Thr ee_easy_payments: I started out in this hobby when I bought Dyna70 and DynaPAS kits and built the stuff myself at the age of 14, back in the 1960s. David Halfer’s Dynaco was built on the premise of simple (simple!) high quality design that was affordable. That ethos had largely vanished in the audio world of today. The system that I have today is built on the foundation that I started out with 53 years ago. The premise is the same: don’t spend much, carefully shop to get the most for the dollar out of each compatible component. The biggest recent improvement was a consequence of moving into a new home that needed a gut restoration. I have a room that is semi-anechoic, and the sound quality went up by a whopping 25% to 30%. All for the amount of money I was to spend anyway for thermal performance, about $2000. Which would you choose? $2000 on a room treatment for 25% improvement $2000 on cables for at best 5% improvement see https://www.theaudioatticvinylsundays.comI have tried expensive cable in the past. You will see that I found cable performance to be so negligible that I don’t bother to include them in my system component listing. I thought until a few days ago that all of my cables were generic, except for some bottom of the barrel Monster. It turns out I still have Analysis Plus in there, connecting the table/SUT/preamp/amps from the last time I tried experimenting with cables, about 10 years ago, and completely forgot about them. cheers - unreceivedogma apologies to those who by now have heard my mantra over and over, beaten into them with a baseball bat. |
tvad :
Thanks for the shout out.
I’ll try to get to it within a week or so. |
Three_easy_payments :
thx for the website shout out.
As inferred before, I built around a low cost, tube analog approach. As to speaker/amp synergy:
I started with the Dyna and a pair of Lafayette speakers. Moved up to a pair of Dyna MK IIIs, then Hafler mono blocs which were crap, back to the MK IIIs. Moved to a pair of Warfdales, then Altec 604Cs (1978), then the Futterman (1985), then Duntechs. The Duntechs and the Futtermans destroyed each other. Repaired the Futtermans, ditched the Duntechs, back to the 604Cs.
I recently had the Futtermans rebuilt by Jon Specter as triodes. He put in all new Jensen audio grade foil oil caps. I rebuild the 604s every 10 years. I asked Specter if I should change the impedance from 16 to 8, he said leave ‘em at 16, the Futtermans love efficiency. The Futtermans have been stable for 8 years now.
I started with building around the Dynas, got the 604Cs, loved ‘em, got the Futtermans and the Duntechs disaster led me to realize that the Altec/Futterman combo was a match made in heaven.
I know that Futterman/Quad is the classic combo, but I never liked the Quads.
I experimented with about a dozen cables in the 1990s/early 00s. To the extent that I heard a difference, I wondered if I was trying to hard to hear it. I should not have to make an effort to hear anything at $200 to $2000 per pair. Sorry! A waste of $s imho.
The only tweaks that I have done that made a difference is bolting the cabinet to a brick wall that the table sits on, and putting the Velodyne sub on springy rubber feet. That second one strikes me as counterintuitive but I guess that decoupling the sub from the building trumps resistance to movement: until then, the sub was turning the entire 3.5 story building into a subwoofer. |
Three_easy_payments:
”…many accessories are completely worthless…”
does he offer examples? |
Synonym:
MC = indefatigable. |
That’s a pretty weak defense MC.
Some folks like that you know. Wiser to get to know better who you are dealing with first don’t you think, before you find yourself in an unanticipated adventure ?
Who knows, those expensive cables might have a use for which they are unintended, but pleasurable all the same, maybe more so.
🤭🤔😳 |
Cleeds:
I have been “actively been working at this” for 53 years. There are moments during that time where I have been happy with the sound. But “Happy” is a moving goal post.
I would say that within the last month that, thanks to the new room of 3 years and finally hitting the correct sub and main speaker placement last month, that my system made a giant leap and finally sounds the way it should.
People operate with constraints: budget, location, room, time. My constraint would be considered by others to be a blessing: a 2,000 sq ft loft for $1,000 a month in the middle of NoHo in lower Manhattan. It was a 41 year trade off: huge luxurious space in the heart of the greatest city in the world in exchange for a room with lots of sound reflections. |
MC:
”I really don’t mean to sound disrespectful but your mind is easily boggled”
🙄
That emoji is my final engagement with you.
Curtains! |
cleeds:
I am 67 years old. The brain cells are dyin’ by the billions as I write this. By the time I finish this post I may be ready for assisted living.
I saw Jimi Hendrix perform at the midnight concert at the Fillmore East. That used to give me bragging rights. Now it just dates me.
But I digress: don’t take what I write literally. 😉
The guiding philosophy behind my choices have not changed over those 53 years. And I’m not at it all the time. I will go for stretches of 10 years here, 5 years there, where it’s f#*k it, good enough, just listen to the music please. And it has always been way better than anything my friends had. It came in great in the loft, we would have “The Loft” style parties twice a year: once at the end of the summer, and New Year's. We could pack 130 people in there.
I don’t go crazy over this audio stuff. I have excellent hearing, I do the best with what my wallet and my ethics allow me to do.
It’s 58 years of collecting LPs. That’s 6,000+ LPs. I have started the process of weeding out 600. |
@ whart:
I listen to both crushing metal and classical chamber. My system must be able to comfortably handle both. |
Those of you who may be interested in buying some of the 600 LPs that I am weeding out of my collection should contact me through my website, and ask me what you specifically are looking for. My collection is 1/3: - classical - Afro Cuban - 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s rock’nroll-rock-acid-psychedelia-pop, Motown, blues, jazz, gospel, world, Latin folk, folk, country, bluegrass, country western, world, reggae, soukous, tango, Cajun, Native American, etc anything not hip hop or rap. All records are at least VG+, most are EX to NM. https://www.theaudioatticvinylsundays.com |
cleeds:
I never said 40. That was someone else. |
@ danager :
I am confused. What is Sotify ? Qobuz? Tidal?
I’ve been listening to Scraping Fetus Off the Wheel for a little over an hour. Then the wife came home. I switched to some Mozart concertos. Life is good.
Since I’ve found the sweet spot for that sub, I have to say that I can’t imagine expensive cables making a damn bit of difference. I’m 95% to 98% there. It’s fine.
The sweet sauce is the semi anechoic room. It’s true what they say. The room is 40% or more. And it cost me only $2,000. I have my Cooper Union / Harvard trained architect and colleague and friend to thank fir that: C B Wayne. |
@danager
I read somewhere that the act of pulling a record off the shelf, removing it from its sleeve, cleaning it, placing it on the turntable, clamping it down, dropping the needle on the groove and settling into the armchair is akin to making the bed before making love.
I’m not inclined to disagree.
As to the format with the most value, us vinyl types figured that would be the case all along. It just sounds better. And since few artists record in analog anymore, the LPs that are AAA (as opposed to ADA, or DDA), are becoming rarer and rarer. I can tell, without checking the liner notes, when an LP has been mastered or remastered digitally. |
The controversy around priorities and putting topics like cables and floating the cables on little feet etc in their proper context with corollary importance (or lack thereof) and to what degree complexity lends itself to obfuscation rather than understanding reminds me of a scandal from the 1990s that occurred in the upper echelons of cultural theory. Alan Sokal, a professor at NYU and London’s University College, submitted an article to “Social Text”, an academic journal of postmodern cultural theory (that I also happened to read myself from time to time). His submission was meant to test the journal’s intellectual rigor, and to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies - whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Frederick Jameson and Andrew Ross - would publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if it sounded good and if it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions." The article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", was published in the journal’s spring/summer 1996 "Science Wars” issue. It proposed that “quantum gravity” is a social and linguistic construct. Three weeks after its publication in May 1996, Sokal revealed in the magazine “Lingua Franca” that the article was a hoax. The “Sokal Affair” - as it came to be known - caused controversy about the scholarly merit of commentary on the physical sciences by those in the humanities; the influence of postmodern philosophy on social disciplines in general; academic ethics, including whether Sokal was wrong to deceive the editors and readers of “Social Text”; and whether “Social Text” had exercised appropriate intellectual rigor. At that time, the journal did not practice academic peer review and it did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist. Needless to say, peer review and the analytical discipline that accompanies it is nowhere near to being A Thing in audio. Is it any wonder that audiophiles rarely agree on much? |
@ sns: my bad if I implied that we need a “peer reviewed audio board” process. I meant to suggest the opposite: that subjectivity reigns in a field that claims to have higher standards of critical thinking than what reigns in the audio world, so why don’t we just agree to disagree and get on with audio - rather than as an end in itself, but instead with what it’s all supposed to be designed for, enjoying the music itself? |
@edcyn
Noth the tree bark and the forest are equally important.
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