Where’s My Weakest Link?


Hi All,

I often find myself wondering where to put resources (money) to take my system to the next level. Over the years I have slowly acquired equipment and sometimes I am impressed with the “upgrade”, others I am disappointed with the change/cost ratio. I recently purchased Jim Smiths book, Get Better Sound and was blown away with the changes I was able to make with what I have but I am now back at crossroads of , whats next?

I am running a Bluesound Node 2i> Carver C-16 pre> Conrad Johnson Sonographe SA250> Thiel 1.2.

So what do you think the weakest link is / whats the smartest upgrade?

Thanks in advance!
otterbein
All these ridiculous tweaks are pointless!

Arrogance is not always wise.... :)

This thing that audiophile calls "tweaks" in fact is a misnomer for something way more essential to know and which is underestimated and most of the times not very well known...

All my " tweaks" gravitated around the many controls of the 4 embeddings of any audio system...Mechanical, electrical, and acoustical in a passive and active way...


Most people think they can judge , speakers, amplifier, or dac, or any new audio component, by simply put it in the linked chain and listening to it all out of the box... This is totally false...


This is the most important thing I ever discover in audio...

Most of the times those who speaks about "tweaks" speaks of that in a not too much enthusiastic way, like if these "tweaks" are only secondary means or methods and not so important way to improve the sound, compared to an upgrade....This is false....( I dont count the few "ignorabimus" that denigrate)


Most of you or at least a vast number of people owns an audio system probably already very good, but if they listen to it in non controlled environment , with no rightly prepared embeddings, most people will never know what their audio system is able to give in S.Q. never...


This is plain truth....Dont buy anything this year, think about that instead....

By the way all my controls means (tweaks) are very low cost, and mostly homemade....They totally transformed my system audibly and without doubt in a more than good audio system....


I’ll be dead before I ever achieve any thing remotely close to perfection,
The goal is not obsessive search for perfection, the goal is to rightly embed in his mechanical dimension (vibration-resonance) in his electrical grid, and transforming in a passive way and also with active means the acoustical field of the room....

This is not obsession this is a good job done in a systematic way.... This is simple small fine tuning engineering works …. Those obsessed are those who cannot controls their own negative emotions towards others opinions...
I don’t disagree about common place basic tweaking, the ones that have stood the test of time and are logical...like speaker positioning, using a protractor to align a cartridge ( getting it close or maybe closer), isolating a turntable (of course!), and using quality cables and interconnects (why would you not!). But there are some here professing this and that as if it’s the gospel, which it is not. To each their own, I prefer not to drive myself nuts, when there are already enough people that do so daily....
The things you mention above, I have already done, because they are smart things to do. I have an expensive, at least to me, power conditioner, a dedicated 12 gauge line from panel to living room, an upgraded copper outlet/receptacle, a turntable that is isolated on a dedicated shelf mounted to studs of which are affixed to a concrete wall, and a very stable support for my components made of wood. My speakers are positioned correctly, at least to my ears and hearing capability, my wires/ cables are all top notch, and they are routed away from power cables and or run perpendicular and not parallel. I think I've done enough. 

You want to hear something even crazier?? I recently bought a pair of tannoys priced at 6k, and to be honest? They don’t necessarily sound better than the speakers they replaced (my wharfedale 225’s, which I still own). They sound different, but I would not say better! Call me nuts, but that is what I hear....when a manufacturer or designer gets something right, regardless of price, they just get it right.

audioguy85
I don’t disagree about common place basic tweaking, the ones that have stood the test of time and are logical...like speaker positioning, using a protractor to align a cartridge ( getting it close or maybe closer), isolating a turntable (of course!), and using quality cables and interconnects (why would you not!)

>>>>Well, you know, it would pretty easy to argue that those examples you gave aren’t really tweaks. They’re not really what we’re talking about. Speaker positioning and cartridge alignment are probably best described as normal set-up procedures or System Requirements. At least for most audiophiles. Isolating a turntable is more like what most audiophiles think of as a tweak. Other examples of tweaks: tube traps, tiny little bowl acoustic resonators, fuses, Schumann frequency generator, Mpingo discs, cable elevators, CD degausser, things of that nature. Tweak-o-Rama!