Audiophile Priorities and Recent Topics

@millercarbon That's the long answer. The short one is: What part of "rent free" do you not understand?

For sure.

I know. They aren't paying me anywhere near enough.

"Will work for 87K$ cables..."

(...heck with the audio pile.....wear them to the next Met Gala, or the next best equivalent...  Look, if a guy can bring a 'synthbaby'....)

Jim,
Had to laugh at this:
"Build some reclaimed wood diffusers I call them Virtue Signaling Quadratic."

I did the same thing earlier this year with some large thick Styrofoam sheets that were used as packing material. The virtue signaling went out the window though when I sprayed them with a relatively toxic aerosol sealer. 

All,
I don't know if "diffusers" are considered "tweaks" or not, but highly recommend them nonetheless. It is one of the many things I've tried after reading about them on this site. 

@three_easy_payments

intended or not, this thread is turning out to be quite a good one with numerous posters entering the discussion with interesting angles and thoughts, and as such, it makes this a better place to spend time at (as opposed to, say a few nitwits who bicker constantly and endlessly about class d amps, and so on, without any useful exchanges of real information)

catching up on the posts, i would make a few furthercomments, in the spirit of lively discussion and hopefully constructive debate

-- my issue with many tweaks is when the cost becomes substantial, then i feel many lose the plot ... yes if you have a system you are veryhappy with, then tweak away to get the last few percent of perceived performance, but some of the tweaks get darned expensive, as cables do, some fuses for a system can add up to a grand or more, so one needs to wonder whether folks buying in are losing the big picture and suspending common sense about relative importance, versus upgrading a systemcomponent rather than tweaks - i remember the shun mook nonsense years ago... yes isolation and tuning of resonances can make a system sound marginally better, but when the stupid wood blocks with little metal tips start to cost thousands, common sense needs to kick that b-s sell job to curb

-- this is a discussion forum attached to a commercial site, and while the forum exists to drive commercial activity, i don’t see the point in talking about who pays what fees or lists gear here vs. on less costly sites as a value judgment on posters who do or don’t... those are personal economic decisions, it is not about what makes this forum good or poor quality (actually what makes this forum good are the wealth of posts and posters, past and present, with something substantive to contribute) ... a lot of us bought and sold lots of gear here, and the sales site changed its fee structure, so some of us took some of our business elsewhere... the change of economic structure of the site has moved sellers much towards dealers than individuals, so what does this have to do with the quality of forum?

-- lastly, to me, without getting too much into arcane car geek stuff, i feel the bmw m3 analogy cited earlier is misplaced... the context is wrong, bmw-cca autocross (leave aside racetrack driving where a factory m3 will melt in 2 laps in an experienced driver’s hands)... firstly, all the improvements made to that posters autocross car are in fact substantial, from brakes to suspension to fluids and so on, he is not changing the battery wiring to the alternator or changing a fuse in the fuse box ... but even so, secondly, go from a ’tweaked’ e46 or e9x m3 to a factory stock 997 gt3 and there is a quantum leap in overall performance (like going from a schiit modius dac to a chord dave or a weiss) - that is the difference between engaging in tweaks to getting an altogether vastly superior piece of gear (speakers, amp, what have you)