cliveb wrote: > Tangential arms are in principle not a problem, because they are > supposed to *always* be perfectly aligned. > > It's pivoted arms that suffer from compromised geometry. But a properly > aligned pivoted arm should have zero tracking error at two points on an > LP side, with the maximum error about half way across. So the tracking > error at the end of a side isn't any more significant than at other > points. >
It turns out that pivoted arms have a potentially audible secondary effect which is jitter or if you will let me be more technical: FM distortion. Journal of the Audlo ENGINEERING SOCIETY VOLUME 30 NUMBER 9 1982 SEPTEMBER Tonearm Geometry and Frequency-Modulation Distortion Jacob Rabinaw, Raymon Kilmanas "Investigated are the mechanisms by which a tonearm and cartridge system can generate frequency-modulation distortion during playback of phonograph records. Tonearm geometry is shown to influence the relative amount of distortion, and, in particular, tangential tracking designs are shown to be inherently less susceptible to horizontal mode distortion than conventional offset designs." AFAIK this paper never got much traction in the vinyl/audiophile community and there are very few tangential arms that are available for sale. I guess the rather massive inherent other sources of FM distortion overshadow it, in many people's minds. That would be Rabinaw as in Rabco. ;-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ arnyk's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=64365 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=106914 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
