What are the best tweaks in your experience?

[PYP]

Cellcbern talks about what I call audio infrastructure: electricity, vibration, acoustics. These seem like basics to me. They may be called tweaks because so many come to addressing these after they've plopped a bunch of gear in their room. Perhaps if we knew then what we know now we'd pay attention to infrastructure as a starting point rather than as 'fix'.

Over the past few years I'm more engaged in getting rid of those sorts of tweaks than acquiring them. It is probably heresy to most -- but there it is. Stillpoint Ultra 5s under my Alexias and other footers - gone. Noise reduction wires - gone. Thirteen acoustic panels in my room - twelve are gone. Power distributor/conditioner - gone. My de-tweaking allows musical energy (vitality, vivacity) robbed by those tweaks to return to my room. Still rolling tubes after all these years; I suppose thats a tweak.

I'm a believer in getting the big stuff done first. That would include "audio infrastructure" (to me, speaker placement is included within acoustics).

I've found that the tweaks one uses changes as the audio infrastructure changes. For example, once I had the power and network side of things sorted out to my satisfaction, I ended up using different acoustic panels - ones that both reflected as well as absorbed sound. I had learned that I like a lively sound because it sounds more like the live experience to me.

At the same time I became fussier about the changes in sound I was trying to accomplish. Little changes no longer interested me. Only significant changes in musical engagement (not sound, per se) now interest me. Just my own temperament at this point in time.

 

[Cellcbern]

I'm a believer in getting the big stuff done first. That would include "audio infrastructure" (to me, speaker placement is included within acoustics).

I've found that the tweaks one uses changes as the audio infrastructure changes. For example, once I had the power and network side of things sorted out to my satisfaction, I ended up using different acoustic panels - ones that both reflected as well as absorbed sound. I had learned that I like a lively sound because it sounds more like the live experience to me.

At the same time I became fussier about the changes in sound I was trying to accomplish. Little changes no longer interested me. Only significant changes in musical engagement (not sound, per se) now interest me. Just my own temperament at this point in time.

Periodic re-auditioning of your tweaks should reveal which ones “audio infrastructure” changes have rendered subpar or detrimental. I have eliminated or replaced a few tweaks after moving to a new listening room, upgrading components, and changing the room treatments. Most of my tweaks have survived such “infrastructure” changes.

 

[PeterA]

I’m not really sure what tweaks I have in my system anymore. I am getting ready to apply DeOxit on my connectors. I do it about once a year and have yet to do it on my new system.

I did do a lot of experimenting with turntable belt versus thread, the tension, and then frequency and voltage controls on the motor. I consider this turntable set up but others might consider it tweaking. I also have adjustable slats in my wooden blinds covering three windows in my room. I just the angles sometimes depending on the recording or where I sit in the room to listen. I do sometimes alternate between nearfield listening and my usual sofa seat. They all affect the sound and listening experience.

 

[Cellcbern]

I’m not really sure what weeks I have in my system anymore. I am getting ready to apply DeOxit on my connectors. I do it about once a year and have yet to do it on my new system.

I did do a lot of experimenting with turntable belt versus thread, the tension, and then frequency and voltage controls on the motor. I consider this turntable set up but others might consider it tweaking. I also have adjustable slats in my wooden blinds covering three windows in my room. I just the angles sometimes depending on the recording or where I sit in the room to listen. I do sometimes alternate between nearfield listening and my usual sofa seat. They all affect the sound and listening experience.

Not sure whether or not you have AC or signal noise filtration….isolation platforms/feet….room acoustical treatments? Every room/system I’ve owned you could see evidence of these things from the listening position.

 

[dbeau]

I’ I also have adjustable slats in my wooden blinds covering three windows in my room. I just the angles sometimes depending on the recording or where I sit in the room to listen. They all affect the sound and listening experience.

I feel validated reading this Likewise, my 'front' wall consists of 3 large windows with wood blinds that can be raised/lowered/angled up or down, and I have found the 'settings' I prefer. Wife thinks I've lost it! I use them as my 'adjustable diffuser''.

 

[Kingrex]

Or you could just have a phone consultation with Dr. Jay, he will set you on the right path ! By the way, what did you pay for that ?

I get the entertaining poke. I paid Jay $75. At the time he was an entertaining being with a lot of experience playing with amps. But come on, I have also paid 2 different TT setup people to come to my house and show me how to set up my cartridge. I also sent my cartridge to JR at Wally tools to be analyzed and watched all his video on setup. I am using pros where needed. If I had a dedicated room, I would probably pay a pro to set up the speakers. At least once. I have a friend who used Jim in the past. I talked with him today. He said Jim taught him more than you get from the video and he feels confident to fiddle with his own placement at this time. I am all about direct person to person instructions. I get a whole lot more from that than reading or videos. I bought Jim's Get Better Sound and that was a must have at the time. I am mulling the idea of getting subwoofers. If I do, I want them here during PAF so I can hire JR to show me how to integrate subs into the room. I realize I have no business trying to do that on my own. I don't know how to use DSP properly.

 

[Kingrex]

Your post is too dismissive, imo. Yes, speaker set-up on its own doesn't solve anything if all the other things you mention are problems. Yet just fixing those things still leaves the major issue of speaker set-up, which needs to be solved properly as well. It doesn't magically go away.

In terms of importance, it's not either/or. It's both/and.

That is my point. The thread was about tweaks and sort of evolved into a dismiss of tweaks and focus on speaker placement. You have to deal with everything. You have to decide where the $$ are best spent. Hiring Stirling or others is not a free tweak anymore. Its expensive and you may get better results spending your money elsewhere. Especially if you have watched Jims videos and worked through speaker setup on your own. Your probably pretty close.

 

[Lagonda]

I get the entertaining poke. I paid Jay $75. At the time he was an entertaining being with a lot of experience playing with amps. But come on, I have also paid 2 different TT setup people to come to my house and show me how to set up my cartridge. I also sent my cartridge to JR at Wally tools to be analyzed and watched all his video on setup. I am using pros where needed. If I had a dedicated room, I would probably pay a pro to set up the speakers. At least once. I have a friend who used Jim in the past. I talked with him today. He said Jim taught him more than you get from the video and he feels confident to fiddle with his own placement at this time. I am all about direct person to person instructions. I get a whole lot more from that than reading or videos. I bought Jim's Get Better Sound and that was a must have at the time. I am mulling the idea of getting subwoofers. If I do, I want them here during PAF so I can hire JR to show me how to integrate subs into the room. I realize I have no business trying to do that on my own. I don't know how to use DSP properly.

I'm just messing with you ! I have had pros assemble, set up and measure my rooms on several occasions myself. In my opinion you are more qualified to give audio advice than Jay is. Love your system, you and Sound of Tao have gone down similar path and i will try it too at some point !

 

[PYP]

I also have adjustable slats in my wooden blinds covering three windows in my room. I just the angles sometimes depending on the recording or where I sit in the room to listen. I do sometimes alternate between nearfield listening and my usual sofa seat. They all affect the sound and listening experience.

It would be interesting to know, on a percentage basis, how many folks here have dedicated rooms. Personally, I prefer a multi-purpose room in which I can listen to music, or read or just relax or socialize. I live in a place with nearly daily sunlight (few cloudy or rainy days) and I want to take full advantage of that, meaning large windows. Of course, sound wise that isn't ideal, but does a setup sound better when one's mood is lifted by the setting than a less conducive environment with ideal speaker placement?

In addition, aesthetics are important to me (and my wife). That limits re-arranging the furniture in the room (that and the open architecture -- the room opens onto other rooms) and therefore speaker placement. Luckily, the room supports less than ideal placement. One benefit of an open floor plan is multiple listening positions and music throughout much of the house. It gives a perspective about how the sound changes across different locations and that changed my ideal when sitting directly in front of the speakers.

 

[Ron Resnick]

I have an acoustically well treated dedicated listening room and the speakers placed where they sound their best. I have used almost all « tweaks» thinkable from power conditioners, cable lifters, footers, spikes, high end racks, etc etc. And very expensive cables.

Now I am listening in the same room with zero tweaks. Nothing. And cheap cables like Mogami, Belden etc. Nothing fancy. One can live perfectly happy without all the woodoo and hype that goes with all tweaks. A good room and proper speaker positioning is by FAR the most important things in order to have a good sounding system.I tend to laugh about the claims made by the manufacturers of tweaks and certain cable manufacturers. And from reading some reviews….

I have been in this hobby for more than 40 years and I know what I am listening to and what I am hearing. And know when it sounds right, to my ears.

You are an interesting case study (as is Peter for the same reason who evolved the same way).

What prompted you to abandon the tweaks? Was it an intellectual decision or a policy decision? Was it the result of finally listening and comparing with and without a particular tweak?

What was your comparison process or decision process that led to you abandoning tweaks?

For the record, I have never embraced tweaks. I have never seriously played with footers. (I did buy a few Simms Navcom pucks in the late 1980s and played with them for a little while.)

Sound electrical and grounding (meaning achieving a low resistance in ohms to ground) infrastructure makes sense to me, but grounding boxes don't make sense to me.

Vibration infrastructure makes sense to me but that is what solid stands are for, so adding to a solid stand with solid shelves additional layers of platforms and footers under each component and between each platform, etc., just does not make sense to me. What makes a whole lot of sense to me is removing the turntable from the room in which the loudspeakers are located, and getting the front-end components completely out of the line of fire of the loudspeakers.

But just going by what make sense to me or does not make sense to me is intellectually invalid. Since I haven't done these comparisons myself with my own ears I don't consider my theoretical opinion to be valid. I'd say it's more that I just don't have the patience to conduct for myself these endless comparisons. This is what we have Marty for.

Any tweak which increases suspension of disbelief and emotional engagement I am in favor of!

You'll have to pull my vintage Shakti stones out of my cold, dead hands! (Remember Shakti stones?)

 

[Ron Resnick]

Insertion depth(if applicable) headband tension(again, if applicable), fore-aft position and getting the best fit regardless.
I often think my headphones are messed up, just takes 1/4th of an inch to make 'em sound right again.

Hi Gert!

Welcome back to WBF!

Are you analogizing careful loudspeaker positioning and set-up to careful headphone adjustment set-up?

 

[Ron Resnick]

Over the past few years I'm more engaged in getting rid of those sorts of tweaks than acquiring them. It is probably heresy to most -- but there it is. Stillpoint Ultra 5s under my Alexias and other footers - gone. Noise reduction wires - gone. Thirteen acoustic panels in my room - twelve are gone. Power distributor/conditioner - gone. My de-tweaking allows musical energy (vitality, vivacity) robbed by those tweaks to return to my room.

What prompted you to abandon the tweaks? Was it an intellectual decision or a policy decision? Was it the result of finally listening and comparing with and without a particular tweak?

What was your comparison process or decision process that led to you abandoning tweaks?

Maybe this isn't that much of a mystery? I think a lot of tweaks are aimed at ameliorating brightness and edginess of contemporary high-end audio loudspeakers and electronics. Some vintage speakers and some contemporary speakers don't need those sonic Band-Aids, so it makes perfect sense that removing now-unnecessary Band-Aids improves the sound.

 

[Ron Resnick]

That's actually an interesting hypothesis:

Is a high-end audio system with a contemporary loudspeaker more likely to employ tweaks than a high-end audio system with a vintage loudspeaker?

 

[tima]

What prompted you to abandon the tweaks?

That didn't happen all at once. Over time my values changed.

 

[bonzo75]

That's actually an interesting hypothesis:

Is a high-end audio system with a contemporary loudspeaker more likely to employ tweaks than a high-end audio system with a vintage loudspeaker?

This probably comes from the fact that most on this forum know Vintage speakers from David and because Peter and Tima follow his philosophy, the approach gets confused with what is required for vintage speakers vs modern speakers, since most cannot relate to what vintage speakers are as they have heard very few if any. Keep in mind David asks people with modern speakers to do the same regarding tweaks. Tang detweaked his system with Cessaros, it is possible in your mind all horns are vintage. And David will ask Wilson and Magico owners to the do the same.

On the other hand, the owner of Bionors and Kondo in EU has Wellfloat and Shun Mook under his gear, including the Shun Mook rack for his Continuum and the shun mook component rack, and has been trying to source the giant shun mook feet for the past few months.

So as such, there is no correlation unless you want to force one.

 

[tima]

And David will ask Wilson and Magico owners to the do the same.

Perhaps for some more so natural sound than vintage speakers.

 

[Keith_W]

You'll have to pull my vintage Shakti stones out of my cold, dead hands! (Remember Shakti stones?)

You can still buy them: https://www.shakti-innovations.com/product/shakti-stone/

 

[Argonaut]

Maybe this isn't that much of a mystery? I think a lot of tweaks are aimed at ameliorating brightness and edginess of contemporary high-end audio loudspeakers and electronics. Vintage speakers don't need those sonic Band-Aids, so it makes perfect sense that removing now-unnecessary Band-Aids improves the sound.

A little too much of an absolutist consideration in this for me Ron … I would feel more comfortable with Some Vintage Speaker Designs and Some Contemporary Modern Designs .

 

[Jep]

You are an interesting case study (as is Peter for the same reason who evolved the same way).

What prompted you to abandon the tweaks? Was it an intellectual decision or a policy decision? Was it the result of finally listening and comparing with and without a particular tweak?

What was your comparison process or decision process that led to you abandoning tweaks?

For the record, I have never embraced tweaks. I have never seriously played with footers. (I did buy a few Simms Navcom pucks in the late 1980s and played with them for a little while.)

Sound electrical and grounding (meaning achieving a low resistance in ohms to ground) infrastructure makes sense to me, but grounding boxes don't make sense to me.

Vibration infrastructure makes sense to me but that is what solid stands are for, so adding to a solid stand with solid shelves additional layers of platforms and footers under each component and between each platform, etc., just does not make sense to me. What makes a whole lot of sense to me is removing the turntable from the room in which the loudspeakers are located, and getting the front-end components completely out of the line of fire of the loudspeakers.

But just going by what make sense to me or does not make sense to me is intellectually invalid. Since I haven't done these comparisons myself with my own ears I don't consider my theoretical opinion to be valid. I'd say it's more that I just don't have the patience to conduct for myself these endless comparisons. This is what we have Marty for.

Any tweak which increases suspension of disbelief and emotional engagement I am in favor of!

You'll have to pull my vintage Shakti stones out of my cold, dead hands! (Remember Shakti stones?)

Thank you for thinking of me and my choices as interesting Ron .

My "process" in the high end has been going on for + 40 years. During this time I have owned a lot of expensive high end products. When I say " a lot" I really mean it. I was constant seeking "better sound" and changed gear often several times pr year because I wanted "higher resolution", "deeper soundstage" and so on. It got to the point of near obsession which is not a good thing. When I ordered something new I almost got "an high" and that feeling is not supposed to occur when buying equipment.... Not healthy!

So my process to end this madness was to slow down which I have done over the last 2-3 years. I still have my dedicated, well treated listening room and now a smaller system. The only "tweak" I have is a dedicated power line to my system, I see no reason to remove that. Gone are dedicated stands, cable lifters, power conditioners, footers etc etc. And, very expensive cables!

And you know what; My system sounds really good and I relax completely when listening to music. I am not thinking about what I am "missing" or "what could be better if" anymore. Coming from very expensive systems I know what I heard then compared to what I am hearing now. The minor differences are there of course, but it does not bother me at all. And these "improvements" costs a lot of money, money I am not willing to spend anymore for small "details".

Maybe we should have an AA in our community as well: Audiophiles Anonymous......

JP

 

[jerrybj]

I have added a plethora of tweaks to my system.
Some have been very effective, while others less so.

Cables I don't consider tweaks, but have made improvements with Audience Au24Sx cables, Auditorium 23 speakers cables, Triode Wire Labs 'Freedom' ethernet cables, and Mad Scientist power cables.

But tweaks that have improved my system:
Changing from streaming via wifi, to ethernet cables
Black Ravioli Pads and Big Pads
SR Red, Orange and Purple fuses
Re-clocked network switches
Akiko Audio products
LAN isolators
Linear power supplies
Grounding boxes
Having equipment modded