How right you are, David!
For what seemed like forever we were stuck in the rut of only measurements matter. Budding audiophiles had mostly Stereo Review with their Julian Hirsch constantly pushing his only measurements matter mantra. This was so thoroughly the mainstream view that when J Gordon Holt first started publishing Stereophile it was taken as apostasy. A newsletter mimeographed off and passed around by a handful of followers, hardly the glossy marketing colossus we know today, but then as ever promulgating the view that everything matters, nothing sounds the same, and its your ears- not a meter - your ears and what you hear that really matters most.
This idea is so revolutionary that even today and even on so-called audiophile discussion groups like this one people object to the "rabbit hole" of wire, the inability of anyone to hear, its all in your head, double-blind yadda-yadda.
Nevertheless, somehow the movement J Gordon Holt began rescued us from, first the hideous sounding low-distortion amps of the 1980's, and then the hideous sounding perfect sound forever CDs of the 1990's, followed quickly by (or concurrently with, but to stick with the decades theme) hideous sounding speaker wire and patch cords in the 2000's. And power cords. And power itself. And along the way the equipment rack, and shelf, and even the lowly feet the equipment rests on. The room! Everything!
The industry, slow and myopic, badly lagging, still pushes the big box gear of amps and speakers and "components" by which of course is meant everything except the components most capable of elevating a system from mediocrity to music: tweaks.
Or maybe they are just giving their customers what they want. For me at least it is a good 20 years since the do tweaks matter debate was well and truly settled. My sense from what I have seen though is this has sunk in to maybe a third of the people. Yes a lot more than a third are buying speaker cables, etc. I'm referring to the whole J Gordon Holt philosophy that the only meaningful measure is listening with your own ears.
Which is what I was doing last night. Rather than just throw up my last 4 HFTs I decided to spend a little time tweaking the locations of the 6 already deployed. These little buggers are so fascinatingly effective and responsive to placement I only managed to fool around with the two in the center.
You guys have been saying these things are so sensitive to placement that moving them even an inch makes a difference. Well, I didn't try one inch, but two to four, and yes it is definitely noticeable!
But for anyone considering these (which you should be!) its not like they are fussy and require endless fiddling to sound good. Anywhere even remotely close to where they "should" be and they will work great. But it is absolutely fascinating the degree to which you are able to tweak the sound with a little fine-tuning.
With the center ones, moving just one up or down by an inch or so I hear an effect very similar in character and magnitude to the difference I heard between my McCormack DNA-1 amp and the Aronov LS960-I that replaced it. For those who don't know, the McCormack is an exceptionally fine sounding SS amp and the Aronov is an exceptionally fine sounding 6550 (or KT88) tube amp. Both are superb, not a lot of difference between them, but the McCormack does sound a bit like SS and the Aronov does sound a bit like tubes. So in other words for $50 you can in a few minutes perform magic tweaking your system from tube to SS and back again simply by shifting one of these little marvels on the wall.
Only, its quite a bit better than that. Most if not all solid state has to some degree or other this artifact, a very fine high frequency shimmer some have called MOSFET mist. I'm not a fan but a lot of guys love it, many mistaking it for detail, air, whatever. Anyway the point is with HFT its possible to tweak placement enough to get that detailed SS top end detail and dynamics but without the unwanted mist. I didn't like it at first because I associated that sound with the mist. But then moving it lower listening to the warmer slightly tubey sound I went back and eventually realized the top end was there like SS but without the annoying mist.
I cannot think of a better tweak for anyone who loves their system but wishes it was just a little more this or a little less that. With a set of HFTs and a little trial and error you could easily tame and bring a degree of warmth to an overly aggressive analytical system, or conversely, liven up and bring out details in one that is overly warm. Still better of course to have bought stuff that put you where you wanted to be in the first place. But you run what you brung. Then later when you upgrade the offending piece, unlike everything else I can think of with HFTs you simply tweak placement again for the new gear and wala, you are back in business better than ever!
Would've made the most sense at this point to tweak the ones on the upper and lower left and right. Instead I got out the ladder and put one up on the ceiling. Same thing here. Same responsiveness to placement.
This stuff to a listener is like crack cocaine to an addict. Any time you find yourself wishing for a little more, or a little less ... make it so.
