I am frustrated because I am an audiophile who cannot discern details from so many of the methods praised by other audiophiles. I joke about not having golden ears. That said, I can easily discern and appreciate good soundstage, image, balance, tone, timbre, transparency and even the synergy of a system. I am however unable to hear the improvements that result from, say a piece of Teflon tape or a $5.00 item from the plumbing aisle at Home Depot. Furthermore, I think it is grossly unfair that I must pay in multiples of one hundred, or even one thousand just to gain relatively slight improvements in transparency, detail, timbre soundstage, etc., when other audiophiles can gain the same level of details from a ten dollar tweak. In an effort to sooth my frustration, I tell myself that my fellow audiophiles are experiencing a placebo effect of some sort. Does anyone else struggle to hear….no wait; does anyone else struggle to comprehend how someone else can hear the perceived benefits gained by the inclusion of any number of highly touted tweaks/gimmicks (brass screws, copper couplers, Teflon tape, maple hardwood, racquet balls, etc.) I mean, the claims are that these methods actually result in improved soundstage, image, detail (“blacker backgrounds”), clarity, bass definition, etc. Am I alone in my frustration here?
Yes, in reality the laws of engineering are incomplete. The effects of quartz on sound are what really mystifies me right now. Sometimes positive, sometimes negative, and sometimes no effect.
05-28-09: Tbg Yes, in reality the laws of engineering are incomplete.
For sure somethings gotta be missing. It can feel like your on the edge of discovery as we approach the audiophile goal line of system synergy with that last little tweek . Unfortunately the goal line is always just one more tweek away. I think there has been a mystical attraction to theorys of electomagnetism since before the turn of the 20th century, in Teslas time, when everyone thought like an inventor out of neccessity. I've always been facsinated by the fact that in 1904, I think it was, the refrigerator and the hullahoop were invented, while at the same time Einstein published his theory of relativity. And it wasn't till 1915 anybody understood it enough to discuss it. There are more audio truths out there, we want to believe! (cause all the other balloons been popped :)
I like Tholt's idea of removing all tweeks and putting them back for a audiophile rush.
"Tesla Electric Light (&?) Manufacturing"? It was in N Jersey.
BTW, many of the "tweaks" described by a-philes DO affect the sound. I've rarely experienced jaw-dropping, vast and mind-boggling effects... Whether the result is positive (i.e., the tweak "works") is another matter. The effects are easily explained in most cases.
For tweaks that filter out external vibrations, it would be cool if there were a gadget that could measure the vibration levels a component is subjected to both before and after tweak. That would settle the issue of whether that particular tweak worked or not. Then the next question would be if it did work, did it make a difference in the sound? Scientifically, that still might be impossible to measure objectively.
Power conditioning tweaks might be measured objectively as well. It would require a sound spectrum analyzer with very high resolution and digital measurement and comparison of the signal levels for a test recording both before and after conditioning.
Gregm, Telluride, Colorado had the first Tesla power company.
Mapman, yes it would be valuable to have such a measure, but judging from the meter on the Halcyonics Micro 40, the vibration are many and of short duration. I can remember all the activity of these measures at the RMAF in 2007, at least during the day. At night it settled down to what I see in my room. Also, what most surprises me is that women excite (pun) it the most. Of course, footfalls show up also.
When I saw the video of using the copper coupler on a Marantz cd player's IEC using a sensitive voltage sensor, I got one thinking as you do, that this would be a good aid in assessing that tweak. Instead, I found that all hinged on the sensitivity setting. At one setting I got a warning everywhere near any cables. I never could find a setting that showed any benefit on my player using a copper coupler.
What we really would need is an instrument that says, "vibrations just altered the music signal." I would, of course, have to have its own sense of what the signal was supposed to look like as well as what it did look like. And it would have to deal with real music, not steady state signals.
Do you know the town where Tesla started an electric power company?
Gregm, Telluride, Colorado had the first Tesla power company
Tesla's first company was the Tesla Electric Light & Power Co. located in NJ - so Gregm was NOT wrong.
Wasn't the electric company near Telluride (actually located in Ames) started by L.L. Nunn (not Tesla)? It later became the Telluride Power Co. It was in Ames that the first AC current was generated and transmitted to a gold mine operation. Mr. Nunn saw his "opportunity" by way of the real hero - Tesla (Nunn was a lawyer - go figure).
Let's suppose the audio issues tweak manufacturers are trying to solve are indeed material ones, so that their solution would produce a material improvement in sound.
Let's also suppose that the problems are very difficult to solve.
Wouldn't we expect the majority of tweak manufacturers to fall far short of the goal? And therefore that most tweaks would have only a marginal positive effect, if any? But that perhaps a small group would actually solve these problems, producing great results?
If that were in fact true, that would explain the fact that most of the posters on this thread don't report great results with the tweaks they have purchased, but some have.
2chnlben, the NJ company was The Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing not Power. See below.
From Wikipedia. The Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing was a company formed by Nikola Tesla in 1886. Located in Rahway, New Jersey, the company was formed after Tesla left Thomas Edison's employment, after a contractual disagreement. Tesla planned to sell and license his patent and innovations. Tesla invented an arc lamp of high efficiency; the carbon electrodes were controlled by electromagnets or solenoids and a clutch mechanism and had an automatic fail switch. The company earned money, but most of the capital gained went to the investors. Ultimately, financial investors disagreed with Tesla on his plan for an alternating current motor and eventually relieved him of his duties at the company.
You are right that Tesla was one of several involved. What is strange is the remoteness of Telluride.
From Wikipedia. In 1891, Telluride's L.L. Nunn joined forces with Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse and built the Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant, the world's first commercial-grade alternating-current power plant, near Telluride. (Nunn's home can be found at the corner of Aspen and Columbia Streets, next door is the home he purchased for the "pinheads"[citation needed] to study hydro-electric engineering.) The hydro-powered electrical generation plant supplied power to the Gold King Mine 3.5 miles away. This was the first successful demonstration of long distance transmission of industrial grade alternating current power.
I just had an experience with an expensive ($775) tweak that I wouldn't even have considered except for facing a milestone birthday and (with my wife's blessing) wanting to do something to take my mind off it. Sealing the deal was the 30-day, no-questions-asked moneyback.
I've had Gallo Reference 3 speakers for almost 4 years and love them. For a while now, the Mapleshade catalog has been featuring stands made specifically for these speakers that replace the original speaker bases with new ones constructed of 4" maple platforms with well-named brass "Megafeet" under them and brass decouplers that put about 1/16" of space between the bottom of the speakers and the top of the bases. Sounds counterintuitive, right? The speakers are held onto the bases with 6" brass screw/bolts.
After putting all this together and discovering a little too late in the process that it was really a two-man job, I started listening. Okay it's nice, even very nice, but $775-nice?
Fortunately I have a friend who has the same speakers. He offered to bring one of them over and compare against one of mine with the new bases, which he did. My Aesthetix Calypso linestage enabled us to listen to them balanced, right only, left only, and any combination, via the remote control.
When the two speakers were balanced (same volume from each speaker) you could hardly tell the stock speaker was playing! We were both amazed. The Mapleshade bases provided far more full-bodied richness, dynamics, better bass, and all the other good stuff. There were no downsides, and there still aren't, unless you count the $775.
My friend ordered a pair of the bases the next day. They're due to arrive this week. The least I can do is help him install them. No kidding. Dave
It appears that the stands raise the speaker about 6"? If so, that likely accounts for the majority of the difference in sonics. Elevating a speaker so that it's orientation to the ears is altered inherently changes one's perception of the performance dramatically.
Thinking back to my review of the Von Schweikert VR-4 SR MkII, it had a time aligned, backward slanted baffle which shot the midrange and tweeter's primary wave front over my head (off axis). Standing up put me directly on axis and the sound was quite different. I was able to alter the speaker's performance by propping up the rear of the M/T module so that it was firing directly at my ears, more on a plane with the bass module. In the end I kept the speaker positioned as designed, but the discussion demonstrates my point about the height of the M/T on/off axis listening.
It's very possible you have been off axis (as the Gallo is a smaller floor stander) with the speaker's mid/treble and now are on axis. Huge difference.
So, in this case, a seeming "impossible" tweak (After all, what can a block of wood do?!) IS really doing something, just not what most people would expect it to do. When the explanation is seen, it's not so laughable. The cost of the stands might be debatable, however if the effect is enjoyed and their addition to the system aesthetically pleasing enough, then they very well may be considered a good deal. :)
Guys, after putting the Gallos on the Mapleshade stands they were LOWER than before. I had them on 6" stands from Stein Audio. They are now about 2" lower than they were then. And, frankly, their esthetics were better with the Stein stands. Any other theories?
If the height thing doesn't make sense, i should probably note that you have to remove the existing Gallo bases from the speakers before attaching the Mapleshade stands, so you first lose two inches, then gain six. If anyone cares :-)
Dopogue, cool experiment, that's half the fun! You mentioned when you first listened by yourself you were not so impressed for the money, maybe a little buyers remorse. But when there was a direct comparison and a second opinion the improvements were more noticable. This is the interesting part of this discussion. Maybe with incremental tweaks we need a baseline for comparison or others of like mind to help validate, or point out where that constellation is, for us to appreciate it.
Thanks, Mumbles. I gotta say I really wasn't expecting the result we got. And we tried everything under my friend's speaker to get the most out of it, including my old (Stein Audio) stands and a cobbled-up maple/cones approach using the stock bases. Yeah, there was a little buyer's remorse, going into the comparison. What I don't understand was how dramatic the improvement was, as revealed by the comparison. I know that Anthony Gallo and Pierre Sprey (Mapleshade) have been friends for a long time -- Pierre has built special stands for the new Gallo 5LS towers that, according to the dealer I bought the Ref 3s from, are pretty much essential in Anthony's view. But that may just be dealer talk. Dave
Tbg and Tvad have said it all. If I tweak at all these days, I tweak for soundstage presentation by coupling or decoupling gear with their bases. Just moving things by a few inches will make a world of difference. It takes time, patience and careful listening. My goal is always, that I would be able to walk around the players in my imagination, that the presentation of individual instruments is sufficiently threedimensional. Before that of course, problems of timbre, pitch, prat have to be resolved. I am old, but I have- since childhood - well and carefully trained ears---and even more important, friends, whose hearing is even better and who are literate enough and musically trained to be convincing in what they can discern.
I can't believe I just wasted 45 minutes of my ,way too short, time on this planet reading this stuff!!!!!! I could have listened to DSOTM for the 10,000th time. Jeez Louise. Please ______(insert diety of your choice)help us all!!!!!!
I can't believe I just wasted 45 minutes of my ,way too short, time on this planet reading this stuff!!!!!! I could have listened to DSOTM for the 10,000th time. Jeez Louise. Please ______(insert diety of your choice)help us all!!!!!!
Ahh...come on Tpreaves, the opening post should have given you ample warning of the rhetoric to follow. Forty-five minutes?? It must have sucked you in like a bad movie; what, did you think there would be a surprise ending!?
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
