Talk but not walk?

jf47t
“Today I learned the difference between tweaking and tuning. I’m not sure if Michael would agree with this as he gives latitude for tweaks mods and component swapping but what I’ve been hearing is a different hobby. MG has asked me not to mention the brands of the high end system we have setup as our competing 2nd system but he says that it’s important for me to see how far high end can go with tweaking vs what a tunable system can do. That’s a classy approach to not pick on specific brands. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s business while he is convince the hobby is taking a big turn. Tonight we’ve been doing some interesting comparisons. Both systems have been setup fairly by Michael. I’ll call one the tunable system and the other the HEA system.”

>>>>>>>That sounds like a Strawman waiting to happen. 😬 What it appears you really need is a Tweaking Guru tweaking the HEA system with the Tuning Guru tuning the other system. I’m not sure the two systems should even be in the same house.

There is what we call the Hierarchy of Sound, not to sound too high fallutin’. The Hierarchy of sound embraces the concept that a modestly priced tweaked (or tuned) system can sound considerably better than a more expensive system that hasn’t been tweaked or tuned. Make sense?

Furthermore people seem to be under the impression tweaking involves a limited set of commonly used thingamabobs, rubber dampers or cones, for example. With that notion firmly planted in one’s head the “tweaked system” is bound to fail. Obviously there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things. And there are way too many variables to try to put Tweaking, the art of tweaking, in a nice convenient little box. That’s a self fulfilling prophecy. But Tweaking is not that easily defined - or accomplished. It’s not just a simole case of coupling vs decoupling. Tweaking is just a word. You guys might be under the impression that Tweaking is a planet. But Tweaking is not a planet, it’s not even solar system or a galaxy. It’s a Universe.

So, gentle readers, I hate to prejudge things but it appears the Great Tuning vs Tweaking Shoot-out is just a contrivance, a marketing ploy, preordained to “prove” the superiority of Tuning.

Besides, surely Tuning and Tweaking aren’t mutually exclusive, or are they? Is it US vs THEM? 😳

glupson
geoffkait,

Anyone can call her/his company whatever they want and it means only that it is that company’s name. However, this empirical testing in this thread was not a name for the company but something that opponents were accused of not doing and therefore their opinion being less worthy. Fakers, talkers, whatever they ended up being. Your explanation consists of correct words applied to an entirely unrelated thing.

>>>>Huh? What are you talking about? The opponents were accused of not doing because they don’t do. They talk, but don’t do. That’s as plain as the nose on your face. In fact, you appear to be the poster boy for talk, not do. Your continuing semantic arguments are do do. This conversation can serve no purpose any more.

prof
glupson: “It seems that for every thing that gets mentioned as a tweak/tuning there are two sides. One claims it is non-sense and cannot be true noticeable difference and the other side claims that the difference is noticeable.”

That’s actually the false dichotomy that I’ve been at pains to reject.

As I keep arguing here, one doesn’t have to take a single side "it makes an audible difference/it doesn’t make an audible difference" position.

One can simply take the position "I don’t know if there is an audible difference, so let’s discuss the reasons and evidence for why there might be an audible difference, or not."

Being a long time audio-nut myself, and always liking the idea of further enhancing the sound of my system, I’m very attracted to the idea of "tweaking" my system. So it’s not something I reject on some weird a priori grounds - in my more tweaky moments I WANT things to make a difference. But I also realize this is also when I’m most likely to fool myself that there is a difference.

>>>I suggest things are not so simple. Audiophiles oft exhibit what is commonly referred to as knee jerk reactions to both Tweaks and Tuning. So before anyone gets his bowels in an uproar wouldn’t it be great if we defined what the heck all the rumpus is about? You know, before going on the offensive? What is a tweak? What is Tuning? I pretty sure many audiophiles have a lot of pre-conceived ideas. Do they overlap? Are they competitors? What’s the difference? Is it mostly coupling vs decoupling? Or vibration control? Does Tuning address RFI? Magnetism? Directionality of wire! Other physics, you know, like quantum physics? Are the universes of Tweaks and Tuning bounded or unbounded? Are they different universes? 

I submit, gentle readers, the wonderful world of tweaks is not really what most audiophiles think it is. For one thing it’s bigger than what most people think it is. Much bigger.

geoffkait,

"So before anyone gets his bowels in an uproar wouldn’t it be great if we defined what the heck all the rumpus is about? You know, before going on the offensive?"

It is as reasonable of an approach as it gets and the one that to me seems to have been missing in this thread a lot. I mentioned it a few of my posts ago, I think. Why not start with the beginning of the original post. Like, the second sentence, and then we can expand.