VTA - is it audible?

[Saab]

yes ive read it Wofgang,and Michael hasn't posted an assessent,he has just made a statement

i am just asking for some clarification about 'so called',is Michael suggesting they lied,and it wasnt blind?

 

[wolfgang]

We started to discuss it in the other forum forum.hifichoice.co.uk initially. It might still be there. If you are really interested I might look it up again.

IMHO they post a question whether cables are audibly different by human hearing. They did promise to use blind listening. However, they did not manage to answer that single question. The faults come when they make a lot of assumptions which don't make sense. Like more expensive cables should and therefore must sounds better then cheaper versions. Then they try to test the assumption that if 3 people are used then is they could tell the difference between then they would rank them in a same order of preference.

Why should that be? Lets make a silly and hopefully more fun analogy. If you wanted to know whether Englishman could distinguish Chinese women by face alone how would you do it? For some reason they assume if you ask 3 men to make a list where they put the most pretty on top and rank them downward then if all 3 of the men manage to rank them in the same order then they must be able to tell them apart by sight alone. Why? Anyway as it is in the final analysis the 3 people don't agree. The list are all different to my eyes. But some how they see a pattern. How is that so?

 

[Saab]

I disagree Wolfgang.They sat around and listened to some cables,and wrote what they thought,I don't see why its anymore complicated than that,and yes,they rightly debated the whole ethos of dbt,ie the order which they are heard.But the most expensive cable came out on top,which seems to have annoyed a lot of people,so maybe there is bias on both sides,if there is any bias at all.

 

[wolfgang]

But not every one pick the most expensive as the best during that test did they?

 

[analoguekid]

Yeah Dave one of the samples, second most expensive I believe was bettered by all others, yet they debayed this and said it was prolly system dependant so moved it into second place, so test was blind, results not what they and their advertisers wanted, so they shuffled the results around, so blind testing was a waste of time, that's what annoyed most people, Oh and look what came first, surprise surprise, Nordost..

 

[Saab]

I didnt read it that way tbh,not everyone picked the same cable admittedly,but there was a clear 'winner'.I suppose i am just not on the HIFI Plus bashing bus,i thought it was a reasonable piece of work and worth a read,i think the non-believers just wanted to bash it regardless

 

[analoguekid]

TBH Dave i found it an ok read, but can see why some found it confusing, as for being bothered about it, well no I see no reason to be bothered

 

[Saab]

my neither

 

[michaelab]

OK, to clarify about the HF+ cable test. I'm not saying it wasn't blind. I used the term "so called" because the test was touted by RG as some kind of definitive answer to all the sceptics that proved that cable differences were audible. Unfortunately there were far too many variables (cables) and far too few listeners and listening trials for any statistically significant (and therefore meaningful) results to be obtained.

What bothered me was precisely RG's triumphant "stick that in yer pipe and smoke it scientist matey boy" when what he'd done was actually of little greater worth than the cable comparisons that have frequently been done at ZG bakeoffs.

Michael.

 

[Saab]

yes,thats a good point,he was a tad triumphalistic,which is a shame.He should have approached the article as simply a bunch of enthusiasts listening to a few a cables and passing on their opinion,so i agree with your second paragraph.As for whether its statistically meaningful,well i doubt anyone would argue they ever thought it would be.

The biggest variable is them,the panel,take a panel of blokes who are nay-sayers and i am sure they would come up with a different set of figures (probably just give the cales all the same score on purpose)

 

[Uncle Ants]

I think Rega just dont place much importance on it. They will supply spacing washers to use if your putting an RB on a different deck etc. If you want VTA then you need to look at aftermarket supplies.

That's right - they don't. At least not the micro adjustments to VTA that the likes of RG claim are audible and Geoff Husband and Roy Gandy claim aren't. If VTA is grossly out ie. The arm slopes down like a ski slope then it may well be audible - might be mechanical problems as well as the arm gets closer to the middle. Hence the spacers.

RG and others claim that fractions of a millimetre adjustments make all the difference, thus the emphasis on arms which can be minutely adjusted for VTA, preferably on the fly (Like the VPI). GH's article makes the very sensible point that this is almost certainly nonsense for a number of reasons, not the least of which, even the flattest seeming of records varies by far more than fractions of a millimetre in thickness or flatness.

If RG and the other golden ears were right then frankly they'd never be able to listen to vinyl because those golden ears would be able to detect the "correct" VTA setting snapping in and snapping out as the record span.

 

[merlin]

RG seems to be getting a lot of flack these days

How the hell can he run a magazine without disclosing the commercial interests of the writers?

At least with HiFiForSale you know it's a commercial organisation. With RG's rag, we now have Scott Markwell not only being an AS writer but also a dealer and distributor for many of the products reviewed. We have the allegience with Nordost. Some have long considered that some of the staff writers have an agenda - I believe even one of our members has come in for some stick from some parties here and on PF.

Frankly it sucks, and would not be acceptable in many fields of public life.

 

[zanash]

Gawd sake .....anyone who has set up a TT will have heard the effects of VTA. Heres a little test lower the height of your arm, this changes the VTA and listen to the effects, now raise the arm height and listen again. The effects I hear are muffled and treble light, and toppy and bass light I'll not say which incase any one wants to give it a go. Once you have the angle set right you get a balance frequence response.

 

[sideshowbob]

When I read Geoff Husband's article I revisited my VTA setup, because I was always convinced I could hear reasonably significant differences between slightly too high, slightly too low, and just right. As it turned out, I ended up agreeing with him, the tiny adjustments being talked about didn't seem to make any clear difference at all. YMMV etc.

-- Ian

 

[michaelab]

RG seems to be getting a lot of flack these days

How the hell can he run a magazine without disclosing the commercial interests of the writers?

His claims to manufacturer independance are hardly bolstered by glowing eulogies about Nordost products in almost every issue. The latest (issue 35) was a case in point. Four pages about how marvellous the new Nordost Thor distribution block is followed only 10 pages further on by a double page spread Nordost advert for, guess what, their new distribution block, complete with a glowing quote by RG from the very same review 10 pages earlier. Then the inside back cover is another Nordost advert for their mains cables, also mentioned in the review. RG doesn't even hide the fact that his system is fully Valhalla'd up, now with 2 disti blocks at £1600 each. One wonders how he can afford all that very expensive cabling. On the other hand perhaps he doesn't have to afford it

Michael.

 

[Uncle Ants]

Gawd sake .....anyone who has set up a TT will have heard the effects of VTA. Heres a little test lower the height of your arm, this changes the VTA and listen to the effects, now raise the arm height and listen again. The effects I hear are muffled and treble light, and toppy and bass light I'll not say which incase any one wants to give it a go. Once you have the angle set right you get a balance frequence response.

Read the article - especially the last bit "What's going on". RG claims that adjustments to the VTA on the VPI arm of a tiny fraction of an inch which translates to an even tinier fraction of a degree of actual SRA are detectable. GH suggests this is basically rubbish (and for very good and well argued reasons) as a general principle but goes on to point out that the effects on that particular arm may well be detectable - but not because it actually changes SRA significantly. Because that particular arm has an extremely low centre of gravity, slight changes in arm height actually have a much more profound effect on VTF than on arms with a more conventinally high centre of gravity such as the rega arms - and that he suggests may be the actual effect RG claims to hear. Of course an alternative hypothesis is that RG is in the pockets of his advertisers, but I wouldn't suggest that - it might be libellous .