What I learned on Audiogon This Year


Things I learned from the forums this year:

1) In n Out Burger is the best fast food in the world, and Father's Office is the best Burger in LA (thanks BongoFury).

2) Widespread Panic and Arcade Fire are great bands.

3) All Digital is the wave of the future through downloads and analog is dead.

4) Analog is back to audio dominance and will continue to grow, digital is a trend and will die off except for convenience sake.

5) Don't ever say anything derogitory regarding certain types of gear that are defended by thier ______-mafia gangs. Especially___________________________.

6) Expensive Power cords are a still the biggest snake oil in audio.

7) Speakers are the most important place to start building a system.

8) Analog sounds better than digital.

9) Blu Ray is dead in the water, downloads for all media, video and audio is now the standard and will only continue to grow.

10) This is not a hobby, but a terrible affliction/addiction, and I need to change out some more gear.
macdadtexas
The 'Feil has hit on all cylinders today. My favorite points there are the censorship (I get moderated a lot, and can't figure out why most of the time), and the cartridge hours.

Ironically I just sold 2 cartridges, the one I sold on here, literally had never touched vinyl, the other I sold to my friend who is a scientist, and he checked it out on his microscope before he bought it. It had well over 300 hrs on it at my house and I bought it used. Makes me really believe in how well made Grado cartridges are, especially if you take the time to set them up correctly.
1.There are always at least two A'goners waiting for me to list an item for sale, so that they can list the same item for less at the same time.

2.Most items for sale on A'gon have the magical quality of staying "new' or "like new" or "still in the box" or "only opened to take this photo", even though they were purchased 5-10 years ago.

3.The majority of A'gon items for sale are "Reference quality", "sound better than the newer, updated model", and are used by some famous reviewer (usually "Mikey") in their personal system.

Happy New Year dear audiophiles! May we all retain our senses of humor, even as we continue to be driven to the brink of insanity by this crazy hobby of ours.
Expensive cables are always better.

Tubes and solid state do not sound different.

Analog is superior to digital.

Balanced cables perform better.

Digital is superior to analog.

Unbalanced cables perform better.

There is no relation between advertising and good reviews.

The forums are completely uncensored.

Every cartridge for sale has less than 75 hours of use.

10/10 can be anything from 5/10 to 9/10.
That's absolutely wrong!

LOL, love this website. I start a new job Monday so I'm guessing my days of combing the 'Gon ad naseum are over for a while.
Do not make an absolute judgment. Someone will always dispute it (and rightly so).
I learned why many people prefer tone arms that don't have user removable headshells, because cartridge rolling is expensive and addicting.
Plato, great post. I have heard the Wyred DAC and love it. I am helping a non-audio-fool friend put together a higher end system, and had him buy the Wyred DAC2 as the centerpiece. That said, in my system I liked the Bryton BDA-1 better than the Wyred, I thought it had a deeper soundstage. But that was my system. The Wyred is as good as advertised.

MickeyF, excellent post. I hate cats, and rim drive.
I have learned that whatever the majority thinks is easy will be difficult for me. Whatever tweak that made a world of difference in the other guy's system will make no difference in mine.
Macdadtexas, I like your observations and I'm sure more will be added to the list.

Regarding point number 10, you might want to try a Wyred 4 Sound DAC-2. It may challenge your analog rig and give you something else to ponder. At least that's been my experience.

My next step is to get a laptop so I can bring my computer music files to the DAC-2 (via the USB input) in my large-room 2-channel system. I already have a wireless computer network in the house and an external hard-drive loaded with music files, so I'm half-way there.

Happy Holidays!
You may have to disconnect all the cables in your system, or move gear, but get your cables arranged in an orderly fashion with an emphasis on separating them from each other as much as possible. It makes a difference.
11) Do not make cat jokes. Especially ones advocating fixing them to audio equipment.

12) Do not diss rim drive turntables. Idlers are the future of analogue.