Lalitk, After all of the great examples of absurd tweaks in this chain, I notice you haven’t budged on your position one iota...which appears to be, don’t dareexpress skepticism about a $4,800 record clamp made of rare wood from the swamps of Africa without first doing an A/B test. My way, and it’s probably more personality based than anything, is to just consider it baloney (no offense intended toward lunch meats or pigeons).
Even after 40 years of audio, my “credibility” should of course still be suspect, entirely your call. But one thing I have learned (the hard way) that you might consider, is this: it’s just a hobby, so lighten up. You’ll find it’s far more enjoyable.
The pursuit of excellence is a big part of this hobby, believe me I get that. My point is that there is a line where this pursuit ends and hucksterism begins, and that (maybe) there’s some humor there. Most have taken this in the spirit it was offered which is heartening, and many of the examples make mine seem almost reasonable by comparison.
IMHO, unless you have tried and tested any given tweak in your system, you are simply talking from a position of literal ignorance. Of course I am not doubting your or anyone’s ability to research and excercise common sense when making decisions to try a specially formulated 💩 or a well thought out tweak 😊
Ultimately it’s your Audio system and money, spend it anyway you seem fit.
Best cheap tweak- the light switch! Just turn it off. The next best tweak-telling your kids, wife and neighbors to shut up and be quiet. 3rd best tweak-turn off the dryer, washing machine, vacuum, air conditioner and heater.
Whoops, in some cases turning on the air conditioner can have a positive effect.
Best tweak of all time: move your speakers or your listening position.
worst problem to overcome- static electricity due to dryness or too much humidity making the air lethargic and not move. Best no brained tweak: clean out your ears or clear them like a scuba diver or yawn big. Best time tweak-listen in the middle of the night. Best tweak for life: change the source off of that rap or hip hop and put on some classic jazz.
Best no brainer tweak: clean your vinyl and your stylus.
Best duh tweak- listen to vinyl.
Best tweak when system totally blows for some reason: alcohol.
Best transformative tweak: getting a promotion at work or a big inheritance from the in-laws.
Latick, You were the one seeming to ask for spec from the OP and so my comment about specs in these product lines in general. Does the manufacturer even provide and about their own [product?
By your logic if someone advertises that placing their specially formulated dog poop under screen the picture improves I have to try it to call it nonsense?
BTW I return to my argument that you can say your hear something and without double blind tests how can it be anything but suggestive testimonial evidence?
Of course not all tweaks are nonsense, and my education is in computer, not electrical engineering, but the power of suggestion and wishful thinking certainly plays a part no matter what you think of my "credibility."
I left out the great
Immanuel Velikovsky
in my last post. Legendary, wonderfully entertaining read. Like a lot of the ads for cables and fuses and tweaks I see, great stuff and deeply amusing.
You just have to realize that you're in the fiction section. If you forget that and take the wrong things as reality, you may get people laughing at you.
“Given the so-called high end audio business seldom uses specs at all, especially with these types of products, what specification would show what effect that a power chord, plate cover, green ink etc etc has on sound?”
If you’ve tried any of the stuff you say, you would know the possible effects or no effects at all on the sound. Cause you will be speaking from your experience...otherwise you have no credibility (just like the OP) to diss a product that may be effective or completely useless.
In 20 years of trying many tweaks I know better not to deem a product ‘useless’ in a public forum until I’ve tried in my system.
>>>>>> I suppose you tried this outlet cover and found to be completely useless.....do you have any measurements to substantiate your vote? What receptacle did you pair this cover with? <<<<<<
I laughed when I read this. Given the so-called high end audio business seldom uses specs at all, especially with these types of products, what specification would show what effect that a power chord, plate cover, green ink etc etc has on sound?
That is the magic dust that some people selling products depend on. I/we have no way to experience or validate, beyond possibly double blind test, which the hard core disdain) if or what differences you/we say we hear.
I am not denigrating ANYONE's experiences but do think some are self fulfilling prophesies and bias. How a very very slight diminishment in some vibration can change specific timbre, sound staging etc in electronic devices..lets just say I am skeptical but kudos to Navy and USAF because their stuff seems to work fine on ships and aircraft lol
I have read through this thread and almost thought about posting "anything from Synergistic Research", lol. Then today, I came across this and just had to laugh!!
cd318---Interesting take. I think a lot of the defenders of the absolute lunatic fringe bonkers tweaks that you see in the forums are like my old card playing buddies.
Back in the day when I had the, uh, exotic dancer living at my place, I had a lot of card playing friends. When they would come over and we'd sit around the table, she would wander around in her, uh, work clothes. Oh Honey, can I freshen your drink? Things like that. She knew what she was doing. They knew what she was doing.
I was looking at the cards. They were looking at something else. I won a lot. They really did not care. They were very happy to come over and not look at their cards.
It's the same way with the denizens of tweak city here. Most know better. They want to play and to dream and the Hell with anybody that says different.
That's fine for what it's worth. If anybody wants to play pretend that way, go right ahead. I used to read Erich Von Daniken and Charles Fort for fun myself.
@kqvkq9, "When I was a kid working in the amusement park I would sometimes work the Carny side of things. You quickly learned who was savvy and who was a mark. Some of the marks knew they were but played along because they were only throwing away peanuts. Some had no clue. When I had the stripper living with me I saw the same effect. When I took my friends to her shows for free we would always be treated like marks when we walked in. After we let out that we knew somebody in the show we were treated like family instead of schmucks. The deal was that we weren't stupid enough to actually pay money for the show. We were alright. Think audio is any different? Really, do you?"
Nope, but the noobs might not know that most 'slick' businesses work like this.
There's little romance going on, its mainly 'us and them', those in the know and those outside.
If you really want romance, try DIY, or at at least take a good hard look at the designer first.
When I was a kid working in the amusement park I would sometimes work the Carny side of things. You quickly learned who was savvy and who was a mark. Some of the marks knew they were but played along because they were only throwing away peanuts. Some had no clue. When I had the stripper living with me I saw the same effect. When I took my friends to her shows for free we would always be treated like marks when we walked in. After we let out that we knew somebody in the show we were treated like family instead of schmucks. The deal was that we weren't stupid enough to actually pay money for the show. We were alright. Think audio is any different? Really, do you?
I wouldn’t dismiss tachyons so quickly. Any more than, say, artificial atoms or quantum teleportation.
from somewhere in cyberspace. OK, Wikipedia, you got me!
“The possibility of particles moving faster-than-light was first proposed by Robert Ehrilch and Arnold Sommerfeld, independently of each other. In the 1967 paper that coined the term,[3]Gerald Feinberg proposed that tachyonic particles could be quanta of a quantum field with imaginary mass. However, it was soon realized that excitations of such imaginary mass fieldsdo not under any circumstances propagate faster than light,[4] and instead the imaginary mass gives rise to an instability known as tachyon condensation.[1] Nevertheless, in modern physics the term "tachyon" often[1][5] refers to imaginary mass fields rather than to faster-than-light particles. Such fields have come to play a significant role in modern physics.
The term comes from the Greek: ταχύ, tachy, meaning "rapid". The complementary particle types are called luxons (which always move at the speed of light) and bradyons (which always move slower than light); both of these particle types are known to exist.”
What about Kemp Electronics Tachyon box of BS. Tachyons don't even exist, and certainly no one is creating them for a hi-fi tweak. If they just said it was a magical box I wouldn't be getting on their case, but to throw out some absurd scientific BS just to get gullible hobbyists to give them money is disgraceful.
Audio magazines. There are articles I feel the expert writer is concerned with the word count over the content. Many times has the article had the "I, Me, Mine" focus then wrote about the subject of review. Unless the information pertains directly with the subject, the writers cuteness and personal life expirences can be omitted. I have subscribed to many of the magazines since the 70's. Todays publishers have a difficult time.
Tweeks come and go. Some work and others work well for the persons on the other side.
Any wire that is larger in diameter than what you already have inside the wall. e.g. going from 14 gauge Romex to a 10 gauge single core power cord makes zero sense.
the stands which lift your speaker cables off of the floor
".. On the one hand, cable supports are to reduce the effect of ground vibrations on cables and, on the other hand, change the capacity of cables by keeping them away from the ground..." http://www.highfidelity.pl/@main-918&lang=en
Here are some examples of preposterous-sounding tweaks that are either free (hel-loo!) or don’t cost an arm and a leg. 💪 🦵
Silver Rainbow Foil, the Green Pen, Mpingo Disc (OK, so the price has gone up a lot in the last twenty years but the used price is not too bad), freezing things at home for two days, getting rid of all magazines, newspapers, extraneous trash, Black Pen on inner edge of CD, storing all CDs vertically, tying adjacent cables and cords into a square knot, removing all cell phones from the room.
I just realized nobody mentioned freezing things in the home freezer. What’s up with that? You guys are slipping. I will be standing by for someone to point out to me that temperatures in the home freezer aren’t low enough to do anything. 😬
Can we have a little bit of fun here, just as the original poster intended? I very much liked the reversed carpet story! Why is this getting ridiculed??? If it's all about subtle influences, and all sorts of snake oil - why should the fibres of the carpet pointing in the reverse direction NOT have an influence? After all the exotic room treatment we have done? Hey - we are here in FREE Of CHARGE territory. Why not try ??? Some years ago my then little kids rearranged the Persian rug in front of the speakers, creating ridges and bumps to play with toy cars! Did it affect the sound? YOU BET. So, as long as it's FREE, any tweak is OK. Thanks to glow_worm for the inspiration.
I'll go the other direction....the best tweaks are a good glass of scotch, a poke of herbal essence and the wonderful cover of night. System always sounds great under these conditions.
I sense your angst and trepidation. Geez, No wonder the Red Pen didn’t work for you. Assuming you actually did, which I doubt. You shouldn’t get so hung up on a manufacturer’s description of the device’s operation. 😬 Faint heart ne’er won fair maiden. So, you were too scared to try the Red Pen after reading the description? Anyway, the underlying idea behind PWB device’s, generally speaking, and the Red Pen in particular, is that the effects do not (rpt not) occur at the conscious level. They occur at the subconscious level.
"...what you can do is to ‘treat’ the cables, wires, components, equipment and listening environment to give them different ‘energy patterns’ which we (human beings) are able to interpret as ‘friendly’., ‘acceptable’., ‘reassuring’ and ‘relaxing’. Once you do this, the human being can relax, be under less tension and hear (perceive) more of the information which is already in the room !!..."
But if you don’t accept/agree with a basic premise of the suggested operation of the specific device (in the case of the red pen, that "the past is black evil and horrible"), how can you relax sufficiently for the device to perform as intended by the designers, regardless of the resolving power of your system?
>>>>You must be the exception that proves the rule. The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades. 😎 itvcan be mathematical proved there is no Present Time. By the time it gets here it’s already The Past.
If the Red Pen wouldn’t work for you it might be because your system isn’t resolving enough.
Re - the PWB red pen. This tweek wouldn't work for me at all. The term "Past" is not dominated by all that is "black evil and horrible". For me, it's where all the best recorded music exists. The "Present" is black evil and horrible.
The Clever Little Clock is much crazier than the Tice Clock ever thought of being. The Clever Little Clock doesn’t have to be plugged into the wall outlet. I mean, come on!
Someone briefly mentioned the Photos in the Freezer Tweak. Now, I know a thing or two about outrageous tweaks and I humbly submit the Photos in the Freezer Tweak for somewhere near the top of the list, but I’m not talking about the list of useless tweaks or the list of expensive tweaks. 🤗
For those using audiophile quality outlet covers and screws, are you using them on all outlets common to a breaker? If not, do you notice any outlet cover sound degradation from receptacle cover cross contamination?
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