AH I get it. LOL
I was thinking on the technical.
My fav needle was the Stanton 881S, beyond the joke about the graph, it would track perfectly a 1g and it's compliance matched very well with the ultra lite arm on my SLT HK table. The shibata styls was supposed to handle the grooves the best, etc. So again my preference very well might have been that all the numbers were right, a objective type guy was always lurking in me somewhere. LOL
Heavy tracking forces bother me so, they are not as necessary as many claim ... and I'm well aware that higher tracking forces are less prone to miss-tracking and hence vinyl damage, than too low a force. But again, many (most?) vinyl-philes don't understand or pay attention to the relationship between tracking force and generator positioning, which is key to any cartridges success. The idea is to put just enough VTF so that the internal generator, either coils and/or magnet, stay in their most optimum position during play. When breaking-in a new cart, I generally run it at it's highest recommended VTF to start, and as time passes, decrease it accordingly. After about 5/10 hours of play, I start the measuring process/test records ...
In todays world, I simply don't understand how anyone can forgo the measuring process and simply
think(and claim) they've achieved optimum VTA/SRA and azimuth. The criticality of azimuth is highly dependent on stylus profile, and I'm not a big fan of the methodology used with currently available Azimuth setting tools. Few realize, with pivoting arms, any deviance away from the arm being parallel to the platter, influences azimuth.
As is generally accepted, ~92degree optimum SRA setting (I prefer ~93degrees) is as important as the arm is capable, and IMO, few arms are
that capable. Most arms simply resonate way too much to be able to hear slight differences, and many arms don't measure as people claim they sound. Kills me how so many vinyl-philes claim to hear BIG differences with slight SRA settings using many questionable arms, including some popular and expensive SME arms, which I consider (and are measured as) being far to coloured to be nearly that transparent.
The topic of Anti-skate bias ... well, let's leave that for another day ... and to me, its not about being either a moving coil or moving magnet which proves to be "best" by default, its farrrrr more about the generators moving mass.
But measurements often tell the tale ... therefore I think it critical to measure any cart/arm/turntables/phono-stage. Without that data, you're only guessing, but since near every vinyl-phile prefers to "guess" and talk the subjective talk ... well ...
