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From: chowkwan%priam.usc.edu@usc.edu (Raymond Chowkwanyun)
Newsgroups: rec.audio.high-end
Subject: VTA
Message-ID: <10016@uwm.edu>
Date: 7 Mar 91 13:58:44 GMT
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Satish Nair was asking about VTA.


First I read the July 1990 Stereophile and issue 66 of Absolute
Sound which describe how to set up a turntable.
So, it's important to get the other adjustments
like tracking angle, tracking weight, azimuth,
and anti-skate down before you tackle the VTA.

TAS says: when the arm is high the sound will sound
too bright and hard with not enough bass.  When the
arm is low the sound will be dull and muddy, the
lows lacking definition.

Stereophile concurs with the above.

My dealer says forget about all the above and
just keep varying the height till you find the
sweet spot.

Your dealer is also a good place to start for
advice about the right VTA setting for your
cartridge.  I have an Audioquest 7000 in an SME V arm.  
The dealer said that the arm should be either level or lower.

So armed with all this advice, I set out to set
my VTA.  First I leveled off the arm.  Use
a ruler to make the front and back of the arm the
same height off the record.  Then I pushed the
arm down as far as it would go without hitting
the record.  (One of the delights of the SME
is that you can easily raise the arm but to
lower it requires you to physically push it 
down.  Thus if you raise the arm past the 
sweet spot, you have to cue the arm off the
record, push it down and start over.)  

Which record to use?  I used Karajan's recording
of various Strauss waltzes.  This is the recording
of Blue Danube that was used in the movie 2001.
I think an orchestral recording with a lot of detail
will best highlight any VTA deficiencies.  

I started raising the arm, one turn of the VTA screw
at a time.  Damn me if I could really tell any
difference.  So I gave up, locked up the arm and
let things lie.  Over a period of weeks, I would
intermittently attack the VTA setting task.
Finally, I was able to hear that magic sweet spot
when everything locks into focus.  The soundstage
gets wider, yet the instruments sound clearer.
Look for detail that you didn't hear before.

I think what happens is that the first few times you fiddle
with the VTA, your brain is so full of all this advice
that it's hard to just relax and listen.  All the time
you're thinking, "Now is the sound muddy or bright?".
Compounding that I find adjusting the arm was to be a tense, 
nerve-wracking exercise.  I have this unreasoning fear 
that I'll give the arm a good whack and send
that expensive stylus skidding across the disc.  
Also I worried that I would raise the arm past the sweet
spot and have to start over.  Did I mention that the SME arm
needs to be pushed down to lower it?
After awhile though, you learn to relax and then you can
hear better.

Some people like to mark down the correct VTA for a number
of records and then use an average setting that's good
for most of their collection.  There exists a fringe element
that resets the VTA for *every* record.  These persons end up 
getting hauled into divorce court on grounds of excessive 
VTA adjustment.  Personally, I just set it using whatever's
to hand and if I don't send my stylus flying across the disk
in the process, I'm a happy boy.  

-- ray