Tracking Force

[BobM]

Anti skate can be set by ear. Find a recore with some vocals and some decent dynamics. Then set the force to zero. This works best with someone helping you, but you can do it yourself if you're patient.

Listen to the right channel and you should hear it almost lower in dynamic volume than the left (a bit recessed). Slowly turn the tracking force up, I mean very slowly a wee bit at a time. Eventually you should start to hear the right channel coming up and getting closer to what the left channel is producing dynamically. Then as you get higher you should hear both channels sounding more dynamic and just better and better. Move the anti-skate up very slowly now.

At last you will hear a fairly dramatic drop off int he quality of both channels. You have now gone a wee bit too far. Back it off a notch and you have optomized your anti-skate.

Enjoy,
Bob

[richidoo]

Hehehehe this is gonna be fun! Thanks Bob!

Listening to my simple TT rig this morning after all the great DACs last night is a very soothing feeling. Dynamics and detail aren't even close on my TT, but the immersion factor and red meat listening satisfaction is better. It will be good to get it optimized.

[_Scotty_]

BobM is correct,you could set the anti-skate force by ear with a regular record instead of a test record.
The catch is that you will have the best results and the least difficulties by using a MONO recording. The key to the exercise is that both channels have identical content making it far easier to tell when one channel is not the same as the other. The HFNRR test record has a 300 Hz test tone in mono on it. The detection of distortion is much easier when pure tones are used which is why the test record uses them for making adjustments of the phono cartridge by ear.* "Generally speaking,excursion of 100 uM or 4 mils at 300 Hz is the maximum better cartridges can track." *
Scotty

*From Handbook for Sound Engineers The New Audio Cyclopedia Gene Ballou,Editor
Published by  HOWARD W SAMS & COMPANY Audio Library
Copyright 1987 Howard W. Sams & Co. A Division of Macmillan,Inc.

[richidoo]

I will try a Clifford Brown ballad, in mono. I think some jazz vocal records are mono too. Thanks
Rich

[mfsoa]

I hate the anti-skate on my ProJect Carbon arm- It's one of those fishing-line w/ a weight jobbies.

For kicks I just took the damn thing off and the sound quality improved dramatically to the point where I don't use any anti-skate at all.

Apparently, the gain of having some anti-skate force applied was being far offset by having a string/weight attached to the tonearm.

I try to listen for channel imbalace / excessive inner-groove distortion etc. but I don't hear any.

It simply sounds better w/out that weight directly attached to the tonearm.

Maybe the cart (AT440 MLA) has something to do with it.

-Mike

[rollo]

BobM is correct,you could set the anti-skate force by ear with a regular record instead of a test record.
The catch is that you will have the best results and the least difficulties by using a MONO recording. The key to the exercise is that both channels have identical content making it far easier to tell when one channel is not the same as the other. The HFNRR test record has a 300 Hz test tone in mono on it. The detection of distortion is much easier when pure tones are used which is why the test record uses them for making adjustments of the phono cartridge by ear.* "Generally speaking,excursion of 100 uM or 4 mils at 300 Hz is the maximum better cartridges can track." *
Scotty

*From Handbook for Sound Engineers The New Audio Cyclopedia Gene Ballou,Editor
Published by  HOWARD W SAMS & COMPANY Audio Library
Copyright 1987 Howard W. Sams & Co. A Division of Macmillan,Inc.

AGHAAAAA, thanks Scotty.


charles

[richidoo]

For kicks I just took the damn thing off and the sound quality improved dramatically to the point where I don't use any anti-skate at all.

That's funny, because my friend Sol got a Project TT on closeout from a Tweeter a while back, but hasn't used it because the anti-skate fishing rig was missing. Time to fire it up! Thanks Mike
Rich

[rollo]

Well Scotty and Bobo got around to using the mono recording. Wow thanks for the tip. It sounds much better.


charles