True or False?

+1 hshifi.  If you want to hear an improvement, install a Puritan PSM 156.

@rixthetrick
I've never had a crossover I've designed fail on my sorry.  When designing myself, I find the best parts I can find (within my price/budget range).  Since it would be a one off project, I'm not worried about availability later.

I was more speaking about manufacturers that have to make certain about the parts availability and the quality of the parts manufacturer. For example some Classe amps were designed with FETs that a few years later are no longer made.  you can't find the FETs to repair the amps.  So,unless you find a repair shop that stocked up on the parts before they became unobtainable, then you are screwed.

So, an equipment manufacturer can't be blind to where they are getting their parts from and whom they are getting their parts from.  There  may be better caps and resistors out there, but if there is a serious possibility that in the near future that parts supplier may not be there, then I'm looking elsewhere.

Also, as you can see on this web site.  Some people love to tweak and adjust.  They can't sit still if you paid them to.  I can't see myself  saying, wow! my system sounds great.  I wonder what the change would be if I changed  this or that.  Added padding, footers, fuses, etc.

I only ask myself this question if I feel something is wrong or missing.  Then you take the long and sometimes expensive journey into trying to find out what is wrong (component or room) and what it takes to fix it.

Don't get me started on room correction.  What a nightmare.  Get a test CD (Stereophile for example), and a sound measuring device. Run  the test in your room at listening position.  Look at the frequency response.  Gaps, holes, peaks?  now what is causing it and what does it take to fix it?
not fun.

enjoy

I wish it was true - it would make things a lot less expensive and easier.
In my experience I have found its not true. Regardless of budget each adjustment applied works towards achieving a personal goal realized by the listener. Even for the the "better" equipment - which require "better" more expensive esoteric "tweaks."

I have also heard "high-end manufactures deny the benefits of tweaking their components", which I find hypocritical because they perform "tweaks" to their models all the time. They refer to it as R&D.

As others have pointed out - those are not stock power cables you see on lifts in the show room or at audio shows.  Manufacturers switch out for better Chips, Caps, Fuses, Tubes, Internal Cabling, Volume Controls and even Hand Wound All Silver Transformers to name a few; which leads to the launches of new models that they want you to buy. This is true with most all products in general. 

Don’t get me started on room correction. What a nightmare. Get a test CD (Stereophile for example), and a sound measuring device. Run the test in your room at listening position. Look at the frequency response. Gaps, holes, peaks? now what is causing it and what does it take to fix it?
not fun.

It is all relative to the road taken...i had the fun of my life with room correction...

I used a mechanical equalizer (32 tubes and recycled plumber pipes with straws for neck all variable and different for volume/lenght/ diameter ratio) which will become part of my audio room...Not an electronical equalizer with a mic.

I used the timbre of voice or instrument instead of a set of limited tested frequencies response and my Ears for the feed back instead of a mic...

Results: the 2 listening position which are good are large enough and not a very narrow one in millimeter out of which no measure means nothing...
I control all aspect of acoustic at will: imaging, timbre perception, soundstage, listener envelopment ,source width...

Is it perfect? no

Is it good? so good that i "trash" all my headphones (7 pairs) and my average speakers work at their best.... Because like Helmholtz i modified the room response and tuned it to the speakers or instrument which was playing...Not the opposite modifying the speakers or the instrument for the room...

You can chose for sure to modify ALSO the speakers response to some set of frequencies but it is good for a last fine tuning, that will NEVER replace room passive material treatment at all, and that will NEVER replace my activation of the pressure zones of the room by mechanical means...Passive materials treatment in small room must be done using in a positive way the timing treshold and reverberations of the small room... The mechanical equalizer is used to mark out or to " buoy" the waves of EACH speaker differently FOR EACH ear, making the brain easily able to recreate 3-d directions and image in the room....

It is was fun and rewarding ....It takes me a month.....It is like tuning a piano...

The room geometry and content is like the piano particular form and the pressure zones are like string tightly vibrating or resonant.... At the speed of sound, waves may cross a small room many times before the brain analyse them in some 80 milliseconds....Then acoustic of room is not only a set of passive wall enclosures waiting for the sound to bounce politely on them it is a complex distribution set of pressure engines...

I dont need a Smyth realizer headphone anymore...

cost: peanuts

Inconvenient: impossible to put this unesthetical devices in a living room...







The only luxury in audio is not costly gear it is a dedicated room....

A straw can kill a room or transform it completely...

Embed everything before upgrading anything...