Are You A Disciplined Audiophile?


The issue of whether break-in is real aside for now, when you make a change in your system, such as a new component or cable, do you have the discipline to wait before making any other changes?  I usually mark my calendar for a month and perhaps 2 months and try to change nothing else for that period of time so I can better assess exactly what the new thing is doing. But sometimes it’s difficult to wait. IMO, break in is a real thing, both in the component and the listener, but even if you don’t believe components and cables change after a few days, can you wait at least a month to listen to enough music to adjust your ears to what the new thing brings to the system on its own?  

chayro

Showing 1 response by asctim

Disciplined audiophile, that's an interesting idea. I won't wait if the sound is markedly unpleasant. Maybe a few days at most. If it's really nice it's easy to let it go for a few months - if my love affair with the new sound lasts that long. Or, so long as some new idea doesn't intrigue me enough to want to try it. I've messed up a lot of what I thought were great sounding setups only because I got an idea in my head and was curious to try it. 

For whatever reason I have a thirst not just to achieve good sound, but to better understand what it is that makes me think it's good. Just last night and this morning I decided to have a new look at my midrange horn, which has been difficult to interpret since it's measured response varies so much with measuring distance and angle. It's a weird beast and I don't know what's right. I tried a method I learned of yesterday called "beamforming" for measuring. You basically add the measurements together that are taken at various distances. This has the effect of suppressing the effect of early reflections, so the direct response of the horn can be more clearly seen, and adjusted as needed with crossover settings and equalization. The end result seemed to give good overall room response, but boy did that do something weird. The bass seems hard to hear, vocals seems very clear and natural but much louder than the bass, even though the bass measures as loud as ever. Before I did this experiment the system was sounding great. 

So no, I'm not disciplined. I didn't even bother to save the settings I had earlier when it sounded great because I was too eager to try new things.