Feeling Tweaky

I never feel "tweaky" anymore. In my media room all you see is two 8 foot speakers, four subwoofers and a screen. No wires, no amps, no lights, no BS. I did the tweaky thing in my younger days discovering that in general it is just a hill of beans. I make my own cables using the best stuff available for a fraction of the cost. If I put some fancy sleeves on them I could sell them for big bucks and rip off gullible audiophiles. The very best "tweak" available is a Weber Soldering Station and some practice. 
Another great "tweak" is the HiFi News test record. Guaranteed to make your TT sound better. A Conductive sweep arm and a tone arm lifter complete the package. Where are all the amplifiers? Directly under their respective speaker on a shelf hung from the ceiling below. Everything is run balanced. They are all triggered by a 25 volt power supply which is switched from the equipment cabinet above. It also runs 4 variable speed fans keeping the lot cool. The speaker cables are three feet long. The subwoofers are on spikes through the carpet and into the floor. The stats are just on the floor. There is no room to put anything under them anyway. There is a line of acoustic tile behind each stat. This improves the imaging by damping the reflection of everything over 250 Hz. 
IMHO none of these things are tweaks. They are all practical solutions with solid explanations and rational. Great sound is not magic, neither is optimizing any system. I am certainly not a virgin. I have fallen for a bunch of stuff in the past. Many things are just visual or ego pleasing. Make things sound better? Only in your mind. Some of the stuff is literally comical like the Talisman Magnetic Optimizer. I almost wet my pants. 

Thomas, I’ve never been into tweaks before, but I can see it would be possible to go overboard and get over involved with them like you say, listening to how the music sounds rather than the music itself. So I’ll keep your thought in mind. Thinking about tweaks recently has been an interesting way to pass the excess time being home-bound during this coronavirus pandemic.

Tvad, thanks for the link to the Sumiko Master Speaker Set. I played around with speaker positioning a few weeks ago but could probably some more fine tuning and use of a test record.

Millercarbon, I did look into the BDR cones you are using, so appreciate that suggestion. They are cost effective.

Mijostyn, which tone arm lifter are you using? I don’t trust myself to smoothly lift the tonearm up each time anymore. I miss my old Bang and Olufsen straight arm tracking which did that function automatically. I’ll take a look at the Weber soldering station. I’ve soldered a lot of copper pipe in my day but done little with anything electronic related. That would be a good skill to pick up. I’m an inveterate DIY person, but have learned over the years to recognize when I’m in over my head and to try and learn from others, which I’m trying to do here.

I’ll look up the HiFi News test record. What is a conductive sweep arm? Is it something to do with static removal.from record albums. Thanks for your ideas and description of your interesting system set-up. "Practical solutions with solid explanations and rational" are exactly what I’d like to find.

Also I checked on eBay and found a Talisman Magnetic Optizmizer for you: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Walker-Talisman-Magnetic-Optimizer-A-MUST-HAVE-FOR-VINYL-AND-CD-LOVERS-NEW/. Never heard of that "must have" before. Take it easy,

Mike

I have tried many tweaks over the years. Some proved to be positive upgrades, some made differences that were not appealing, and some made no difference at all~at least to my ears. But the tweak that has been the most consistent and cost -effective on my system and in my room is the room light switch. Put it in the "off" position and everything suddenly comes into focus. The sound stage becomes more precise as your speakers are removed from your view and you hear every nuance and subtle hint in the music. I think it has to do with the the way our brain focuses better, the fewer things it has to deal with. Thhis probably will seem obvious to most but try it  if you haven't already. It's free!

Aewarren, the price is certainly right. I'll give it a try tonight.. Thanks.

Mike