Basic Audio Advice — These Are the Fundamentals of Good Sound

I wrote a long commentary in 2010 criticizing the advice Mapleshade was giving out regarding cartridge and tonearm adjustments, some of which I agreed with and much of which I did not. You can read all about it here.

However, this excerpt from that commentary will focus on Revolver, to the relief of all who read this blog I suspect. Enough with bashing Mapleshade!

I noted back then that Mapleshade gives out some good advice, but it’s mixed in with a lot of audiophile nonsense. The audio world was drowning in absurdities long before I got into the hobby in the early-70s, and let me be the first to admit that I have fallen for more than my share of bad audio ideas over the years. (That’s partly because I have been doing it for so long, if you will forgive me for using that as an excuse. It’s really the only one I have.)

If you want to get closer to the reality of how audio actually works, watching videos won’t get you there.

Neither will reading blogs.

The audiophile who wants to improve his playback quality has only one option, and that is to get his hands dirty, because doing audio is the only way to achieve meaningful results.

Everyone gives out plenty of advice, including us. Testing that advice and putting what you learn from it into practice is what separates the men from the boys, or the better stereos from the other ones in this case (regardless of price).

Here is the complete quote from Mapleshade:

To get first rate sound and to get your money’s worth from any expensive cartridge, you MUST meticulously adjust VTA or tracking force every 3-4 months — that’s because stylus suspensions always sag with use. This lowers VTA and seriously kills dynamics and treble sparkle. Lots of people misinterpret this as a worn-out cartridge, an expensive error. Instead, raise VTA or lighten tracking force until your test record’s treble sounds too harsh, then drop VTA or lighten tracking force a hair. Your test record must not be thicker or thinner than the bulk of your record collection. Adjusting tracking force yields slightly better sonic results and longer cartridge life than adjusting VTA — and adjusting tracking force on most arms is WAY easier than adjusting VTA.

The basic idea here is that your cartridge sags over time, causing the VTA (Vertical Tracking Angle) to change, which results in less dynamics and “treble sparkle.”

So, with this idea in mind, after doing a serious shootout with Revolver in 2010 and hearing a Triple Plus side one with amazing bass and energy, we decided to reduce the tracking weight on our Triplanar arm a tiny, tiny, practically non-existent amount, something in the range of 1/100th of a gram perhaps. 

Cueing up Taxman, we immediately we’re knocked out by the amazing bass line that came jumping out of the left speaker. It was bigger and punchier than we had ever heard it! Wow — who knew? I thought it was amazing before. Hell, it was amazing before, the best I had ever heard it, all of ten minutes ago.

And when the vocals came in, they were even smoother, even more natural. I thought they were already pretty darn smooth and natural, but here they were sounding less strained and more full-bodied.

From a reduction of something like 1/100th of a gram of tracking weight.

As is always the case, once we are on to something, we need to find out what the limits are. We know to keep doing it until we’re overdoing it, and overdoing it came pretty quickly. No matter how little tracking weight we lightened it, the sound got worse. We went back and forth again and again, but the truth was incontrovertible: the tiniest amount was the correct amount.

This is as it should be. We are as careful as is humanly possible with our setup. We hadn’t arrived at that original tracking weight by luck or chance, we had worked on it for as long as it took. We kept going up and down again and again until we had complete confidence that the weight was right.

The cantilever of our 17D3 may have been just six weeks old at this point but it had already been dropped onto a record more than a thousand times, perhaps closer to two thousand, and that’s hard on a delicate instrument like a modern moving coil. Our 17D3’s (now Dx’s) take a lot of abuse here at Better Records. It’s why they regularly wear out after three to four months.