What are the best tweaks in your experience?

[Keith_W]

Honestly, If I was going to take my Porsche Cayman S out to the track to drive it to its full potential, I sure as heck would pay a professional to teach me what its all about and how to handle it. Its pretty easy to die at 167mph.

Haha! That reminds me of my Porsche track driving day. We had a pro racing driver instruct us on how to tackle the track. So we were all out on the track, and in my mirror I see a Cayenne (a huge lumbering Porsche SUV) in the distance. By the next lap, he overtook me on the outside. It was the pro driver with 3 passengers staring back at me. So embarrassing.

 

[Carlos269]

I will admit that you are the ultimate recipiant of the one man survey. and the surveryed one is you. Cool!

Without proof that you are correct you certified that you are by stating yourself as the proof. Brilliant LMAO

Unlike some here, I’m not looking for affirmation. My systems are for me and for my enjoyment only. What is there to prove in your view?

 

[Elliot G.]

Unlike some here, I’m not looking for affirmation. My systems are for me and for my enjoyment only. What is there to prove in your view?

sadly its not about affirmation, but without having someone that could know more than you ( WAIT THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE) help, one will never know, however assuming that you are omnipotent serves your agenda.Perhaps you are the smartest man alive but even if so you have decided that you are incapable of learning from anyone. My point was that not everyone is as smart and as accomplished as you and they MIGHT require some help. My 50 years in this business have shown me via experience that is factual.
I dont know what you do for a living but I am damn sure that someone walking into your office and telling you that you are wrong and don't know what you are talking about would sit just perfectly with you.
No one was suggesting that everyone here needs help but some of the reply's show you they do or did. This list includes a magazine reviewer and a high end dealer.
Carlos we get that you don't want help, don't need help and will never accept help.It is nice to be king even if it is in your own mind and a kingdome of one.

 

[Carlos269]

sadly its not about affirmation, but without having someone that could know more than you ( WAIT THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE) help, one will never know, however assuming that you are omnipotent serves your agenda.Perhaps you are the smartest man alive but even if so you have decided that you are incapable of learning from anyone. My point was that not everyone is as smart and as accomplished as you and they MIGHT require some help. My 50 years in this business have shown me via experience that is factual.
I dont know what you do for a living but I am damn sure that someone walking into your office and telling you that you are wrong and don't know what you are talking about would sit just perfectly with you.
No one was suggesting that everyone here needs help but some of the reply's show you they do or did. This list includes a magazine reviewer and a high end dealer.
Carlos we get that you don't want help, don't need help and will never accept help.It is nice to be king even if it is in your own mind and a kingdome of one.

Some insight into me and my systems

Let me know what else you need to know.

 

[Republicoftexas69]

Honestly, If I was going to take my Porsche Cayman S out to the track to drive it to its full potential, I sure as heck would pay a professional to teach me what its all about and how to handle it. Its pretty easy to die at 167mph.

I would not recommend it for you. I do have an FIM Superbike License and ran on the FIM World Endurance series years back. I only club race now. Don’t be a fool stay on the road. If you want to know how slow you are go do a track day.

 

[Republicoftexas69]

from you ? nothing absolutely nothing. Those pictures do say everything one would want to know. Was that from an episode of horders?

Well I know who’s company and lines I will not patronize.

 

[Zuman]

This "conversation" has become ridiculous. I certainly hope this is not how you behave in person (you know who "you" are...). This is how wars start in the real world.

 

[henrich3]

No, it was a debate about how the digital signals can transmit noise. I asked a few tricky questions to Emile and he answered them very effectively. Please start reading the thread at this point: https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/taiko-audio-sgm-extreme-the-crème-de-la-crème.27433/page-48

Ok, so in Emile's (Taiko Audio's) post 972 he claimed
"Bits are indeed what they are, bits. However when bits are transferred they go accompanied by noise generated by a multitude of mechanisms. The interesting part of this is if these bits are stored in for example memory, or on disk, this noise is stored with them. When you read these bits back, this noise is read back along with them.

The research shows that these noise profiles are subsequently visible on a spectrum analysis of the output as high frequency noise. This will clearly have an effect.

We have identified and do address several mechanisms which generates this type of “bit noise”. But that “bit” I’m not sharing."

While this is not my area of expertise (I don't design electronic circuits), it sounds like a false claim to me that the noise accompanying a digital bit stream over Ethernet would also be encoded onto a PC's hard drive, for example.

Over Ethernet we may see ones & zeros come across like this -

The ones & zeros are just transitions from one voltage level to another.

In a hard drive, a read-write head magnetizes microscopic spots on a spinning platter to represent those ones & zeros. There's no Ethernet-sourced noise also being recorded onto the platter. Just noise-free ones & zeros.

The last place that a PC will see Ethernet-sourced noise is on the I/O (Input/Output) of an Ethernet chip. The digital data stream is then rewritten without extraneous noise as it is copied into various locations (RAM, non-volatile memory) in the PC.

While that author is surely well informed about many technical issues, he also makes claims that fall into the "audiophile vodoo" category IMO -
"To match the aliveness and dynamic freedom of copper networking, you need the Startech 1550nm 80km modules I recommended. What you gain is more contrast, better colour saturation and darker backgrounds. The best analogy I can come up with is turning down the brightness and increasing contrast on a television set. Or have it ISF calibrated."

When someone claims that swapping in different networking modules will give your audio more "aliveness and dynamic freedom" or "more contrast, better colour saturation and darker backgrounds", that just lowers the trustworthiness of their claims IMO.

 

[wil]

Some insight into me and my systems

Let me know what else you need to know.

Back to tweaking, I see you use the Cello Pallete. I’d be curious to hear about your use/experience with this device?

 

[WBF Team]

Personal attacks are unnecessary and will not be tolerated. Any continuation of this will result in warnings and bans.

 

[henrich3]

Personal attacks are unnecessary and will not be tolerated. Any continuation of this will result in warnings and bans.

If you reread what I said, you'll see that I made no personal attack on a member. I did dispute a member's claims however, since their claims were offered up as evidence that my claims were incorrect. I was defending my claims, and I believe that what I said was appropriate.

 

[mtemur]

air suspension with slate my best tweak brought more than cartridges five times as expensive. i was skeptical at the beginning too, now five friends of mine are using the same concept, your own ears can be wrong, many ears can't. you need about 105kg mass on the 3 air springs, the slate ensures that the transparency is better.
i tested different materials over several months, slate is the material that has the least influence on the tonality.

I agree with you about slate but it’s very hard to cut it without breaking. I always I liked turntables made with a slate plinth, mostly diy. I don’t know if slate is responsible for that but taking your post into account I now convinced that it is.

 

[mtemur]

When you add a tweak it makes an improvement as if you changed a mojor component. After a while once you remove it you feel like system sound more organic without tweak. You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.

The tweaks I like:
Shun mook mpingo discs
Yamamoto mgb-1 magnetic floating feet
Shakti hallographs
Steinmusic speaker match signature
Concert fidelity record mat
Bassocontinuo acoustic panels (unfortunately they didn’t work in my room)

 

[DasguteOhr]

I agree with you about slate but it’s very hard to cut it without breaking. I always I liked turntables made with a slate plinth, mostly diy. I don’t know if slate is responsible for that but taking your post into account I now convinced that it is.

I had my slab(2 .1/2 inch thick) machined and smoothed by a stonemason. the whole thing cost €250 + €320 for the air springs, hoses and valves. As I said, my best purchase in my hifi time. the audiolabor (brinkmann)recordclamp and audiosilente graphite mat.the cheapst tweak kaiser silverplated power plugs better then furutech in sound should also be mentioned.

 

[microstrip]

(...) While this is not my area of expertise (I don't design electronic circuits), it sounds like a false claim to me that the noise accompanying a digital bit stream over Ethernet would also be encoded onto a PC's hard drive, for example.

Over Ethernet we may see ones & zeros come across like this -

The ones & zeros are just transitions from one voltage level to another.

In a hard drive, a read-write head magnetizes microscopic spots on a spinning platter to represent those ones & zeros. There's no Ethernet-sourced noise also being recorded onto the platter. Just noise-free ones & zeros.

The last place that a PC will see Ethernet-sourced noise is on the I/O (Input/Output) of an Ethernet chip. The digital data stream is then rewritten without extraneous noise as it is copied into various locations (RAM, non-volatile memory) in the PC.

While that author is surely well informed about many technical issues, he also makes claims that fall into the "audiophile vodoo" category IMO -
"To match the aliveness and dynamic freedom of copper networking, you need the Startech 1550nm 80km modules I recommended. What you gain is more contrast, better colour saturation and darker backgrounds. The best analogy I can come up with is turning down the brightness and increasing contrast on a television set. Or have it ISF calibrated."

When someone claims that swapping in different networking modules will give your audio more "aliveness and dynamic freedom" or "more contrast, better colour saturation and darker backgrounds", that just lowers the trustworthiness of their claims IMO.

I regret that you use language such as "it sounds like a false claim to me" after telling us that it is not your area of expertise and than switch to pure elementary logic arguments, ignoring that logical signals are represented by analog voltages or currents and hysteresis effects. I was expecting a thoughtful argumentation - many decades ago I had to design and build some circuits using differential fast ECL logic and know perfectly what Emile is addressing. People can claim that such noise should not affect sound reproduction - it was not never proved - but it is a possible explanation.

Sorry to discover this way your real intentions of simply denigrating people in this high-end forum - bye. And yes, much of the high-end is voodoo - but in fact it works successfully.

 

[hopkins]

Ok, so in Emile's (Taiko Audio's) post 972 he claimed
"Bits are indeed what they are, bits. However when bits are transferred they go accompanied by noise generated by a multitude of mechanisms. The interesting part of this is if these bits are stored in for example memory, or on disk, this noise is stored with them. When you read these bits back, this noise is read back along with them.

The research shows that these noise profiles are subsequently visible on a spectrum analysis of the output as high frequency noise. This will clearly have an effect.

We have identified and do address several mechanisms which generates this type of “bit noise”. But that “bit” I’m not sharing."

While this is not my area of expertise (I don't design electronic circuits), it sounds like a false claim to me that the noise accompanying a digital bit stream over Ethernet would also be encoded onto a PC's hard drive, for example.

I would agree that the claim is very surprising. Once a file is stored there is no such thing as "accompanying noise", its just binary codes.

But we can give him the benefit of the doubt - perhaps he simply did not express himself clearly and had something else in mind - it sounds like a full time job keeping that thread going and answer everyone's questions...

This reminds me of another company, claiming that the way data is stored can generate "playing bits out of order"!

DeFractionalized Memory | tmp-2023

www.thememoryplayer.net

"By forcing the data on memory to populate in its original order, DeFractionalized Memory can transform sound to a more analog, natural tone, with increased dynamics, bass and ambient retrieval. Even a state of bit perfection will allow up to seven bits in a byte to be played out of original order, due to the weakness in the code used for digital audio."

If this were the case, the content of my post could actually change every time someone refreshed the page!

 

[henrich3]

Sorry to discover this way your real intentions of simply denigrating people in this high-end forum - bye. And yes, much of the high-end is voodoo - but in fact it works successfully.

My impression is that whenever someone shines a light on some of the false claims that are made here, the truth-tellers frequently get jumped on by the mods and/or members. Any criticism or exposure of false claims is, by inference, viewed as an attack on the member who made the false claims, and those aren't allowed. The people who are legitimately trying to help prevent members from being deceived then just stop participating.

There is a lot of worthwhile information on WBF. That's why I became a member. My feelings about that decision are changing however because of the general attitude here that "voodoo" claims should go unchallenged. That's not how I operate...

 

[Carlos269]

My impression is that whenever someone shines a light on some of the false claims that are made here, the truth-tellers frequently get jumped on by the mods and/or members. Any criticism or exposure of false claims is, by inference, viewed as an attack on the member who made the false claims, and those aren't allowed. The people who are legitimately trying to help prevent members from being deceived then just stop participating.

There is a lot of worthwhile information on WBF. That's why I became a member. My feelings about that decision are changing however because of the general attitude here that "voodoo" claims should go unchallenged. That's not how I operate...

Well put, and your observations echo my sentiments.

 

[jeff1225]

The best tweeks for me have all been to deal with my analog system and room acoustics. A proper heavy turntable weight (I like the HRS Heavy Weight), KLAudio Record Cleaner, and record flattener improved by vinyl playback. For the room, the back wall is IMO the most important to deal with. Either with scatter plates or having your records behind your listening position.

 

[Psycho]

PRESS RELEASE


March 28, 2023

Austin, Texas


Nextscreen, LLC today announced the resignation of Lee Scoggins. Tom Martin, CEO, said “For three years, Lee and I have worked enthusiastically doing a digital transformation of The Absolute Sound and hi-fi+.” During this time, Nextscreen added new websites, created new offerings like the Welcome Mat campaign and two successful YouTube channels. The company also greatly expanded its audience through a major emphasis on global digital magazines and an expanded web presence. All of this is in concert with a new strategy to segment the hi-fi+ and The Absolute Sound platforms around the key demographic segments in the market.


“At this time, however, we have realized that we have a huge amount of executional detail to focus on. Therefore, I decided to take a more active role as Chief Content Officer and resume the CEO role. In these circumstances, Lee naturally wants to take his strategic talents on to a new venue,” said Martin. Scoggins will still participate in some company video and strategic projects.


Scoggins said “It has been a real pleasure to work with Tom and the staff at Nextscreen to take these influential publications into new channels. I have made lifelong friends at both magazines and continue to be proud of the quality of these publications. I have especially enjoyed working with some of the most sophisticated audio manufacturers in the industry. I believe as the industry becomes more digital, our investment in new channels and ideas will prove valuable.”