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My Poop theory by kublakhan

I’m willing to bet all of you have had this experience and keep on having it, am I right? Have I said what the experience is yet? (Reading back, reading back…no, I didn’t). Ok, here’s the experience: You get a new piece of gear, be it some new cables, new speakers whatever, and the sound difference is extraordinary. You can’t believe what a beautiful improvement the item has made. Then, days, weeks, months later you find yourself remembering back to the good old days when you first got the piece and smiled ear to ear every time you listened to music through it. What happened, you say to yourself? I LIKE my system, but I no longer smile as I used to.

So okay, you go to audiogon.com and search out some answers. Answers which almost always cost money and a lot of hassle with research and this that and the other thing. Then you fixate on the new ‘solution’ buy the item and WOW, that is what was missing! And you write your ‘gon review of how stupid everyone is for not having used this xlr cable or that capacitor, etc….you get my drift. But the cycle continues. And continues.

Thanks for all of you who are still with me because here is where my ‘poop’ theory comes into play and it’s what we call in scriptwriting (and good sex) ‘the payoff.’ The poop theory (I’d use a stronger term for ‘poop’ by the way but audiogon already deleted one of my posts for vulgarity. I wrote a synonym for ‘posterior cavity’). Anyway, the poop theory says that if you put someone in a room full of …poop… they will cringe from the smell. But after a while, they will no longer notice the smell. At all. Can this theory be at work with us freakish audiophiles? I think perhaps so. After a while some part of our body gets accustomed to the poop (which in this case would be good, like a new preamp) and we no longer notice it. We need the poop back and we search for the poop (this time read like, you know… ‘the skinny’) on audiogon. We spend our money and time and finally, shazam! Once again we smell the poop …but the sh*t starts right up after a period of time. When will it all end? When will we all stop to smell the poop?

I write this because I’m now bored out of my mind with my system. And I’m refusing to pour more money into it. So now what? Look for new music I suppose – that’s the cheapest poop I can think of. I don’t know. I just know I miss the stench of a pair of newly retubed ARC monoblock 300s.

We’re all doomed. The cycle continues. I’m willing to bet all of you have had this experience and keep on having it, am I right? Have I said what the experience is yet?
kublakhan
siddh
345 posts
 
I have yet to meet anyone categorically obssessed with this stuff not occassionally dis-satisfied with the crappy sound projecting from, what just days earlier was believed the "ultimate". Four nights ago I replaced the tubes in my line stage, discovering a tautness and detail not heard before. But, today after popping in the same CD, the unforgiveables have returned.
It's hard to nail down the cause. Could be mood swings, bio-rhythms, the humidity...who the f... knows. It does happen way to often, though, and just when I think I have captured the truth in reproduced sound, time will pass taking that illusion along with it.
Often, I ask a fellow listener to help verify that the problem actually exists, get his feedback in order to rectify. An odd thing then happens. We sit and listen. We analyze, we shoot the sh*t, and wham-o. The problem disappears. The focus of what's not right reforms to what is. Again, I can't figure it out. Maybe I ain't supposed to. The money part is definitely getting to me, though. And, the fact that too much time is spent attempting to perfect the defective.
Thanks, kublakhan, for opening the discussion.
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Well, to my opinion, Psychicanimal is basically right. We move generally closer to live music with every improvement of our system, but never really get properly close, except for very fleeting and magical moments. So if we compare our setup to a musical instrument, its one we are continuously working on, fine-tuning it, which next to the enjoyment of music can be a pleasure by itself... as well as a pain in the ahem neck, of course. In time our last improvement will seem normal and if we are avid concert goers especially, we will soon get restless again. A good remedy against that, especially if the budget is drained, is to play a LP or CD we haven't listened to for a long time and bingo, the poop is back and wow it smells good.
jsbail
368 posts
 
I sometimes throw my old,old speakers in the system for a session. After one night with my ADS L880's, I put the Proac 3.8's back and the poop smell comes right back.
psychicanimal
1,738 posts
 
Well chosen words and nicely put, Detlof. Especially the analogy of the musical instrument. Live, unamplified music is THE reality check.

In my particular case, I listen to most any kind of music. From orchestral to salsa/merengue/cha-cha back to chamber ensembles. From jazz to rock to electronic to Celtic. Creating a system that will be able to play ALL these genres and variations in recording quality is, in my opinion, the most challenging.

What do I do? I have programmed my mind that once I finish setting up my system what I get is what I get. Period. I have to optimise sound quality and musical enjoyment. Beyond that point the system will start becoming ruthlessly revealing and the defects of my not so great recordings (a good chunk of them)will stand out. The resolution of the system will interfere with the enjoyment of the music. I learned this working at an audio store while in college. We had B&W 801s wired to a McIntosh rig. The only two rock groups we could listen on those speakers were Pink Floyd and Alan Parsons Project. They sounded awesome, indeed. But what about the rest? Those Dahlquists on the corner, however, were sooo sweet with any kind of music...
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