For Your Edification and Enjoyment re "Burn In", etc.

My point is that when doing evaluations regarding tweaks and the like quality of the equipment is critical. You may hear it on a budget system but not to the same degree or at least not in my experience.

I dont know what a "tweak" is... Save for the fact that it is considered by half audiophiles useless and "snake oil", that is to say costly secondary additions to the system which basic electronic design is the most important part of the H-i-Fi experience for most...Sorry but to good electronic design which is half of the story, you must add the system tuning being the other half of audio experience...


I am sorry but controls over the 3 working dimensions of a system comes from exprienced and experimental listenings, may dont cost a dime, are not secondary additions to a system, but on the opposite the tools by which this system would work at his peak potential...








All systems at any price vibrate and ask for a control over vibrations and a control also over resonances... It is the mechanical working embedding dimension....No system at any cost can replace these controls...

All systems at any price contributed to the electrical noise floor of the house grid where they are embedded and to the noise floor of the gear with which they are connected.... All that noise ask for a minimal control over the general noise floor and not only of each piece of gear to optimize his working... No system at any cost could work without being embedded in a general electrical noise floor to which they contributed too individually.....

All systems at any price are embedded in a room where the quality of air pressure will varied zone to zone, and will ask to be controlled by the law of Helmholtz acoustic controls, the reflecting sound waves will be such reflected , absorbed such and diffused such, and will asked also to be controllled in the right balance for any system to be working at his optimal acoustical potential....These ask dor passive material acoustical control and more active one...The room is NOT a passive player....

If you think that these controls over the three embeddings working dimensions are only illusions, secondary "tweaks", snake oil, if you think that the price of a system is a warrent against vibrations, against a too high noise floor of the house grid and room, a warrent against some basic acoustical laws which are the most important laws in the perception of musical sound.... Think again...

Go from consumerism in audio magazine to basic very elementary science....Or go on with the fools calling that placebos or snake oil and warmly recommending to throw money on "upgrades" till the end of the world and the end of technology....It is called chasing the moon and chasing your tails....


My low cost system has been trasnformed by elementary science, elementary common sense, and basic listenings experiments, at low cost... It is not necessary to buy costly "tweaks", you can devise yourself all which is necessary by listenings experiments....


When the piano or complex harmony decays of harpsichord fill the room, a brass orchestra, or a choir, the sound filling the room , exceeding all limits from the speakers, with the benchmark test of a deep imaging balanced between his width and his hability to encompass the listener, when the natural timbre of instrument and voices is there and rightly perceived, the goal is reached...

Price has nothing to do with a very good experience BUT tuning, controlling the working embeddings dimensions is the ONLY key...

Nobody can make a good hi-fi experience violating mechanical physic, electrical physic and acoustical science.... Sorry...

The designer designed their good gear, they do not controls the location, the connection, the synergy with the precise other pieces of gear with which their own gear will be working, nor the noise floor created in the house/room/system and certainly no designer of any piece of gear even the speakers can act on your acoustical setting in the room at distance and in advance...


My 3 maxims are simple:

The tuning of a system is more important than the system itself...

Dont upgrade anything before embedding everything right...

ONE single straw could kill a room or ressuscitate it....So powerful is Helmholtz science....

Audio_audition, Building hundreds of rigs of all levels, from lower end HiFi (i.e. approx. 5K) to much more significant (100K) all systems have capacity to reveal changes from such things as power cords, interconnects, treating CDs (Back in the day; it was one of the very few cheap activities - I distinguish it as a treatment rather than tweak - that did result in an audible change), etc.

The system I did the testing for the current article was approx. $60K MSRP. You were happy to dismiss the article/findings with a mocking comment of the Peachtree integrated used in the first article. That turns out to be a great choice now, as persons such as your self who express skepticism about the quality of the system used in the comparisons are shown to be wrong, as several of the variables under comparison were the same in both tests. The rig used in the second article was approx. $60K. This demonstrates nicely how systems at lower MSRP can teach the audiophile the same principles as rigs at higher MSRP. One might expect that, as this is all HiFi gear. Now, if you want to talk about testing a $300 plastic fantastic system from Best Buy, all bets are off! :)

You seem to find glee in argument, even when shown to be wrong several times. I’m not interested in extending correction to you indefinitely.

Daveb, thanks for your reply, but you seem to have missed the point entirely. Allow me to explain. It is necessary when writing an article on methods/tweaks that purportedly cause audible change, when comparing two systems, to report on whether there is an audible change. 

Perhaps you don't find that terribly important, or helpful. Great, thanks for your input. But if you haven't noticed, there is an audio industry that has a very healthy tweaks market, and many methods that are questioned/debated with regularity. That someone should step up and write about it, combined with comparisons, may have pertinence to many. Maybe not you, fine. You have made your point, which was oblivious. Enjoy your listening.    :) 

Doug,
The core problem is that you think your opinion has more credence than the opinion of others. I believe that for publications, the reviewers quality of writing is of more consequence than the ability to hear. When you add this preconceived notions, personal and professional industry affiliations with the need for ad revenue we have a fundamentally broken model in which true objectivity is illusive. This is especially true of the big 2, but is unavoidable at all levels. You cant blame the listener for succumbing to a myriad of subconscious factors and then deny that you are immune to any of these. At the end of the day it is simply one enthusiasts opinion and one with which I disagree. A simple disagreement is the whole of it.