@hce1 -- Thank you. Apology accepted. I have been an audiophile for nearly my entire life, purely for the love of music. I have tried many types of tweaks over the years with an open mind -- always an open mind. My policy is to live with a system change for a while before making a judgement on it. Then, if I believe that I’ve made a true improvement, to remove the tweak and live with that a while. Things like better cables (better is not equated to ever ascending prices) prove themselves out over time -- so when they’re removed, it’s often easy to hear what’s now missing from the presentation. The most obvious tweaks that I’ve made almost aways involve the listening space itself. Improving EM noise levels, reflections, etc. Sometimes you just don’t know what you have improved until you take it away and live for a time with the absence. Some things are obvious and can be heard immediately when introduced and then later removed. Those I put back. If I have to reason and argue with myself over a tweak’s impact of the sound I learned that this, for me, is a sign that it probably doesn’t need to be there. If that’s the case, then I err on the side of keeping it simple over adding more complexity to achieve an uncertain benefit. Finally, until the room itself has been tuned to it’s maximum potential, my experience has been that it’s better to put the effort there -- even if that’s (usually) not as much fun as searching for that elusive silver bullet.
SR Tuning Discs, Psychoacoustic Bias and Listening Fatigue
By the way the SR Tuning Discs are snake oil. They don’t make a damned bit of difference. Careful about psychoacoustic bias. Fresher ears hear small differences greater than fatigued ears. At first listen, again A-B ing instantaneously with streamer cable plus Disc against exact same master and material on CD player transport digitally into same Bryston DAC, the two sources about 5 seconds apart to hear “phrase” of that duration in instant back to back repetition, I THOUGHT I heard a shocking large difference. But it was the first listen of the day. Then removed Disc from cable and did same thing. A LITTLE less dramatic difference. Ok. Then put Disc back onto cable. About the SAME as last. Hmmm. Then repeated this whole process about 6 more times to be sure. Then left room for hour. Came back in and did test once WITHOUT Disc. BIG DIFFERENCE. Like first test of the day with Disc ON cable.
CONCLUSION : THE DIFFERENCES I HEARD WHICH I INITIALLY ATTRIBUTED TO THE SR TUNING DISCS WERE PSYCHOACOUSTIC AND LISTENING FATIGUE BIAS. SYNERGISTIC RESEARCH TUNING DISCS MAKE ZERO DIFFERENCE.
But that’s my opinion. You can take it with a grain of salt if you so desire.
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@wesheadley You described my evaluation procedure to the T! Cheers. |
@tlcocks I certainly was not referring to your review in my comment. I found your comments open-minded and helpful. I appreciate you sharing your experience. The comments that put me off are those that treat other peoples’ curiosities, experiments and interests as ridiculous. |
Yes. Understood. Thanks. I am open minded, despite that I don’t sound that way with these SR discs. Couldn’t help but poke a little fun at the whole “just use the sticky putty to affix the Tuning Disc to your [fancy] cable” thing. 😁. As a dedicated audiophile though, I took the listening experiment deadly serious though. As I always do when critically listening. |
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