There was a bit of discussion about "nothing" a few posts ago. Soon, though I do not know when, I will have a lot more to say about the Nothing. Likely in another thread though.
There was a bit of discussion about "nothing" a few posts ago. Soon, though I do not know when, I will have a lot more to say about the Nothing. Likely in another thread though.
Yes, best upgrade but only in the no-cost sense. But, there are some upgrades that cost a lot, and they can make all the difference too. I just spent some days learning about both.
Nothing: Rubber belt to kevlar thread with proper tension - cheap
Something: Excellent turntable to a great turntable - expensive
Few years ago there was one selling equipment for too cheap as "used", can't remember name but it was closed after a while (or blocked from google search). There was even thread about it here.
Upgrades that cost...nothing:
For many years I used champagne corks cut in half as component supports. They worked surprisingly well, particularly under heavier kit. The really entertaining thing was about 5 years ago a couple of dealers (two separate occasions) came round to demonstrate improvements / sell me stuff (select your adjective of choice according to your personal level of cynicism) and we try some expensive footers. Without listening to my admittedly horrible looking corks we put in these new footers under my PX25 and listened.... <shrug > OK, very nice.
On the first occasion I asked whether we could try the corks under the amp again. This instantly gave a cleaner, less hifi sound, tighter more ..."natural" bass, even the dealer saying "yes OK that does seem better on this occasion" !
Same demo on the second occasion, different dealer same result, that time the dealer switched smoothly to trying something else and didn't discuss footers any more.
...Probably just how badly made the hifi footers actually were....
What would you have called that Zu thread, Peter?
"So natural, I can't believe it's not butter".
"There's natural sound, then there's NATURAL SOUND".
"Naturally, Zu".