Transfiguration Axia cartridge review

[garylkoh]

The Kuzma has an effective mass of 14g - still a bit bass light in my opinion. With such a low compliance, it would sound best with an arm around 20g.

In the scale of things, the Axia is a borderline low-compliance design.

 

[mullard88]

Hi Gary,

Thanks for post 19. It was very enlightening for me.

Sam

 

[amirm]

I think audio reviews are equal parts information and entertainment.

Great point. That is the whole reason behind the new cooking channels. Hardly anyone watches them to learn to cook. They watch them for entertainment. They call it "food porn."

 

[microstrip]

If you are as lazy as me you can use the excellent Resonance Evaluator of the vinylengine site. After you introduce the tonearm mass you get a complete chart of resonance frequency versus compliance.

http://www.vinylengine.com/cartridge_resonance_evaluator.php

The same link gives access to a comprehensive library of cartridge characteristics, including compliance.
A tonearm library is also accessible in this site.

 

[cjfrbw]

I don't know that "resonant frequency" or compliance have much to do with "bass response", except if resonant frequency is too high, you will possibly get audible rumble and waste a lot of preamp/amp energy. VTA and down force are probably more influential, as bass response will be a variable with these, as well as the inherent robustness of the turntable i.e. high mass.

It does seem that with higher effective mass arms and lower compliance cartridges, you get a fuller, more tape-like presentation vs. the more ethereal and theoretical presentation of high compliance cartridges with lower effective mass arms.

There are still some antiquarians that think that an ordinary, standard conical tip Denon 103 on a long, high mass arm and an idler drive turntable are still amongst the best vinyl playback systems. The denons 103's are throw aways by high end standards (price-wise, that is) and very low compliance.

However, you can also get odd synergies amongst cartridge-arm setups that shouldn't work, so nothing is particularly set in stone or predictable.

 

[KlausR.]

Garyl,

I'm not a turntable set-up expert, and I was waiting for someone with more knowledge to weigh in, but I'm surprised that no one has brought up the issues of Cartridge/Tonearm Matching 101. cjfrbw mentioned it in passing, but strangely, none of the vinyl experts has come in with an explanation.

In 1976 Shure engineers measured 67 randomly selected records and found that all records have warps between 1 and 3 Hz, 20% have warps between 5 and 6 Hz, 5% have warps between 9 and 10 Hz. The curve of relative warp occurrence vs frequency rises sharply below about 7 Hz. They show a theoretical graph of amplitude vs frequency where the response starts rising at about 4 times the resonance frequency. From that it could be concluded that system resonance results in enhanced deep bass rather than lack.

Happ et al., “Record warps and system playback performance”, JAES 1976, p.630

In a later paper Taylor determined the power spectral density of 110 records and concluded: “The results presented indicate record warps to be less than has been thought previously. The average PSD is also an order of magnitude less than the worst case envelope PSD.” The abstract says: “The worst case envelope for vertical warps is shown to be somewhat lower than that used by previous investigators. More importantly, the average vertical warp is seen to be an order of magnitude less than the worst case.”

Taylor, “Measurement of spectral content of record warps”, JAES 1980, p.859

In 1977 Ladegaard presented a paper to the AES convention where measured amplitude response (5-20 Hz) was shown for 3 different cartridges combined with 3 different arms. All combinations show a rise towards the respective resonance frequency. Ladegaard states that the range above 20 Hz is however, both measurably and audibly, affected in terms of rumble, wow & flutter, VTF. Further, whenever resonance occurs, IM distortion in the audible band is generated. Various test records were used for the different measurements.

http://www.vinylengine.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1281


The question is, what importance do these findings have for a random selection of commercial records used for a review?

Again, I'm no turntable set-up expert, but this thread was irritating me because MF is supposed to be the expert on turntable set-up, and he even has a DVD teaching us all how to set one up.

Fremer is an expert who considers Risch’s article “More than one vertical tracking angle” in Audio, March 1981, as proof that SRA is more important than VTA. When reading Fremer reviews, one should further keep in mind that he is the guy who wrote that the SME 30/2 had better bass than the Rockport Sirius when the only component present in the two systems used for the two reviews was the power amp.

Klaus

 

[garylkoh]

Thank you Klaus. That was very educational.

Gary

 

[garylkoh]

There are still some antiquarians that think that an ordinary, standard conical tip Denon 103 on a long, high mass arm and an idler drive turntable are still amongst the best vinyl playback systems. The denons 103's are throw aways by high end standards (price-wise, that is) and very low compliance.

That would make me an antiquarian.

A Denon 103R, Blu-tack, and two pre-1983 pennies on the headshell

 

[cjfrbw]

I have the same objections to SRA arguments as I have towards a lot of azimuth arguments. Playback needles are not cutter heads, if they have any pliability at all, then they will "lock" into the groove according to the dynamic forces applied by the groove as a product of down force, any fine passive adjustment of SRA beyond a certain point will tend to be meaningless.

In a dynamic situation, the variable groove forces will overwhelm the passive adjustments, the passive adjustments are at best approximations.

SRA and Azimuth adjustments tends to be what I would call "false precision". Beyond a certain point, you cannot improve the general error envelope imposed by the dynamic limitations of the vinyl playback system with increasingly anal passive geometric manipulations.

That is at odds with a lot of analog tweaking fetishes that prevail on many boards.

 

[microstrip]

(...) SRA and Azimuth adjustments tends to be what I would call "false precision". Beyond a certain point, you cannot improve the general error envelope imposed by the dynamic limitations of the vinyl playback system with increasingly anal passive geometric manipulations.

That is at odds with a lot of analog tweaking fetishes that prevail on many boards.

The question is just how you define "Beyond a certain point" . The certain point will depend a lot on type of stylus - some shapes are very sensitive to small misalignment, others are not so sensitive. Also, most of the time naked eye alignments are not the proper ones as the stylus is not perfectly mounted in the cantilever.

I an not the kind of people who changes the Stylus Rake Angle (SRA)/ Vertical Tracking Angle (VTA) for every LP, but after mounting a phono cartridge I always optimize the azimuth with a test LP with separate null L and null R for minimum crosstalk using an oscilloscope (or nowadays with a soundcard and some free generic audio software).

For other settings I just use the manufacturer recommended values - he should know them better than me!

For a nice glossary of these terms and simple advice on how to set the basic parameters see:

http://www.deadwaxcafe.com/vzone/cartalign.asp

 

[KlausR.]

I have the same objections to SRA arguments as I have towards a lot of azimuth arguments.

To the best of my knowledge, SRA has never been thoroughly examined, and I don’t know of any paper in a peer-reviewed journal. In other words, no one knows what exactly happens when SRA is incorrect. In this Audio article the authors hypothesize, theorize, think that a mismatch causes IM distortion and scanning loss.

Azimuth: I know of only one paper that investigates the effects of azimuth:

Jakobs, “Analysis of crosstalk on stereo test records”, JAES 1971, p.280

One would have to examine the crosstalk figures in the light of perceptual thresholds
for crosstalk, such as from

Taylor, “The maximum permissible interchannel crosstalk for imperceptible restriction of stereophonic stage width”, BBC RD 1979/7
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1979-07.pdf


Klaus

 

[cjfrbw]

To the best of my knowledge, SRA has never been thoroughly examined, and I don’t know of any paper in a peer-reviewed journal. In other words, no one knows what exactly happens when SRA is incorrect. In this Audio article the authors hypothesize, theorize, think that a mismatch causes IM distortion and scanning loss.

Azimuth: I know of only one paper that investigates the effects of azimuth:

Jakobs, “Analysis of crosstalk on stereo test records”, JAES 1971, p.280

One would have to examine the crosstalk figures in the light of perceptual thresholds
for crosstalk, such as from

Taylor, “The maximum permissible interchannel crosstalk for imperceptible restriction of stereophonic stage width”, BBC RD 1979/7
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1979-07.pdf


Klaus

I think you forgot the "orgasmic audio epiphany"? "I adjusted the azimuth and SRA by a fraction. The heavens opened up, a celestial host of perfectly phased audio information now gathered in front of me to overwhelm me with musical ecstasy. Merely a moment ago, before the adjustment, the field was grey, muddled and forelorn. The Orgasmo-Azimuithometer is a must have for any serious analog setup."

Is cross talk less than 20 db even audible? I doubt it. Most azimuth adjustments made by audiophiles aren't along the axis of the cantilever, (which is a moving variable during playback), but are done by swiveling the head shell around the axis of the tone arm shaft. This just lifts the whole motor and cantilever assembly outward or inward, it doesn't change the relation of the cantilever to the motor, but it does change the relation of the cartridge to the headshell and to the tone arm shaft and to the bearing. This usually requires an additional collar juncture and sometimes a broken contact point for the signal. These "cures" seem to be worse than the "disease".

If one were to assert measured improvement of phase response, it would be with a test record in an isolated case scenario, not the running average of the many records played from a record collection.

I think "precision" tends to end with the VTA adjustment. If you have a precisely constructed turntable with a precisely constructed tonearm with a precisely adjusted base and a proper headshell arrangement, then messing with SRA and azimuth is likely to just muck things up, especially if it requires an non-monolithic tonearm assembly and multiple contact points for the signal.

If you "need" SRA and azimuth adjustments, then you probably have a poorly constructed cartridge and need a different one.

If you have a particular needle profile, it will still be "locked" into the groove by frictional forces, it is not an infinitely lubricated, rigid entity that responds to passive geometric adjustments with any reliability during playback.