Audiophile Priorities and Recent Topics


I'm increasingly fascinated by the number of threads that have been created lately by OP's who have joined over only the last 2 months with less than 30 posts that all seem related to the importance of wires and tweaks. While I'm not dismissing the notion that everything matters in hifi (including digital cable), it seems that these topics vastly overwhelm thread topics that clearly would have more influence to hifi audio sound such as discussions of the sonic characteristics of various amplifier topologies, the importance of simplifying the signal path, and identifying fantastic speaker/amplifier synergies, etc...

If some unsuspecting newbie were to stumble onto this forum they would likely come away thinking that a fuse or a piece of wire are the most important elements towards obtaining wonderful hifi sound. This is unfortunate. For example, my discovery of listening to a SET circuit years ago paired with speakers possessing a high and flat impedance greatly outshines any joy derived from identifying the finest digital cable produced by man. I'm simply questioning the hifi priorities that this forum seems to be obsessed with lately.

Is it just me?
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Showing 6 responses by twoleftears

I agree that it's a question of proportion, and the way the discussion is carried on in a lot of threads these days, an unsuspecting reader might easily get the impression that substituting one brand of audiophile fuse for another makes as big a difference to the sound of a system as, say, moving from one brand of speaker to another.
It's the law of inverse proportion: the more barely perceptible the "improvement" is, the more hyperbolic the language will be to describe it.
+1 jjss49.  If you're sinking thousands into your system, do something substantial like getting a significantly better component rather than spending the money on overpriced tweaks.
Typical politician's tactic: if you can't win an argument, distort the terms of the discussion out of all recognition, and then start arguing about that.
It seems to me that there are basically two types of tweak: the substitute tweak and the add-on tweak.

Substitute category: you're replacing something that your system needs in order for it to work with a something else that performs the same basic function, though supposedly better: fuses, power cords, capacitors, whatever.

Add-on category: without these, your system will continue to produce sound: dynamat, footers, microdots on the walls, whatever.