Tweaks you got rid of because they were not effective (enough)?
There are some audiophiles for whom cost is no object; they buy what they wish and every single tweak and gadget which promises to improve the sound. And the industry is all too happy to produce such tweaks -- often made of expensive materials with elaborate engineering explanations. Those who question the value of these tweaks are frequently accused of being "naysayers" who are either too ignorant or insensate to realize that "everything matters."
Of course, money spent one place cannot be spent elsewhere; expenditures on tweaks take the place of other more central factors affecting the sound. In some cases, those tweaks are worth it; you can hear the difference, and that $400 (or whatever) really could not have improved your speakers or sub or amp, etc.
So, the question here is simple: Which tweak have you tried which, after some experience and reflection, you realized was either *not* effective or not the most effective way to improve your system?
@krelldreams , Wow, 35 years of trying different tweaks and you end up here....
I’m blissfully content to not spend a lot of money on gizmos.
All I can say is, me too! I have found in most cases, the end result of an expensive tweak can be accomplished simply and economically, and the level of sonic improvement is just not worth the big money paid for many of those products. One thing for sure, the dollars spent on tweaks and cables by audiophiles proves the Jedi have no monopoly on mind tricks.
Hahaha. Yeah, well, as I said.. I’m willing to try things out! I’ve not been constantly trying tweaks... just when I get an itch. Some I leave in place if I like the way it looks (eg.. wood platforms). I love It when I discover something free, or at a low cost, that makes a positive difference! Speaker positioning is FREE, and can yield a giant improvement! I try really hard to only focus on the music. Once a music lover finds great sound, however, it’s difficult to just be satisfied. Thus our “disease”!
A few years ago I bought a half dozen Black Diamond Racing Cones for my fairly big power amp. I didn’t notice any change in sound. I might have kept them as nice audio jewelry, but I did notice that height raise was accumulating more heat underneath the shelf above the amp. Sold them.
Tweaks are how you do not build a great audio system.
If disparate "tweaks" are not the way, ,money is NOT the only way to build a great audio system....I apologize to reviewers...
:)
I know i have one at cheap cost but great, not with a singular "tweak" or 2 but very great with listening experiments and cheap materials that i use to create a connected GRID of devices embeddings controls...Calling that "tweaks" is inappropriate....Tweaks are not connected by cables.... :)
It is the ears and brain that matters most.... Money is not mandatory...I will not write a review of a million dollars amplifier, off course it will be better than mine, embeddings controls or not....But who cares about a half million dollars amplifiers? Or even a 100,000 dollars one? or even a 10,000 dollars one ? We, most of us want a good amplifier and we dont care about the best amplifier in the world because we cannot afford it anyway....
I prefer to make my 150 dollars vintage one sound near a 10,000 dollars one with the adequate cheap embeddings controls....
I dont read reviews anymore guess why? I dont buy "tweaks" guess why ?
I sell nothing except the faith in your own creativity....The only price you will pay is reading my posts....
Tweaks are exactly how you build a great audio system. I would even go so far as to say you cannot build a great audio system for any amount of money, it simply will not be great without tweaks. Sorry. You can build an expensive audio system without tweaks. You can even build an impressive audio system without tweaks. But you simply cannot build a great audio system without tweaks.
Here in Seattle we have a system with over one million dollars worth of Wilson, D-Agostino, and AT. Very impressive. It probably could be a great system. But it has no tweaks. And so it is not as great as mine, which cost less than the sales tax on theirs.
Please see my System page. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 There are many tweaks, not all equally effective but to take just one of the more average ones, cable elevators, everyone notices the sound field collapse when they are removed. The same or similar will happen if any of the many other tweaks are removed. Remove them all, I would not even want to hear it. For sure I would not be bragging about it. Minus the tweaks it would be merely another system, down there with the systems of all you who think tweaks aren't how you build a great audio system.
"And so it is not as great as mine, which cost less than the sales tax on theirs."
There is a value in such systems. Actually, they are priceless. It is that pride in "I did it".
According to https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 it costs not only less, but much less than the sales tax on theirs. Unless they are in Delaware, Dubai, or some other location with D.
One of my most unutilized tweaks was a Sound Shaper III Equalizer. 16 bands for each left and right with a toggle to notch each one up or down by 2 ( don’t remember if it was DB or...). I remember using it to tailor the sound in my room, and tweak, and tweak, and tweak never getting around to sit back and relax to the music. Finally bypassed it and just enjoyed the music. every couple of months I got the urge to play with the EQ and most times I settled on the same wave shape attenuation. I guess the ears know what they know. of course, if friends came over and I played disco,the right side EQ controls were all at the top
16 bands for each left and right with a toggle to notch each one up or down by 2 ( don’t remember if it was DB or...). I remember using it to tailor the sound in my room, and tweak, and tweak, and tweak never getting around to sit back and relax to the music.
I did the sub crawl and discovered, happily, that a best spot for my REL was right next to my listening chair. That makes it easy to adjust the bass levels at the beginning of the song. Sometimes, no change is needed, but typically, a bit of dial-in is necessary.
Based on what you relate, I better understand why Schiit made their Loki equalizer have 4 bands. It gives one enough to play with, but not so much that it becomes a distraction. Or, at least, it's less tempting.
@jacksky - Thanks for the blast from the past! I owned the Sound Shaper One back in college and had a bunch of fun adjusting the sound of different systems. This was way before tone controls were considered a bad thing.
I think tweaks are like clothes. If you only add, without periodically sorting out the "keepers," you will have a pile of stuff that either is neither useful nor beneficial.
For me, it is mostly eliminating vibration control pieces. Adding is the easy part, like accumulating shirts and pants. The real work is critically looking at the whole audio setup, making subtractions, and re-evaluating the resulting sound changes. Less can be more.
I might be the only one with this opinion, though.
If it wasn't for the SR HFTs (32X), I would have had to buy expensive quadradic diffusion paneling from front and rear walls. If it wasn't for the two pairs of Hallographs, my Legacy Focuses would have remained unfocused sounding. Those are my essential tweaks to building a great sounding audio system. If I upgraded my speakers to Von Schweikert's upper priced models, maybe I wouldn't need Hallographs.
'I’ve found, to ME, in my systems, nothing that has made a difference in sound that has compared to the level of difference I’ve heard/experienced with: changing speakers, changing speaker positioning, treating the room, changing amplifiers, or changing phono cartridges (roughly in that order). ... Tweaks that DO work are noticeable, and enhance the sound a bit, but I haven’t tried one that made me think; “Wow! I can’t listen to my music without this!”
My experiences too. So far so good but then it gets tricky.
@douglas_schroeder
'Tweaks are how you do not build a great audio system.'
@millercarbon,
'Tweaks are exactly how you build a great audio system. I would even go so far as to say you cannot build a great audio system for any amount of money, it simply will not be great without tweaks. Sorry. You can build an expensive audio system without tweaks. You can even build an impressive audio system without tweaks. But you simply cannot build a great audio system without tweaks.'
I think it's important to distinguish between what constitutes a tweak and what constitutes good system set up.
I mentioned earlier the idea that an optimized $500 system might match a poorly setup $50,000 one, but assuming that @millercarbon is on to something, could it be even that figure was too modest?
Actually I'd tend to agree but don't like the idea of equating good system setup with nonsense such as teleportation tweaks, magic pebbles etc.
For example I think most of us would agree that a low noise floor is a good thing.
Therefore wouldn't a million dollar (boutique) system placed in a box shaped front room next to a busy main road be at a serious disadvantage to a 500 dollar one placed in a near silent room which had asymmetric dimensions for height, width and length?
Maybe that's the real question here, just where does good system assembly and set-up end, and the portal to audiophile snake-oil begin?
It's obvious, as all audiophiles know, that you can't just buy a system and plonk it down willy-and hope for the best sound.
You may get lucky and it may sound good, but on the other hand you might be putting up with seriously degraded sound compared to what your system might be capable of.
I'd say that a room with good acoustics, freedom from electrical and other outside noise, and a degree of structural integrity is desirable.
Speaker placement and perhaps some isolation underneath are also definitely worth experimenting with.
It is not technical progress in amplifier design, or in dac design, or speakers design that are the FIRST reason why a system sound great....( for sure nobody will debate that a better design is a better design)
Top Amplifier of the past, or speakers or dac of the past, are good enough for most of us and can rival some new design in some case....
The reason why a system is good is not an accumulation of disparate "tweaks", it is the systematic implementation of some controls devices in the 3 embeddings.... And for sure, we may call that the 4th or first embedding, a synergetic pairing between themselves of the main electronic parts.... A good speaker with the wrong amplifier is not a good start for sure....
My 3 main electronic components has not been changed here for years, why then is there NO comparison at all between them before and after the rightful embeddings?
Because this is the way to go, but most people dont even know what is the potential best S.Q. of their actual system.... Their only road for improvement is first and last an upgrading.... But an upgrading, except if absolutely necessary, must be the last thing to do to reach Hi-Fi....
Number 1 tweak for analog since 2011-2, Magic Eraser for cleaning the stylus. I suspect I have doubled the life of my Benz Ruby3 making sure to use this free tweak for almost a decade. Better than the Onzow. Use Disc Doctor stylus cleaner once per month to satisfy that the stylus is really clean to the cantilever.
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