Some things he doesn't mention - Because of the pivoting nature of the playback tonearm, you get a minimum of 2.5 degrees tracking error on the inner grooves a

Some things he doesn't mention - Because of the pivoting nature of the playback tonearm, you get a minimum of 2.5 degrees tracking error on the inner grooves as well. This causes some distortion. - The very best playback cartridges have intrinsic total harmonic distortion figures up around 0.5%, which is second-worst in the audio chain, only exceeded by speakers (typically 1%-3% for good quality speakers). Mechanically induced distortion is mainly second harmonic, though, and is less grating than odd-harmonic distortion, as you get with electrical clipping and DAC artefacts.