Feeling Tweaky

I have tried many tweaks over the years. Some proved to be positive upgrades, some made differences that were not appealing, and some made no difference at all~at least to my ears. But the tweak that has been the most consistent and cost -effective on my system and in my room is the room light switch. Put it in the "off" position and everything suddenly comes into focus. The sound stage becomes more precise as your speakers are removed from your view and you hear every nuance and subtle hint in the music. I think it has to do with the the way our brain focuses better, the fewer things it has to deal with. Thhis probably will seem obvious to most but try it  if you haven't already. It's free!

Thomas, I’ve never been into tweaks before, but I can see it would be possible to go overboard and get over involved with them like you say, listening to how the music sounds rather than the music itself. So I’ll keep your thought in mind. Thinking about tweaks recently has been an interesting way to pass the excess time being home-bound during this coronavirus pandemic.

Tvad, thanks for the link to the Sumiko Master Speaker Set. I played around with speaker positioning a few weeks ago but could probably some more fine tuning and use of a test record.

Millercarbon, I did look into the BDR cones you are using, so appreciate that suggestion. They are cost effective.

Mijostyn, which tone arm lifter are you using? I don’t trust myself to smoothly lift the tonearm up each time anymore. I miss my old Bang and Olufsen straight arm tracking which did that function automatically. I’ll take a look at the Weber soldering station. I’ve soldered a lot of copper pipe in my day but done little with anything electronic related. That would be a good skill to pick up. I’m an inveterate DIY person, but have learned over the years to recognize when I’m in over my head and to try and learn from others, which I’m trying to do here.

I’ll look up the HiFi News test record. What is a conductive sweep arm? Is it something to do with static removal.from record albums. Thanks for your ideas and description of your interesting system set-up. "Practical solutions with solid explanations and rational" are exactly what I’d like to find.

Also I checked on eBay and found a Talisman Magnetic Optizmizer for you: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Walker-Talisman-Magnetic-Optimizer-A-MUST-HAVE-FOR-VINYL-AND-CD-LOVERS-NEW/. Never heard of that "must have" before. Take it easy,

Mike

I never feel "tweaky" anymore. In my media room all you see is two 8 foot speakers, four subwoofers and a screen. No wires, no amps, no lights, no BS. I did the tweaky thing in my younger days discovering that in general it is just a hill of beans. I make my own cables using the best stuff available for a fraction of the cost. If I put some fancy sleeves on them I could sell them for big bucks and rip off gullible audiophiles. The very best "tweak" available is a Weber Soldering Station and some practice. 
Another great "tweak" is the HiFi News test record. Guaranteed to make your TT sound better. A Conductive sweep arm and a tone arm lifter complete the package. Where are all the amplifiers? Directly under their respective speaker on a shelf hung from the ceiling below. Everything is run balanced. They are all triggered by a 25 volt power supply which is switched from the equipment cabinet above. It also runs 4 variable speed fans keeping the lot cool. The speaker cables are three feet long. The subwoofers are on spikes through the carpet and into the floor. The stats are just on the floor. There is no room to put anything under them anyway. There is a line of acoustic tile behind each stat. This improves the imaging by damping the reflection of everything over 250 Hz. 
IMHO none of these things are tweaks. They are all practical solutions with solid explanations and rational. Great sound is not magic, neither is optimizing any system. I am certainly not a virgin. I have fallen for a bunch of stuff in the past. Many things are just visual or ego pleasing. Make things sound better? Only in your mind. Some of the stuff is literally comical like the Talisman Magnetic Optimizer. I almost wet my pants. 

See what I mean? 22k posts, doesn't even have a system.

BDR was originally Black Diamond Racing. Founded by audiophile DJ Casser and originally making ultra-high end gear for America's Cup sailboats, DJ saw advantages in the inherent vibration damping properties of carbon fiber and after a huge amount of effort developed a whole line of vibration control products. You can see many of them in my system. Like many of these niche companies the expertise was very closely held and when DJ died several years ago that was the end of the story, at least as far as new products goes. The company lives on as BDR but only as far as I know sold by Music Direct, and only the Cones it seems are regularly in stock. 

@millercarbon, what’s up with all the personal attacks? My guess is an inferiority complex. Please give my condolences to your liver.

Mike

I also like  IsoAcoustic Gaia feet under Lansche 4.1 speaker.

During my 42 years of audiophile, I had tried lot of tweaks.

My conclusion is simple.

They work often but not always.

If you pay too much attention to tweaks it is going to be harder for you to enjoy music.

Just my two cents

Thomas

Millercarbon, thanks for the explanations and taking the time to write and post them. I still have to research the many tweaks you mentioned in your earlier reply, not to mention decipher the acronyms you and others have been mentioning. Hopefully I'll get on that tonight and tomorrow. I am learning things,  which  has been an ongoing project since reentering the audio equipment world.

Mike

Millercarbon, I’ll be seeing how well these tweaks add up as you indicate they will, which does make sense from my limited experience so far. As this point I’m trying to prioritize which are the most productive. It’s a fun project to try and maximize what your components are capable of doing. I think I’ll try to put together a list of the myriad tweaks and see if I can get a consensus on what ones people agree on are the most effective, or the opposite.

There is no consensus, except among those of us who have tried certain things. My all time favorite most universal value leader is BDR Cones. DIY acoustic panels of OC703 is right up there, but you quickly limit out on that. Next would be fo.Q tape. With that you will not hit the wall until you've done a couple sheets on your turntable and speakers. Then after that comes a whole long list from Synergistic that are all very similar in terms of sound improvement value per dollar- HFT, ECT, PHT, Fuses.

You would think there might be limits to what you might accomplish in an additive fashion.

Of course there are limits. But they are a lot further out than you would think.

For instance a lot of tweaks mention they widen the sound-stage. If they all worked you’d think the sound-stage would extend from one end of the house to another.

Good one. Okay so what happens, the greatest extent of the sound stage is the walls of the recording venue. This could be anything from an accurately miked symphony hall to a singer in a recording booth. Whatever it is, its on the recording, and so its what you should hear. The walls of course don't make any sound. They do however reflect back, and that acoustic signature is what provides our sense of the space we are in. So its not that the individual instruments expand farther apart, or even that it sounds like they are in a bigger space. They may after all be in a recording booth- a tiny little space. But when the system gets better our sense of that space - whatever it is - is stronger, and in that sense the sound stage is bigger. 

That's the mostly high frequency aspect of it. There's also the low end. This is where it gets really good. Because of the physics of sound, really low frequencies have really long wavelengths, these just don't naturally happen anywhere but really big spaces. Think of the rumble of thunder. You hear that, you don't need to look, you can judge by the sound alone it was very far away. 

Well okay. So when you are able to accurately reproduce such low frequency bass it creates the unmistakable sensation of being in that large space. This ultra-low frequency fidelity goes hand in hand with the high frequency detail and together is what creates the other worldly sensation of being on the scene. There. No longer in your room.

One other thing if you don’t mind my asking, since you’ve achieved good results, how many tweaks have you incorporated to get to where you are now?

All of them. And more.

This oughta be good. 

Or would be, if he would answer straight instead of cracking some lame joke. OP apparently hasn't read many of his 22k posts. Let me break it to you: he has no tweaks, because he has no system.

Oregonpapa. hopefully by making the right choices in tweaks, that will turn out to be true, before the bank account runs dry anyway.

SGordon1, I hear you, and what are HFT’s.

Geoff, what was your last tweak and which tweaks have you found to be most effective in your system. Hold that carrot out in front of me.

Mike

Tablejockey, the Gaia’s appear to be working pretrty well under the VPI Classic 2 although I’ve only had them on for one day so far. I played an old Riverside Cannonball Adderly with vibraphonist Milt Hinton album, "Things are Getting Better" last night. The vibes were so well articulated the footers had to be playing a part. I listened to a Sade album too and surprisingly heard a soft male backgound vocal that was buried in the mix. So far It’s been similar, but not as pronounced difference, as placing the footers under the CD player. It’s really to soon to tell though.

My Magico A3 speakers are good at revealing detail, details which the IsoAcoustic feet seem to help deliver to them less encumbered by whatever mess vibration might be adding to the signal. An older Gato Barbieri album on the Flying Dutchman label (before he went commercial) sounded great too with better separation between instruments and more transparent articulation apparent than ever before. If it wasn’t such a pain to get these footers installed I’d try some A/B testing with and without them to be sure. Please share your experience once you get yours. Thanks.

I also have my Classic 2 and CD player on a left-over 24" x 40" floating slab of marble, which does show off the VPI same as yours. It’s a nice touch and got the unused slab out of the storeroom where it sat for almost thirty years unused.

Geoff, too late now.

Millercarbon, I’ll be seeing how well these tweaks add up as you indicate they will, which does make sense from my limited experience so far. As this point I’m trying to prioritize which are the most productive. It’s a fun project to try and maximize what your components are capable of doing. I think I’ll try to put together a list of the myriad tweaks and see if I can get a consensus on what ones people agree on are the most effective, or the opposite.

You would think there might be limits to what you might accomplish in an additive fashion. For instance a lot of tweaks mention they widen the sound-stage. If they all worked you’d think the sound-stage would extend from one end of the house to another. The IsoAcoustic footers have so far helped define the placement of elements within the sound stage which seems a more realistic, but still amazing, accomplishment.

One other thing if you don’t mind my asking, since you’ve achieved good results, how many tweaks have you incorporated to get to where you are now? And do you have any more in mind to try? Thanks,

Mike

Gentle readers, be ever vigilant for The Last Tweak syndrome. That’s when you think your system cannot possibly sound any better right after you installed some tweak or other. 

If "each tweak adds to the effect of prior tweaks"...
beware, they might not, when taken as a whole,
be contributing to better sound.  

For example, have you ever subtracted some HFTs that were too close together (horizontally or vertically) only to hear an improvement?  Or, replaced or subtracted vibration control products,
and concluded that "less is better?"

I like to pause, periodically, and evaluate the changes, just to "keep myself honest."  I would give more weight to experimentation,
than addition, in our quest for better sound.  Anyone agree?

• "... the few of us who have taken it far enough all agree you cannot get here any other way."

There is no doubt that each tweak adds to the effect of prior tweaks. Done properly and with a lot of experimentation, a Magical Music Machine will emerge that will astound the listener.

Frank

If these tweaks are additive as Millercarbon pointed out in another thread, this could be a fun ride..

You have no idea. Most of those who try tweaks at all will do one or two say that's nice and then they are done and go back to running the component upgrade treadmill. I call it a treadmill because you do a lot of work but don't really go anywhere. Because ultimately all it does is get you by until the next component upgrade. A set of BDR Cones however, HFT, ECT, acoustic panel, AC line or outlet, whatever tweak you care to name, is forever. Elevates your game from now on. Actually gets you somewhere. 

Any one individual tweak on its own may not seem like all that much. Do enough though and at some point it begins to dawn on you there is no way any amount of money spent on any components ever made will ever be enough. 

I'm not the only one saying this either.They do all add together and that is why the few of us who have taken it far enough all agree you cannot get here any other way. In other words tweaks are way more cost effective than components.

He wrote the book on reading books! 

skyscraper
Geoffkait, following your suggestion I considered taking all my books
outside and starting a good-sized bonfire with them. I bet you nobody’s ever thought of doing that before.

👍 You’ve already read them all, right? 

"I’ve gone ahead and ordered IsoAcoustic Gaia feet for my VPI Classic 2 turntable"

I will be looking for your observations on the results.

My aging Classic 1 has been under the non scientific/controversial, low tech and expensive Mapleshade brass/maple slab. For whatever technical/psychological reason, it does add a tiny bit of more "real" to the presentation. If anything, it makes the humble VPI look cool. 

The Gaia's are just like any other footer tweak. YMMV. They do seem to have more positive results under speakers than most. I heard them under
some pricey speakers with/ without. Yes, they seem to add something?

Tvad, It would be interesting to compare the performance of the Apex footers with the IsoAcoustics to see how much improvement there might be with such a high end product. The IsoAcoustic footers made such a difference, it's hard to imagine getting even more performance out of such a simple concept as reducing vibration. I'm still awaiting the special  1/2"-13 studs needed to install the recently arrived IsoAcoustic Gaia feet on my speakers to get the full effect of having their footers under all components. You're fortunate to have those Apexs. 

Geoffkait, following your suggestion I considered taking all my books
outside and starting a good-sized bonfire with them. I bet you nobody's ever thought of doing that before.

Williewonka, I will have to play around with the placement of the IsoAcoustic footers under each component as your second link suggested. The first linked described exactly how I set up my current shelving using non-slip shelf liner under a floating shelf, so maybe I did something right there. I'll try some of those blocks you and Millercarbon suggest under the wires.

Any suggestions by anybody about what your most effective tweaks have been would be appreciated. Thanks,

Mike

Here's a couple of tweaks that I found worked nicely...

http://image99.net/blog/files/3b1e019ed6bce1eec35dad4636fd815c-25.html

http://www.image99.net/blog/files/505119d0be04fa00f053d1e3491df5c8-80.html

Regards - Steve

skyscraper OP
My listening room is filled with wall to wall bookshelves, so there’s hardly a square inch to acoustically treat. I seriously considered one of those Lyngdorf integrated amps with Room Correction for that reason since they could electronically deal with that issue.

>>>>Hi, I’m from the future where we found out books and other media like CDs are bad for the sound. The biggest improvement you can make to your sound is to remove all books from the room. Perhaps you can rent a storage shed? Sorry to be the bear 🐻 of bad gnus 🐃 And yes, I know what you’re thinking, “but books are natural acoustic absorbers.”

Tvad, sounds like you've made the rounds with isolation footers. I'd not researched the Grand Prix Apex Audio footers you mentioned, so I looked them up. Priced at $1400 for a set of four they are  only only a pipe dream.for a plebeian like me.They must be nice.

My listening room is filled with wall to wall bookshelves, so there's hardly a square inch to acoustically treat. I seriously considered one of those Lyngdorf integrated amps with Room Correction for that reason since they could electronically deal with that issue

Millercarbon, thank you for all your ideas. It's going to take me a minute to research each suggestion and product you recommended, but I will. I'll have some follow-up questions for you too if you wouldn't mind following this thread for a day or two. Thanks.

Slaw, nice to hear from you. If I remember correctly I did follow some of your suggestions building my component shelving and thank you for that. Honestly, since replacing my 40 year old system in entirety the last year or so, the footers are my first tweak ever. I guess the shelving could be considered a tweak, having utilized many ideas garnered from that thread to foster vibration isolation. .

The AudioAcoustic footers have been such an unexpected success, I'm thinking the tweakers among you are on to something. So I'd like to identify among the multitude of tweaks what might be the best thing to try next. It's pretty amazing what you folks have come up with so far. If these tweaks are additive as Millercarbon pointed out in another thread, this could be a fun ride..

Bemused, I will look up your ElectraClear and Symphony Pro's tomorrow.I found there site a minute ago, but it's getting late and I'll better understand their product line after a night's sleep. Thanks,

Mike

Check out the ElectraClear and Symphony Pro harmonic power conditioners made by ADD-Powr.
I have 6 ElectraClears and 2 Symphony Pros and my system never sounded so good.
If you consider them tweaks, the so be it. Worth checking out, because you have nothing to lose with the 30 day money back guarantee.
Perhaps the best deal for the money out there.

@skyscraper,

I've followed and contributed to your posts..Looking back, Since you're an ongoing "upgrader", it would have been nice to have one thread dedicated to your own system. I think I'm out. Best of luck!

All the other power cords are what came with each component.

Ouch. Huge room for improvement there. Synergistic Research Master Couplers, used, on everything.

So my question to you all is, what tweaks have had the most positive impact on your own system that you could you recommend for the above described system?

System really does not matter. This idea certain things work only with certain other things will only hold you back. The PC recommended above will work no matter what component or what your system. Same goes for these other highly recommended tweaks:

Synergistic HFT, ECT, Orange Fuse. HFT are the most highly effective acoustic treatment yet almost invisible.

Synergistic PHT on your cartridge and arm. Green Dream and Black Widow together are awesome. Check out mine. Look close- there are ECT on the arm as well. These things really work!

BDR Cones, probably about as effective as the footers you have now but a lot less expensive, and universal, as they work just as well under lightweight CDP as massive speakers and amps.

fo.Q tape applied to your arm will open up detail like you won’t believe. It goes on easily, and can be just as easily removed without leaving any residue. I put a strip all along the under side of my arm, where it works great yet is out of sight. Its also underneath the arm base, and a lot of other places where its out of sight yet still works great. Once I heard how great it is I got more and replaced all my speaker gaskets with fo.Q tape, and stuck it all over the drivers on the baskets inside. None of this is visible- stealth tweaks! Also can be used on caps and circuit boards and inside cabinet to damp sheet metal vibrations, although I haven't personally tried those yet.

Cable elevators, either brand name or equally effective ceramic insulators. On sale now at Music Direct.

Acoustic room treatments that would affect room decor are unfortunately out of the equation too.

Please note Synergistic HFT Speaker Kit, works great, hardly noticeable, doesn’t even go on walls.

Some of the things I’ve thought about are redoing the house wiring to create a dedicated circuit, and making an ultrasonic record cleaner.

Don’t re-do anything. Simply run one 20A line direct to the system. Plug everything into that one outlet. You can do a lot more. The sky is the limit. But this is the one that is truly cost-effective. This btw is known because I have actually wired my system and not just once but several times. I know from experience what costs what and how much improvement it brings. You’re on the right track, it just takes a while to try all these different things.

https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367

Make the record cleaner if you’re into making stuff. Otherwise get the Walker Enzyme system and never look back.