Origin Live Aurora MKI - Manual (Page 17)

17
Tracking Force
This adjustment is carried out on the counterbalance weight of the tonearm or spring dial if one is in place. At
this point, use y our tracking force gauge and setting tracking force according to your cartridge instructions —
final adjustment will be done later by ear.
If you do not have a tracking force gauge, but the arm does have a calibrated counterweight, defeat the arm’s
anti-skate mechanism or set it to zero. Set the counterweight so the arm is level and balanced. Be very careful
of the unprotected stylus — you cannot do this with its safety cap in place. Once the arm is balanced, lock it in
its cradle and, using the calibrated counterweight, set the tracking force according to your cartridge’s
recommended weight.
Tangency Alignment
(Lateral tracking angle) - Follow the manufacturer's literature and the dictates of your alignment gauge —
different gauges use slightly different methods. As you square up the hi-fi cartridge body with the gauge’s
markings, be sure that the cartridge sides are square or your alignment will be wrong. When all adjustments are
correct, carefully tighten down the hi-fi cartridge mounting screws. Keeping a firm grip on hi-fi cartridge and
headshell together so nothing shifts, delicately tighten each screw down a turn or so, and then repeat until tight.
Tightening down one screw all the way before tightening the others is almost certain to twist the cartridge out
of alignment. However careful you’ve been, always check the alignment again after tightening.
Vertical Tracking Angle (VTA)
Unless your tonearm has a special VTA adjuster, adjusting arm height is usually carried out with the use of
spacing washers (a s with Rega arms). In arms with a pillar / collar type vta adjuster it helps to put pencil or pen
marks on the pillar to keep track of various heights. See your tonearm manual for its recommendations on
adjusting arm pillar height. The best approach is to tune-in VTA gradually by listening to music. You know the
arm needs to be lowered at the arm pillar when the overall sound is hard and bright, with thin bass or no deep
bass, edgy highs, and harsh midrange (of course, this could also be tracking force whic h is too light). Distortion
obscures low level details between the musical; notes so dynamic range is reduced. Transient attacks may be
too sharp. Raise the arm when the sound is dull and damped, the highs rolled off, the lows muddy and lacking
definition, and transient attacks are dull. Mind you, this sounds an awful lot like the effects of changes in
tracking force (too light is edgy, too heavy is heavy and dull). They are different sounding but hard to explain.
Start with the arm a little low and very gradually raise it, first to where it is parallel to the record, and then so
the back of the cartridge is tilting up. Keep track of your settings so you can return to the one you like best
where everything snaps into focus. The range of adjustments can be quite broad, as much as 3/4" or even more
(at the arm pivot). Play with the full range so you know what it sounds like and don’t be diffident.
Antiskate Force (pivoting arms only)
This applies an opposing, balancing force to the natural inward drag of a pivoting arm while playing. Left
uncontrolled, the stylus would push up against the inner groove wall, causing distortion both from mistracking
and a cantilever skewed in relation to the cartridge generator. To set, lower the stylus down near the label of a
record with a wide run-out to it. Increase antiskate until the arm starts to slowly drift outward, away from the
label. Again, this should be finalized by ear as you listen to music. If image placement is a little off-centre, or if
things don’t seem to be lo cked in solidly, experiment with antiskate. Also, watch the stylus when you set it into
a groove. Does it move to the right or left relative to the cartridge body? This indicates too much or too little
antiskating.
Fine Tuning
You now have three adjustments approximated. Tracking force, VTA, and azimuth. It’s a matter of reiteration
to optimise the sound. The change in sound with each of these individual adjustments can be similar. It’s
therefore necessary, in optimising all three, to experimentally move from one type of adjustments to the next,
then to the next, in order to balance the optimisation for all three. It's helpful to listen to female vocals as you
proceed. Firstly try deviating from the cartridges recommended tracking force by small increments - about 0.2
of a gram deviation above and below the manufacturer’s basic recommendations. Don’t worry about record
damage from heavy tracking as most record damage is actually caused by mistracking in the middle-to-high
frequencies with too little tracking force rather than with too heavy. If you’re getting mistracking at the low
(lightest) end of the range and yet the low range is generally sounding the best (and on moderate signals, not
heavy passages), then chances are you have either a dirty stylus, a bad record, an accumulation of crud in your