Tweaks - An Honest Discussion

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.

cd318
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. 

>>>>Tweaks can be heaven or hell. That’s the way things go sometime. 😩

"....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....."

That's been my experience as well. I've made changes/tweaks that provided a perceived improvement in sound quality only to find, days later, that the system actually sounded better in the original configuration.

Hey Millercarbon,  change out your BDR cones, for Nordost sort cones. Just a suggestion.