It Pegged the Needle on My "BS Meter". Now, I'm A Believer. Ever Happen to You?
Okay, here you are. Feeling pretty good about yourself. Your high end audio knowledge base is extensive. Ears fine-tuned. You can sling words around like "dampening factor", "air gap flux density", and throw in the occasion "dark background" or "micro-dynamic" just to let those around you know you’re not a high performance audio lightweight.
Then, there it is: you are presdented with the utterly ridiculous. After the initial automatically triggered chuckle, the "reasonable" part of your brain assembles a list of the number of reasons why this makes no sense at all. You hit the eject button and move on to more sane topics, like alien shape shifting. But, the topic gets revisited. Most likely an acquaintance or industry associate asks: "Have you tried this?" You put on your best poker face and attempt to keep a friendship intact while explaining in no uncertain terms why they are out of their cotton-pickin’ mind.
After defending your space and putting up your best efforts to not come within 100 meters of this "thing", you give in to the pressure(s) and give it a listen. And then ... "what the heck just happened?!!" You are flabbergasted. Not only did it make an improvement. You have to look at the guys you just labeled as certified lunatics -- and admit they were right.
Ever happen to you?
The first, and most memorial for me .....
Monster Cable CD Sound Rings
The sonics first generation CD players were not, uh, as advertised. They had more grain than a belt sander with 60 grit attached. A bit later Yamaha introduced a new (lower priced) player with "oversampling" that filed the burrs off a bit But, still not even close to an analog experience in my view.
Then the Monster rep showed up and dropped off a little package of CD Sound Rings. Per the rep, these little boogers reduce "jitter" in CDs and make them sound better. I just couldn’t hide the obvious smirk, and "promised" to listen to them. He left. They sit on the desk along with literature, open invoices, and a pretty full todo list. I’m not sure what provided the nudge for me to give them a listen. But, I finally opened the package, stuck one (literally) to a CD, and closed the drawer. Music started playing. It was at that precise moment that CDs became listenable for me. And, opened the window for a lifetime of open-minded, audio experimentation.
Similar experience(s) anyone?
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- 40 posts total
@noodlyarm Here's the Monster Cable trick: they supplied a trick speaker cable A/B switch with 20 feet of cable for each gauge. The 18 Ga zipcord all neatly coiled up and an equal length of Monster Cable, which, being heavier gauge, resisted coiling up so neatly. On testing, the zipcord sounded dull by comparison. Why? That neat coil of zipcord formed a serial inductor - a low pass 6dB/Octave filter and at about 20 ft the serial resistance was enough to impede (pun intended) the bass damping on most speakers. Very clever marketing, I sold a lot of Monster Cable from that demo before some Electrical Engineer from a nearby aerospace company pointed out the flaws in the setup. But he thought Monster Cable was cool, and bought it anyway. |
Hmm, I was not aware of that trick, but it doesn't surprise me. In our case, we did not use the Monster Cable demo box, we just had roughly equal lengths of Monster Cable and compared that the zipcord speaker wire. We just moved cables around. We did not think about how the cables were laying, just the lengths. Another one was glass platter matts for the turntables. I was surprised at the increase in clarity due to a thin piece of glass on my platter. And we did account for the change in VTA. |
Thanks. I needed that. Every day I read, contemplate, and comment on very serious topics. It is nice to get a break from insanity, and put a little distance between myself and actions that have major consequences. EVERYONE's contributions to this "little" forum have value that can't be overstated. Thanks for YOUR posts. |
- 40 posts total