Vinyl Asylum Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ.

---

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Vinyl Asylum ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

I've also been exploring this kind of stuff recently...

Posted by John Elison (A) on May 16, 2009 at 13:28:02

In Reply to: Azimuth adjustment using Oscilloscope posted by Ungie on May 16, 2009 at 10:35:29:

You don't mention how much azimuth error or tilt you have, but normally there should be no more than about two-degrees one way or the other.

Unfortunately, I do not have a tonearm with azimuth adjustment capability, but I'm considering buying one just to make some measurements. I recently made a couple of measurements of my DL-103R by loosening the bolts at the base of my SME V and tilting the arm slightly. The first two oscilloscope screen shots below have azimuth visually set to zero . The left channel is in yellow and the right channel is in turquoise.

The next two oscilloscope screen shots have azimuth tilted about one-degree counterclockwise looking at the front of the cartridge.

I was actually looking at the signal from my preamp main outputs and I had the volume control set differently for each set of measurements. That's why the signal level is different in the first set of pictures compared with the second. However, crosstalk can be calculated in decibels as follows:

........................... Zero Azimuth ........ One-degree Azimuth

Right Crosstalk ....... -25-dB ...................... -27-dB
Left Crosstalk ......... -47-dB ...................... -36-dB

I believe that if I could have tilted the cartridge another half-degree or so, the crosstalk would have equalized at around -30-dB or thereabouts.

Below is a graph of crosstalk vs. azimuth for Wally Malewicz's Dynavector XV-1s. Additionally, Wally graphed the crosstalk phase shift in the second picture. Interestingly, crosstalk level and crosstalk phase intersect at the same azimuth position.

Dr. Chris Feickert has developed some cartridge measuring software in which he also explores the azimuth and crosstalk phase angle relationship. Additionally, Dr. Feickert discovered that VTA affects the phase angle at which the crosstalk phase curves intersect. For example, if the curves intersect at 135-degrees as they do above, changing VTA can change their intersection to, say, 90-degrees. However, they still would intersect at the same -1.4-degree azimuth position on the upper graph. It is unclear whether the correlation between VTA and crosstalk-phase-angle has any significance with regard to optimizing VTA/SRA, but it would be interesting to explore further.

Check out Dr. Chris Feickert's Adjust Plus Software for which you can also download the manual that explains the azimuth adjustment relationship with crosstalk level as well as crosstalk phase angle.

Best regards,
John Elison

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Sonic Craft

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---