The JC Whitney syndrome

Those of you that have tinkered with cars as a hobby probably remember the JC Whitney catalogue. This was a mail order catalogue that offered various performance upgrades that could be installed on your car. What always amused me were the claims made by each product. There were literally hundreds of add on products, each claiming to "increase HP by x amount" and/or "improve gas mileage by y MPG". I used to joke that if you installed all the accessories being offered, you would be able to add thousands of horsepower while getting over 100 MPG.  This is not to say that each product taken on its own wouldn't have some merit, but the improvements are not necessarily cumulative.

Same goes for audio. Every product (I'm referring mainly to "tweeks" here) claims to offer "tighter and more extended base, clearer highs, better transparency, freedom from coloration, less listening fatigue, greater detail, etc., etc. The benefits (real or imagined) of audiophile wall sockets, power conditioners and chords, cables, vibration pods and spikes, equipment racks, cable supporters, binding posts and terminations made of unobtainium, etc. etc. are typically not cumulative. While any of the aforementioned items may provide a sonic benefit on its own, that benefit may be lost or diminished by the addition of additional tweeks. In such cases, 1 + 1 often equals something less than 2. Your system may have reached a point where the addition of a normally beneficial tweak provides no audible benefit at all. 

Don't fall victim to the JC Whitney syndrome.

J.Chip