After mounting the cartridge in a headshell or on the tonearm, you then have to calibrate for overhang, azimuth, tracking weight and a bundle of other parameters.

Get it right, and your cartridge sings like a healthy canary. Get it wrong, and it’s more crow than canary.

Canadian outfit AnalogMagik took a long hard look at the cartridge calibration process. It decided that most methods lacked scientific vigour and exactitude.

Before long it developed a Windows-based turntable cartridge calibration software designed by Richard H. Mak and a horde of engineers.

Ask AnalogMagik what’s so special about this software and you’ll be told it offers a scientific and repeatable way of calibrating every cartridge setup parameter.

It’s not an idle boast. The new software will help you with turntable speed, azimuth, vertical tracking angle/stylus raking angle, anti-skating, phono loading, phono gain, vertical tracking force, measuring vibrations, determining resonance frequencies and wow and flutter.

All you have to do is load the software and then perform a basic alignment on your cartridge using an alignment protector.

The software and AnalogMagik’s Test LPs will then guide you to optimise and fine-tune all the parameters required to get your cartridge to perform, as it should.

By following the onscreen instructions, the program guides you through all the test functions and tells you what “optimal” numbers to look for, and what cartridge adjustments you need to make.

Local distributor Audio Reference is currently awaiting their stock to arrive, and pricing will be finalised upon arrival.

For more information visit AnalogMagik.