What is a tangenital / parallel tracking tonearm ?
The playback of a record should imitate the cutting of the lacquer as closely as possible. During the cutting process the cutter diamond makes an angle of 90 degrees at all instances from the beginning of the groove to its end. Obviously, the best way to read a record groove is by using an arm which follows the groove in a similar fashion as in the cutting process. A parallel tracking tonearm has the least distortion because the tracking error is minimized to practically zero. The cartridge stylus reads the two groove walls at the same time without any delay. Furthermore, a parallel tracking tonearm does not need bias compensation (anti-skate settings), as there is no centripetal force, unlike in pivoted arms. Pivoted arms, on the other hand, are the most commonly used tonearms. These can be further subdivided into unipivots and non-unipivots, as well as pseudo-unipivots. With common pivoted arms (also called radial arms), there is zero tracking error only in two instances. At other po
