I Just Don't Hear It - I wish I did

It's a conspiracy, marketing or both. I am with the OP -- I struggle to understand how feet and other tweaks the night and day differences that I read about, moreover that the component itself was seemingly putting out a fraction of its potential without them. I've decided to take all those testimonials I read about with a lot of salt. Money for me is the determining factor -- beyond what i consider a reasonable expenditure, I won't try it. Any 'real' money is going to be spent on an upgrade, not a tweak.

In general, what I have discerned is that anything I put on brass spikes seems to be lighter in bass, thus sounding more 'airy'. Sorbothane has improved bass slightly in some instances (CD players). No tweak has ever been night and day. And the best tweak I've ever done was not to any component but to the room with acoustic paneling.

Rushton, I think I speak for most if not all that we're jealous you have a spouse who is as enthusiastic about this hobby as we are! nice!

05-27-09: 2chnlben
Good God Nietzschelover, does it really make you sad!? Have a cocktail.
2chnlben (System | Threads | Answers)

Best response I've read in a while. Cheers

05-24-09: Jimjoyce25
Marigo Mystery Feet provided an immediate, highly significant and positive audible difference in my system.

At $799 for 3, they'd better.

05-24-09: Cruz123
The only changes that have been significantly noticable in my system are component changes, modifications to equipment (and sometimes those are iffy) and speaker cable /interconnect changes. I have yet to hear a footer make much, if any, difference, though I do use soft footers under every device (I've yet to uderstand how placing a component on a hard object such as brass or grantite can reduce vibration, though my feable mind can kind of understand how a soft footer could insulate from vibration.) Also, contrary to many here, I have yet to notice significant, if any, improvements from a power cord, though I have tried many hoping something will eventually floor me. I use tube dampers and various CD tweaks, but I'm not sure they make any difference.

The crazy thing is that although I doe not perceive that I can hear the changes from many tweaks, I keep using them, believing that if I take them out of my system it will somehow result in a degradation. On the other hand, I am very happy with my system as it currently stands. Perhaps the cumulative effects of the various tweaks I use do, somehow, make a difference. Or, perhaps I just want to believe.
Cruz123 (System | Threads | Answers)

My exact experience -- every word.

Wondering what people aren't doing with their weeknights/ends because we're arguing about the benefits/pseudo benefits/degree of benefits/lack of benefits of tweaks. Taking a step back I would venture that this thread has had more impact on our lives then most tweaks will ever have.

I believe tweaks were partly borne out of an audiophile's typically obsessed state of mind with making it 'better'. After all, we've all seemingly accepted that slicing and dicing the point of diminishing returns has somehow become a worthy cause. How many of you have thought about what benefits, if any, an aftermarket power cord would make on say, an electric razor? Would it cut better? Faster? I've thought about things like this, and then I laugh because I've obviously crossed over into crazy audio-geek world -- a "normal" person wouldn't think about these things, just as their reactions are predictably perplexed when I tell them why my cd player is balanced on 3 blocks of wood. But of course we're all audiophiles here, so we won't discuss how abnormal this way of thinking is in the first place.

An interesting experiment to all us tweakers would be to take all the tweaks out of our system (maybe not power cords, for those of you with serious power issues) and see how it sounds. What if you didn't hear any difference? What if you heard a slight difference? What if there was a major difference? It would resolve any doubt as to whether tweaks worked in your system or not.

One sad truth is that many "audiophiles" lack either the faculty, or training, or both, to discern those heightened sonic attributes for which they so often pay so dearly. It would not surprise me if less than twenty percent of you reading this, now, can hear well enough to discern what those "golden-eared" ones can.
Furthermore, I suspect that very few of the "golden eared" have honed their listening abilities sufficiently to make effective use of what effectively remain naught but latent abilities.

Following your argument, pretty much everybody has no idea what they're hearing, and therefore have no basis to judge if it's truly good or not.

3) I suspect that, ofttimes, the developer of an expensive tweak
a) Doesn't, really, know why it works, so they posit something that may be absurd, or, at best have little to do with anything

And since audio equipment, like tweaks, are created by the same types of people, they must not know what they're doing either. Which makes this whole hobby a joke on itself and its participants.

Can you not apply this argument to most things man made created for fellow man to enjoy? if i buy an expensive sports car and I like going fast, in reality, the expensive sports car is a mass of metal only thought to perform well, but its creator doesn't really know what he's doing and if or why it works. And I only think I'm going fast, in reality I'm not smart enough to know what fast is, and I'm actually probably not going fast at all.

So we have no idea why we like something, and moreover, we're idiots if we think we do. Makes sense, since we're all living in the Matrix anyway.