Most Effective Tweaks


Self explaintory thread. Im looking to experiment with my system and see if I can truly alter the sound of my music with some simple cheap tweaks. If we could all list as many sucessful tweaks as we can to help develop how our systems are put together. Everything to ball bearing isolation to "amber beads" please share your experience and let us know which tweaks you found the most effective or the most dramatic change.

cheers
malakei
All of the above suggestions have their effect on the music.
My pet tweek is speaker positioning, and speaker isolation. The more precise the positioning relative to the listener, the more focused the soundstage, and you can tune things by changing the distance to anything, including walls, floor, distance between speakers (especially effective in tuning the amount of center focus). Don't be afraid to find your own inexpensive imitations of expensive tweeks - if you thoroughly understand the working principle, you can have all kind of fun with your own "implementations" of any idea, and some will work very well, indeed.
CAPT369 on 2/20 you wrote...
"Replacing the brass cones under my maple isolation stands with racquetballs inserted in inch and a half PVC end caps. Made a big difference on my carpet covered concrete."

Any chance you could post a picture? I'm picturing the raquetballs cut in 1/2 to accomodate the endcaps. One half at each corner of a stand. Does the rubber hemisphere contact the carpet or the maple isolation stand? I have the same floor situation in my listening area and was thinking to run thin furniture screws through a 10"x10" piece of wood to penetrate the carpet and couple to the cement below. Sounds like you went from coupling to decoupling your speakers??? Thanks in advance for your reply.
Ghosthouse..sorry for not being clearer in what I said. Monitor speakers are on spiked Osiris stands coupled to the floor, I left them that way. I have two amp stands, one for cdp and the other for int. amp. Whole racquetballs are inserted into pvc end-caps. One for each corner. Simply wedge a ball into the end-cap, it will wedge in about half way. Simply turn this concoction upside down so that the flat part of the end-cap rests under the corner of the amp stand and the ball rests on the floor (x4). I did this for both amp stands.

In my case, I have a concrete floor and with spiked amp stand corners the instrument timbre was way off. Piano sounded "plinky" etc. By doing what I suggested, and by decoupling in the manner I described, it put everything right, almost analogue like..

Herbies Audio Lab products further helped do dampen the tube micro phonics in my system and I have a huge and airy sound stage as a result with no loss of dynamics. Worked for me and my ears.

Hope this helps.
Capt369 - I got the picture now! I have not tried any isolation for my tube amp or CD player. They are both just on shelves in a Custom Wood Design cabinet. The amp is on the very top of the cabinet. The CD player is inside on the first shelf. Your "concoction" sounds like something to try. Got to visit Dicks and Lowes to see about the parts. Thanks.
I apply a household anti-cling product to top of CD's and all cables about once a month. It reduces/eliminates static. Makes audible difference.