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The latter feature is necessary to achieve the first, but I know from three decades of writing on this subject (footnote 9) that it puzzles many people. So, using some straightforward geometry, let's clarify how it comes about. Fig.2a shows a triangle representing a pickup arm aligned at the inner of the two zero-tracking-error radii (distance SC). Point S represents the stylus position, point P the arm pivot, and point C the center of the turntable platter. The distance SP is the effective length of the arm and exceeds the distance CP by the overhang: if we use the figures quoted in the…
Another factor that graphs like fig.3 should state is whether RIAA weighting is applied, as suggested by J.K. Stevenson. Because the RIAA deemphasis (ie, replay) curve, ignoring the IEC amendment (footnote 12), declines from +19.4dB at 20Hz to –19.5dB at 20kHz (using the equation in IEC 60098)—an average rolloff of 13.0dB/decade or 3.9dB/octave—Stevenson suggested modifying Baerwald's distortion equation to account for this. If this change is made, then the 1.07% maximum second-harmonic distortion of the red trace of fig.3 is reduced to 0.68%.
The justification for this is perfectly…
I still believe that 58mm is a good practical figure to use, but for the reason already stated, there is good justification for playing safe and using the theoretical minimum of 56mm—as I have done throughout this article.
Alignment Errors
Although this issue is often conveniently ignored, accurate cartridge alignment is very difficult to achieve, not least because the overhang and offset have to be set within extremely tight tolerances if anything like the distortion behavior shown in the red trace of fig.3 is to be realized in practice.
Let's demonstrate this by assuming…
Readers of a mathematical bent will already see what's wrong with this type of protractor. Correct arm/cartridge alignment requires that two independent parameters, overhang and offset, both be set correctly. As is drummed into math students when they learn simultaneous equations, to solve for two independent variables, you need two independent equations in those variables—or, in the case of an alignment protractor, you need two setting points. So achieving optimum alignment with a single-point protractor is a matter of luck. The only thing in its favor, apart from its simplicity, is that…
I always enjoy CES. Like the Big Apple, or the City of Angels, the Consumer Elecronics Show is stimulatingly frenetic and enjoyably fatiguing—things that would soon put me in the funny farm if I lived with them year 'round, but can easily cope with twice a year. In fact, attending CES is rather like visiting the city of my birth, a place whose culture is one with my own because I grew up there, and where half the pleasure lies in seeing once again those audio people—the Allisons, Marantzes, Frieds, Beveridges, Haflers, and Tuckers—whose durability as friends always reminds me of how rapidly…
Best of Show
Before the show, Larry Archibald asked me to look for "about twelve significant new items, for in-depth writeups." I could not find twelve such items. But then, after attending shows like this for more than 30 years, it is perhaps understandable that I can longer consider a new preamplifier from Company X or a new cartridge from Company Y to be "significant." While I don't wish to minimize the importance of evolutionary improvements in the state of the art, I find it increasingly difficult to take seriously the products embodying those evolutionary advances—which will be…
I was visiting a high-end audio manufacturer several years back, and as the chief engineer and I talked about speaker design, the company's president popped her head around the door and told him that she was sending MacroVision their annual five-figure check.
"MacroVision?" I was surprised. "You don't make video recorders." (MacroVision owns and licenses the technology to prevent the copying of analog video signals.)
"We're about to launch a DVD player," the engineer explained, "and you wouldn't believe the licensing fees we have to pay. MacroVision is just one of them. But as we…
London Concertante: Piazzolla and Beyond
Works by Astor Piazzolla, David Gordon, Adam Summerhayes
London Concertante; Adam Summerhayes, dir.
Harmonia Mundi HMU 907491 (CD). 2009. Chris Grist, prod.; Matt Butler, eng. DDD. TT: 52:01
Performance ****
Sonics ****
Works by Astor Piazzolla, David Gordon, Adam Summerhayes
London Concertante; Adam Summerhayes, dir.
Harmonia Mundi HMU 907491 (CD). 2009. Chris Grist, prod.; Matt Butler, eng. DDD. TT: 52:01
Performance ****
Sonics ****
"How are we even to have a shallow grasp on the complexities of tango, here in northern Europe, decades after its golden age, that we might attempt even a revision of the work of that great and visionary revisionist, Piazzolla?"
Good question. It's one, posed in the liner notes of the aptly titled…
As a musician who has studied of all forms of acoustic and electric keyboard instruments, I have played the gamut of keyboards, from gems to disasters. I think the most significant keyboard developments of the 20th century were the Hammond organ, the Fender Rhodes electric piano, and the Moog synthesizer. These instruments were notable not for their ability to replicate the sound of acoustic instruments, but for the new timbres and textures possible with them, which have since become permanent parts of our musical vocabulary. I have now played an instrument that may prove one of the most…
Although LPs remain, for me, the high-end medium of choice, I'm not terribly interested in today's high-end record players. Most of them, from the 1980s through the present, have been soulless, uninspired, me-too products that utterly fail to communicate the presence, momentum, and punch of recorded music. And in certain ways—expense, complexity, size, cosmetics—some have been, quite simply, ridiculous.
But a relative few have seemed the products of original thinking. And most of those have stood the test of time: The ">Well Tempered Turntable. The Rega Planar 9. The Roksan…