Tweaks - An Honest Discussion

@reven6e  

But once everything is in place and the big job is done, I see no harm in trying lifting cables, controlling vibration, trialing different cables and any other number of "tweaks".

Completely agree with this and it has been my approach.  The tweaks get me the last bit of goodness allowing well designed gear to work its best.  Through experimentation I've noted benefits from raising speaker cables off the floor (haven't found a benefit on power cords though).  I have adjusted speakers, added footers, added cones under most components, added HFTs to improve imaging a bit....etc.

But at the end of the day NONE of these tweaks ever were transformational enough to claim any one was the equivalent of a multi-thousand dollar component upgrade.  Not even close....tweaks are rewarding, allowing you to be hands on and get even more engaged in the hobby, train your ability to hear subtle differences, better understand what sonic qualities are most important to you, etc...but let's not pretend we have a choice on either spending $5K for component upgrade or putting some tape on a tonearm or putting some cones under your DAC and realizing the same benefit.    

I experimented with Stillpoints in the past. I liked them under my DAC but I hated them under a Devialet Premier.

Melco S100. Not going to start an argument. I know ethernet switches are a snake oil, a con, bits are bits and idiots are idiots. But it has an obvious effect on a streamer (and dCS at that). I heard several people complaining that it sounded too "soft", that it had a "sugarcoating" effect on their system, robbing it of some impact, of some drama. I like mine.

Some swear by conditioners, others by regenerators. And then there are plenty who say: best conditioning is a dedicated ring.  

And so on. One man's Nirvana is another man's disappointment and wasted money. I will continue to call all of the above snake oils not to take sides but because, as per my original post, I think most of these products are system dependant. There is no one size fits all and there is no guarantee that they will work FOR YOU.

The main components are generally a certainty. Double the amount you have spent on your DAC and anybody can hear the improvement (hopefully). Upgrade from a slim class AB or D integrated to class A mono blocks and everybody and their dog will notice the difference.  

But an AQ Nirvana? A Melco S100? Tornado vs Hurricane?
Isoacoustic vs Track Audio vs Townshend vs anything else you can think of under your speakers? Unknown quantity. Hic sunt leones. Your very personal adventure.   

S.Q. increase in the 3 main embeddings with a relatively optimal tweaking in place in my own audio system :

20% mechanical(resonance-vibrations)

30% electrical grid

50% acoustical field of the room


Remember that this % is only an indication and can be qualitatively misleading...

For example vibrations resonance problems are less impactful than the acoustical non treated field in a comparative S.Q. scale evaluation...But in a treated acoustical field, an audio system with a non adressed mechanical problem will be less tone acurate with a more blurry imaging, and there will be a spectacular increase in S.Q. when the right tweaking will be implemented to address it...

Then all methods or tweaks are important, and these % ratios are only an indication of the relative importance of the 3 dimensional embeddings TOGETHER ( or 4 if we distinguish the passive way to treat room and the active way via S.G. or various active resonators or Helmholtz bottles etc )


Fine tuning an audio system implicate a systematic overview of these embeddings and of their mutual complementary interactions and feed back in the S.Q. audible effects "measured" by the learning and experimenting brain-ears...It is fun, cost me low cash, and I bought almost nothing except USB cheap S.G. (10 bucks each), all other materials is cheap and homemade except stones and crystals bought in China at low price...


Today with what I have learned, my audio system will cost : Amplifier, Dac, speakers, + all materials for treating the embeddings around 1000 dollars...


To upgrade with a significatively better one will cost me around $16,000 + all my controls methods for the embeddings which is the most important thing... I think that this upgrading is not necessary now because my actual system being very good as it is....Then when I read that someone has bought only a dac around 16,000 bucks, today I can smile without any frustration or enviousness, only the curiosity to listen to it if possible with a grain of skeptic salt about the Price / S.Q.  ratio.... :)

There exist only 3 possible sources of joy in audiophile hearts:

1-Buying the most expansive and at the same times best pieces of electronic components there is for your audio system...With no systematic controls means of the 4 embeddings because they dont feel the necessity after having bought the best products... 



2-Creating yourself the best possible at a ridiculous price....

3- Buying the best because they can afford it and knowing how to embed it in the optimal way... ( the rarest among these crowds)


I dont have money but I am creative and my only possible source of joy is 2...


Navigating audio forums gives me the idea that most are in the 4th rung...


4- buying relatively hyped for the mass products and using them with almost no embeddings controls means... Being frustrated at the end and after one year upgrading in a cycle raging urgency to live Hi-Fi experience without having any ideas how to makes it happen....

With over 30 years of obsession in Hi-Fi I have tried out quite a few recommended system tweaks. Looking back I have no idea why I wasted so much of my time on them.

A lot of it was down to reading popular writers of the day. Here in the UK Jimmy Hughes was the standout pioneer tweaking champion. In those days he was seen as a maverick, an amusingly controversial advocate of unusual audio advice.

He proffered advice such as turning your speakers to face the rear wall, replacing your speaker cables with twin and earth mains cable, removing the LP12 power switch etc. Later others jumped on the bandwagon, the most famous being Peter W Belt who really pushed the tweaking incredulity boat out into the already murky waters on both sides of the Atlantic.

He advocated stuff like putting bits of paper under just one foot of your speaker stand, amp or CD player, using silver foil stickers and a whole host of strange suggestions, many of which could be bought from his own company.

As crazy as it seems now, I fell for a few of these tweaks myself. I mean they were cheap and easy to reverse if nothing happened, so why not?

Yes, indeed why not?

Well, for one they were a major distraction from actually enjoying music. A doorway to audio neurosis.

Secondly the cost of the tweaks increased over time. Tweaks can now cost more than entire systems.

Thirdly some of them actually led to damage to your equipment. Anyone remember being told to tighten your cartridge head shell bolts (also speaker driver bolts, speaker stand bolts etc) to high heaven? Headshells got mangled and cartridges snapped and eventually we came to our senses.

There were also those ghastly upturned spikes upon which to place your beautifully veneered speakers - but that was a definite step too far for me.

Finally there was the small issue that none of them actually worked. Ever.

It’s true that there usually seemed to be a difference at the time but this ’difference’ usually evaporated into the ether in a matter of hours or minutes.

So nowadays I regard my tweaking days as truly behind me, a two decade lapse of audio sensibility. Why did I fall for such obvious nonsense? Was it greed, a simple irrational desire for bargain price upgrades? I don’t know, but whatever it was, it was stupid.

Even those brave determined souls who succeeded in making their Rega 1s sound as good as say, a Rega 5 usually admitted afterwards that the cost involved meant they had saved precious little from not having bought a Rega 5 in the first place!

Similar things now happen to gamers who wish to upgrade their budget PCs to higher spec than off the shelf models (other than a graphics card, RAM and SSD) and then discover there’s very little money saved - especially if your time is precious to you.

If it isn’t now, trust me, it will be one day.

So am I against all tweaks?

Not quite. I believe there might just be something worthwhile in the realm of mechanical isolation, especially for loudspeakers, eg Herbie’s footers, Townshend isolation stands etc.

However I can’t swear to it, and no credible explanations have ever been put forward to explain this effect apart from some resonance graphs for loudspeakers.

If I ever want higher sound quality in the future the now obvious answer is to find and pay for a better pair of loudspeakers.

As simpe as that. Forget the ridiculous shortcuts. The tweaks didn’t work, not for me.