Editor’s Note: Alexey Korf is a designer and owner of Korf Audio, a company based out of Klosterneuburg, Austria that’s big into research and development, specializing in ceramic headshells, tonearms, and accessories. A former engineer for the Soviet space program, Alexey worked as an engineer in the oil industry before establishing Korf Audio in 2011. It began as a consulting company on analog servicing manufacturers and dealers, but eventually switched to building analog products, culminating in their first product, a popular “fully ceramic headshell made as one uninterrupted casting with no joints”, as he put it, in December 2019. It became a huge success (I use the Korf HS-A02 Ceramic Headshell in my reference system). Alexey recently agreed to share his thoughts at Prairie Audio.
I got a lot of letters over our last article about THD versus alignment. A big thank you to everyone who found time to write!
Let me start with an important clarification: I am neither the first nor the only one who has done those measurements. Many people have done this before me, and all they received in return was the usual scorn from audio forums. No links, you’ll find them if you are interested.
Why the 1970s Measurements Were Different
A few people pointed me to the 1970s spot measurements that seemed to confirm the Löfgren/Baerwald distortion curves. How could that be?
The scattering of spot THD values is immence. Below is a typical raw data recorded by Virtins Multi Instrument software. This explains how making spot rather than continuous measurements can “prove” any theory—Baerwald, Löfgren, Stevenson, you name it. You can draw any curve you want by picking spot measurements out of it.
Read more HERE.