Noen som har forsøkt å justere azimuth ved hjelp av Puffin?
Ja. Det fungerer utmerket å følge instruksene for azimuth justering:
𝗔𝘇𝗶𝗺𝘂𝘁𝗵 & 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗔𝗱𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁
A stylus that is perfectly centered in the record groove - when viewed from the front - and not leaning one way or the other can give us optimal stereo separation and is one of those keys for big soundstage. This angle of the stylus is called azimuth.
You'll need a test record with a mono reference signal at a steady output level. I use Track 1 of Side 1 of The Ultimate Analogue Test LP.
Have the Puffin set up with your favorite cartridge and your typical settings. Then adjust as follows:
Mode:Stereo
Magic:OFF
Fine Balance +00 Phase:Null
Go to the Levels VU in Average mode, paying attention to the second line, "D av -XX.X -XX.X". Go ahead and play the test signal. You can even have your system volume muted so that you don't have to hear the obnoxious test tone, as we are just monitoring the levels.
Since we are in Null mode, we want this to be as low a negative number as possible (e.g. -50.7 is better than -48.5). In Null mode were are subtracting the two signals from each other, so if the two channels are perfectly aligned, theoretically we'd get absolutely nothing (-99.9 on the Puffin). Since there are many factors, for our adjustment we are just looking for a relative minimum, and every tenth of a dB we can drop is good.
Adjust the stylus azimuth by rotating head shell, shimming the cart, or making the adjustment that you have on your tonearm. You'll have to research that elsewhere. For me, I have an SME type removable headshell with a little slop, so I can manually adjust a few degrees one way or the other easily. If the detected nulling average drops lower, then you are adjusting in the right direction.
After you get that number as low as possible (i.e. stylus azimuth is now perfect), you can adjust the gain mismatch in your cartridge. Just adjust the Fine Balance for even more rejection (go one step at a time, and change directions if it gets worse).
The only real trick is to constantly keep monitoring that you are playing the same track, so you may need to needle drop it a few times. But after you do it once or twice, the whole process is fast and easy. In my case, I usually use bubble levels, but all my carts required a few more degrees tilts inward, which indicates I need to adjust my main tonearm shaft. But now that I know the error, I can compensate easily.
I improved all my carts 3dB to 6dB separation in this method, so this fine adjustment is highly recommended
