Some leftover business this month, which will lead me, with some pleasure,
towards a few observations on the use of our remark able native language. There's
no recession in the growth of this useful commodity! The linguistic GNP continues
to expand with astonishing ease, and we can only be glad that language isn't
subject to economic conditions even though it is subject to fashion.
Some time back, I put aside the second of two new turntables from Japan, because, very simply, I am merely a mu sic lover and cannot play two tables at once, nor house them. More specifically, the brand new JVC top-of-the-line OL Y5F turns out to be about an inch deeper front to rear than the Sony PS-X75 of parallel vintage and so would not fit into my equipment cabinet. The Sony made it by a hair, so I started with it.
(For your instant info, the Sony measures 15-11/16 inches from rear to front, along the base of its containing cabinet, whereas the JVC measures a trace over 16 5/8 inches, almost precisely an inch deeper.) You will remember that I was impressed with the ease and sureness of the Sony operation, in spite of being intimidated by its considerably bulky arm and the complexity of its automatic operations via linear motors. That impression has not changed. The "automatic every thing" has not yet settled into easy familiarity (as happened to an earlier automated table I tried - for a brief while), and all is smooth and effective now that I no longer try to set the stylus tip down in mid-record via the automatic up-down and side-to-side arm controls. I just use my fingers.
The JVC OL-Y5F has a leaner, thinner, simpler look than the Sony in spite of the larger depth measurement and a sixteenth of an inch greater width.
(Both tables are about the same overall height above their adjustable feet). The thinner look is largely in the JVC arm which, unlike the Sony arm, does not contain elements of motor drive inside.
There are two linear motors in this JVC model, one to the side of the arm at the pivot point and the other beneath the deck. The look is uncluttered, and I like it. Both these tables, being of the newest generation, have characteristics in common, not only the linear motors to do the pushing and pulling and lifting and, more significantly, the "pressurizing," the downward force at the stylus tip, but also in the outboard controls, ranged along the front shelf-like projection so that they can be reached even when the machine is in operation with the dust cover closed. Lots of simultaneous similarities.
And yet - differences. Once again, this is no lab report, just a musical user's observation, and music listeners tend to ignore the inner technical details so long as the machine works. I gave the JVC table to my brother for a couple of months, and then asked him how had things gone - anything special? "Special?" he asked, "I don't know what you mean. It works. And the sound is wonderful." That's absolutely all I could get out of him. (I'd hoped for at least some sort of revealing problem!) So the differences will have to be my own accounting. They do go beyond the mere dimensions and looks.
JVC, too, has the new automated stylus placement buttons, up/down and side to side, and they work very well, I must say at once.
In the process of shifting these tables around and between cartridges, I discovered something curious. Both tables have the electronically applied skating and tracking force adjustments combined in one control. (On Sony it is out side the dust cover where it can be adjusted neatly as the record plays. On JVC it is inside, next to the arm and less convenient, though it still can be adjusted during play.) What has been over looked, evidently, is that some cartridges require just a bit more anti-skating force, perhaps a quarter gram, than tracking force to produce absolute lowest level of distortion.
Perhaps you see the problem. On, "conventional" tracking and anti-skate force adjustments, via weights or spring tension, one merely follows the directions, adjusting each force to optimum.
Easy enough. But what if the stylus force and the sidewise skating force are combined in one electronic control? The thought was good: Skating force does normally vary in step with stylus force, and the two can be integrated neatly for a single control. (Remember the early skating force arrangements - still current, I think - via pulleys, cords and dangling weights?) But this does not al low for the different adjustments! At the moment the JVC has a Shure in it and this, the V15 Type IV, has the small carbon fiber brush out front. It has caused less trouble simply because the adjustment for the brush is less, or so I figure it. But, even so, there is a nagging thought in my mind that JVC is perhaps bearing down a bit too hard on one side of my grooves, if not by much.
I must publicly admire one JVC technicality, of considerable usefulness in the way of resonance and tracking, incorporating what is called "0 damping." This arm's linear motors actually respond to wows and warps by pushing momentarily harder, up or down, sidewise-in or sidewise-out, in order to resist the inertial tendency of the arm and cartridge to keep on going in the same direction, especially at any resonance point. There is, JVC says, virtually no effective resonance between cartridge stylus and arm mass with this overall electronic system at work, the "Electro Dynamic Servo Tone Arm," as it is called. So - superb tracking of all irregularities and a smoother, better sound.
I'll have to add that, with a different complexity of control, the Sony arm system also tracked and sounded remarkably well, or good, as the case may be. No use my trying to account for these effects in detail, which belong in an Equipment Profile. Just be advised - these tables work, just as my brother said.
I believe in the growth and fluidity of our language, dictionaries or no.
They are only self-appointed monitors; they try to pin down usage at a given point and thus are always out of date.
(Much more important is the background and derivation of our words that dictionaries give us, so we may judge for ourselves.) Thus, a correspondent recently chided me for my many uses of "via," citing dictionary chapter and verse and the correct substitutions. In al most every case, his version was three or four times longer than my "via" and no clearer. So I will continue "via" whenever it is useful in the context.
Similarly, when I say "stylus" - when you order one at your dealer's - you can assume more than a near-invisible diamond tip or point. "Stylus and cantilever assembly" still does not include the normal slide-in surround elements. So - stylus! Why not? In the appropriate context, we know what is meant. But there can, of course, be con fusion. In my discussion of the Micro Acoustics phono cartridge Series II, I spoke of the stylus in the latter sense but also, confusingly, mixed up the action of the beryllium cantilever, the stylus bar, which I said "bent" up into the housing.
No, it does NOT bend! It is rigid, but pivoted. Mea culpa. Apologies.
by Edward Tatnall Canby (adapted from Audio magazine, Jul. 1981)
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