This is normal and not something you need to worry about, but it does mean that the angle of the cantilever relative to the record surface will change a little over time. That means the optimal setting for azimuth will also change as you play more records, which, once you hear how good they sound with your azimuth set right, you’ll want to do a lot of!
Therefore, if you want to optimize your turntable’s playback performance, you’ll need to readjust your azimuth periodically. I expect the extent to which this is necessary will depend on many factors including everything from what turntable, tonearm and cartridge you have to how many records you play to exactly what records you play and how revealing those records are, or have the potential to be, to how good your system is at revealing what’s on your records.
My experience with my system, a very revealing one on which I play records capable of very high fidelity playback, is that I need to readjust my azimuth about every 2-3 months. Or at least that’s what I’ve needed to do with my current cartridge, which is the first cartridge I’ve had with which I’ve learned to fine tune this adjustment.
So, we’re setting the bar very high here. We’re aiming for the stars in terms of playback quality. And some might say we’re getting pretty nitpicky doing it. So feel free to bail out now, before it’s too late! Because once you’ve heard your best sounding records played back on a rig that’s set up to reveal everything on them, there’s simply no going back.
Fine-Tune Your Anti-Skate
Before we dive deeper into Azimuth, I’d like to talk about how to dial in your tonearm anti-skate adjustment. In Part 2 I discussed the WallySkater and how it is, to best of my knowledge, the only tool available that provides a reliable way of knowing if your anti-skate setting is correct.
That is, unless you have a Triplanar U2 tonearm and a Dynavector Karat 17dx cartridge with the VTF set at 1.8g. If that’s the case then I descrie in Part 2 exactly how to set your anti-skate, in which you can skip this section and go on to azimuth.
If you don’t have a Triplanar U2 and/or a 17dx then I would encourage you to buy or borrow a WallySkater. Not just becauses the WallySkater will tell you if you’ve set the adjustment correctly, but also because it tells you if your tonearm has its own horizontal torque force, independent of any anti-skate you apply.
I briefly discussed this issue of horizontal torque force a little in Part 2. Suffice it to say that having too much of this force in your tonearm is far from desirable as it will make the tonearm much less responsive, and this lack of responsiveness will cause quite a bit of distortion on playback.
If you buy or borrow a WallySkater and with it you discover that your tonearm does have its own horizontal torque force (you can use the WAM Engineering instructional videos to find out how much of this is acceptable and when you need to address it), WAM Engineering will gladly provide you with assistance on what you need to do to correct this.
Alternatively, you can certainly set your anti-skate by ear with listening tests, such as the one I describe below for azimuth. In my experience, I found doing this especially challenging, for one particular reason – where exactly do you start? My tonearm has an awful lot of options for where to set the anti-skate with different sized weights that can be set at many different positions along a small bar. With little guidance as to where to set the anti-skate to begin with, I found myself scratching my head wondering which weight to use and where to put it first.
Fortunately, I got some very specific advice from someone with the same turntable, tonearm and cartridge that I use, and who I knew had tested their settings extensively, advice that I share above. When I eventually did get my hands on a WallySkater, I simply used it to confirm that the setting I had and that was recommended to me was already correct.
No matter how you choose to set your anti-skate, it is worth taking the time to do it properly. It will greatly enhance imaging and the sense of space in your soundstage, and it will give the instruments in that space clearer placement and greater palpability and realness.
Fine-Tune Your Azimuth
As important as properly setting anti-skate is to the sound of our records, I’ve found fine-tuning the azimuth even more crucial. As I describe in another of my recent articles on the topic, a teensy tiny little change to the azimuth can make a HUGE difference in the sound. But as you will see below, getting azimuth right can require some time and some patience.
In Part 2 of my turntable setup guide I explain how to adjust azimuth by eye using a tool. If you adjust your azimuth this way you can get excellent results, especially with a brand new cartridge that’s not yet broken in. In fact, I would recommend adjusting azimuth for a brand new cartridge by eye ONLY, and then waiting until the cartridge breaks in before adjusting it by ear in the way I outline below.
Brand new cartridges, as I discussed in my article on cartridge break-in, have very stiff cantilevers, and they often start out sounding edgy and metallic. But over time, as the cantilever softens a little, the sound becomes more musical and pleasing to listen to.
Over time, as the cantilever continues to soften beyond the initial break- in period (about 50 hours), its shape and position will begin to change ever so slightly. Eventually it will reach a point where it is no longer aligned exactly the way we aligned it to start with.
Now, there is the possibility that this could lead to better sound. If we didn’t align the cartridge properly to begin with, and / or our cartridge was built outside of tolerances, the sound might possibly improve as the position of cantilever changes beyond the initial break-in period. In other words, we got better sound by getting lucky.
This is not the worst thing that can happen. Afterall, better is better, no matter how we get it. But we don’t want to have to rely on luck to get the best sound out of our turntable. We want to be able to exercise as much control as we can over every element of the setup possible. Therefore, I encourage you to be as accurate as you possibly can with your initial cartridge installation and not to rely on luck.
Assuming we’ve been diligent with our installation, and we’re beyond the initial break-in period for our cartridge, we will reach a point when it’s time to adjust azimuth by ear. When that time comes for you and you’re ready to take a crack at it, refer to the detailed approach to setting azimuth by ear that I outline below. Then, get out some of your very best sounding records and get to it. You may be surprised at how good your results are!
Or as my friend Bill, who was kind enough to beta test this approach for me said:
“Holy shit! I can’t believe how well that worked and what a massive difference it made.”
Step 1
Take the necessary steps to prepare to rotate the tonearm headshell to adjust azimuth. Using the tool you used to adjust azimuth by eye, double check that your tonearm headshell is perfectly level to the record surface when the stylus is sitting in a record groove. If you discover that the headshell is not perfectly level, make it so.
Step 2
Choose a classical record, preferably a Super Hot Stamper or better, and one that features a soloist playing with an orchestra. The Beethoven / Reiner lp I wrote about, or a Heifetz violin concerto are great options. Take at least 5 minutes to listen to your record carefully.
*Pay particular attention to the size of the presentation, and to how clearly the orchestra sounds in contrast to the soloist up front.
Then, when you’re ready to proceed with the adjustment, rotate the headshell position ever so slightly in either direction. Then play the same record again to hear what’s changed.
If your system is where it needs to be for this adjustment to have the sizeable impact that it should, you will hear a change in the sound. And if the sound is better, it should be fairly obvious.
Some things you’re likely to hear include the following:
The violin or the piano will sound bigger, fuller and more present. The orchestra behind the soloist will sound clearer, with the individual instruments in the orchestra more discernibly placed behind the soloist. The bass will be tighter, and go deeper.
If the sound is worse, the results may be a little less obvious. However, the soloist may seem smaller than before, while the individual parts of the orchestra will be more vague and harder to make out.
Step 3
If after rotating the tonearm headshell the sound is better, try turning it again, just a hair further, in the same direction (I’m talking so small you can hardly tell you’ve even turned it). In other words, turn it a whisker more in the direction of “better.”
If instead, after the initial turn the sound seemed to get worse, try going just a hair back in the other direction.
*With each turn, make a mental note of which direction you went. Better still, write it down.
Keep rotating the tonearm headshell in teensy tiny increments, listening to the record afterwards each time, until you’ve clearly determined which direction is the direction of “better”.
Step 4
Continue making further rotations in the direction of “better,” listening to the record again after each rotation. Soon you will reach a point where the sound begins to get worse.
Once you reach that point, go one slight turn back in the opposite direction. Then listen again to confirm the tonearm is back to where it sounds best. Once confirmed, stop changing the tonearm headshell position.
Step 5
At this point might want to place the block in front of the headshell again and get a visual of what the “right” azimuth adjustment looks like, in addition to what it sounds like.
Then reset your VTF.
Hey! Wait a minute! What about setting azimuth electronically?
In Part 2 of my setup guide I discuss this approach and explain why I don’t advocate for it. Please refer to that article for more on this.
Fine-Tuning VTA
Those of us who read Tom Port’s blog The Skeptical Audiophile can attest to his insistence that correct VTA setting is essential for hearing a record sound its best. However, I’ve heard from several people who have tried adjusting VTA for their records and have failed to hear meaningful differences in the sound. Therefore I know I’m not the only one of Tom’s readers who has struggled with his approach of adjusting the VTA for each an every record we play.
But when I finally had my anti-skate and azimuth dialed in precisely, that changed. I began to hear the effect of slight changes in the arm height on the sound of most of the records I played.
It’s important to emphasize here the word “slight.” The changes I am talking about are not so large as to be raising or lowering the tonearm meaningfully away from parallel to the record surface. It seems to me we are simply trying to optimize our cartridge VTA adjustment to the extent that we can by accounting for variations in record thickness and groove depth. Either that, or we are further fine-tuning the azimuth adjustment we’ve already made and that is, in fact, influenced by the height of the tonearm.
Whatever the case, remember, we simply want our cartridge stylus to track the record groove in a way that it delivers as much of the content contained in that groove as is possible to our ears. The better the stylus and cartridge do that, the better the resolution and the better the record will sound.
So once we have adjusted everything else as well as we possibly can and confirmed that the outcome of those adjustments is higher resolution and better sound (ie – by ear), then small changes to the height of the tonearm and cartridge relative to the record groove will indeed have an audible impact.
What is that impact? Basically even higher resolution. In particular, better conveyance of the subtle transients that allow recorded music to convey that very special “you are there” experience to us, the listener. IOW – the music will be brought even further to life.
Some caveats to these comments on VTA are as follows. First, we need to play our stereo at a fairly high volume to hear the audible effects of slight changes to the arm height. That means we need a stereo and a room that can play at what Tom Port calls “live volumes,” which is pretty darn loud.
Second, we must play records capable of delivering those subtle transients in the first place. If the records we’re playing are not capable of delivering a certain level of fidelity, we needn’t bother with fine-tuning VTA, or I could argue any of the other adjustments I mention here. Ultimately the records we play need to have the content necessary to make all of this nitpicky fiddling worth the time and effort it takes to do it.
But with the right records, played on a revealing system that’s set up right, the music on our records can come to life in a way so that is so convincing, we may hardly believe what we are hearing.