paul packer wrote:
On 20 Apr 2006 17:09:03 -0700, wrote:
Sander deWaal wrote:
said:
7. The few people who did try my tweaks and found that they do indeed
work, are stupid. Well except for Sander, who gets the lion's share of
respect because:
a) He's a working audio engineer and
b) He's one of the friendliest types on RAO, he has the "correct
RAO-approved sense of humour" and thus is well liked by all.
That's not entirely correct.
Arny doesn't like me sob
Dave Weil and Paul Packer also seem to dislike me, lately.
Of course, I have my theories about that too. The very idea that the
alternative tweaks and audio products are serious, and do in fact work
as advertised, makes an awful LOT of people here angry. Angry and
scared. Well, angry, scared and defensive. Okay, angry, scared,
defensive, and paranoid. Maybe even angry, scared, defensive, paranoid
and hostile. Just asking them to "think outside the box" brings up all
those nervous, scary feelings, and they don't much like that. Having
considered you "one of them" for so long, they feel "betrayed" (yes,
there I said it: "BETRAYED"!) by you. Betrayed because you stepped foot
outside the box, and left them inside.
...Yeah so anyway, that's my explanation of why Dave Weil and Paul
Packer don't like as much recently.
You still haven't got my message, Mr. Sound. My message is that I
don't care if the tweaks work. Having read a couple of your links,
especially the review of the strips of foil, I'm inclined to believe
there may be something in some of it, but I don't care. Why? Because
I've already spend the last 30 years trying tweaks, and one thing I
know about tweaks is that, whether they work or not, they can become a
black hole of obsession that distracts one permanently from the music.
Now what you're presenting us here is a mix of things, some of which
may or may not improve the subjective reception of sound, but most are
open ended---that is, once you've discovered, or think you've
discovered, that the little L-shaped thingies work here, then you need
to try them there, and over there, and just above the mantle-piece
and....hang on, didn't it sound a bit better sitting on the right side
of the vase rather than the left, or was that because the wife was
hoovering around my feet at the time? And that cream, how many places
can I find to smear it, and how often do I need to re-smear it, and
does it matter if it attracts dust and looks like the under-side of a
rural pick-up---is it still doing the job? I can well imagine someone
following the whole Belt regime and actually getting better perceived
sound, but the amount of fiddle-arsing before any degree of
satisfaction could be achieved, and then the wondering....wondering if
just another strip of foil here, another smear of cream there...could
it be just a bit, a tiny bit better...where does it all end, Mr.
Sound? And Sander, while you're luxuriating in all this wonderful
sound, aren't you constantly wondering what next? Will you ever be
able to rest until you've tried every possible permutation, every kind
of animal picture, until you have bits of foil flapping all over the
room, cream smeared in every crevice and all over your glasses. It's
just not a road I want to go down, thanks.
He's a thought, Mr. Sound: why don't you tell us about every tweak
you've got in your system and the improvements they've made, and we'll
decide if we want to follow your lead. And if you're not a Belt
salesman, better tell us how much it all cost as well.
See, I can write a long post too, and all with the hunt-n-peck method.
Bravo. Seeing someone write something halfway meaningful makes a
refreshing change from the usual dumb one-liner quips like you get from
"Shovels" et al., that bore the hell out of me. Nevertheless, I must
say I was VERY tempted to "jive-ify" your post, and leave you
hanging.... But your (no doubt temporary) change from your usual
smart-ass rubbish to a rational plea was overpowering....
You get an "almost pass" for your dismissal of the use of the tweaks
and products. For 2 reasons: you admitted there may be something to it
(a surprisingly reasonable thing to hear from the likes of you), and
you have a (somewhat) valid point about the experimentation side of the
'business' of alternative audio tweaks. BUT.... but.... I have a
response for that... .
First of all, it's an "almost pass", because you still haven't
confirmed for yourself whether or not the tweaks have an audible
effect, according to your listening threshold. A true audiophile or
scientist, even a lazy one, should be curious enough to take the 30
seconds to find out what, if anything, it all means. Once you confirm
whether or not there's something to it *for you*, then you get a "full
pass". That is, a "full pass" with "no obligation to continue any
further with it".
Experimentation is not for everyone. However, I will argue that it's
not just necessary for unconventional audio products, its also
necessary for conventional audio products. I assume for example, you
have speakers in your audio system. Well, they require careful
"tweaking" to determine their location. To a lesser degree, so do all
your components. Or did you think just plopping them anywhere on the
shelf was perfectly fine? Wrong! Their exact location on the shelf can
make all the difference, particularly when combined as a whole. Those
are just 2 examples of many ways that conventional audio requires our
input in order to get the best sound out of what we have purchased.
Of course, you could just walk into an audio shop with your credit card
in hand, buy whatever the dealer says is the best system in his shop,
have it installed for you, and then do nothing but fiddle with the
knobs after that. But in no way, shape or form does this make you an
"audiophile". My tweaks are for "audiophiles" and I always made that
pretty clear. I've been applying tweaks to audio for some 25 years, and
while I understand the point about permanent obsessions, I argue that I
like doing both: discovering new things about the art of music
reproduction, and listening to music in a casual endeavour. I don't
feel one must be exclusive of the other. But for me, I generally tend
to get into audio in "spurts"; concentrating on it for a time, then
switching my focus to other things.
As for the Belt products, there's something in ALL of it, despite what
you may nor may not be "convinced" by, from your ivory tower, where you
observe all of it with your eyes. I've not tried a single product or
free idea that didn't make a difference. But some more than others.
Obviously, Belt's products tend to have a much larger impact on sound
than his free tweak ideas (otherwise, they wouldn't be free ideas, I
imagine....). Your description of the cream obviously comes from
someone who's never used it. It does not gunk up your hifi and make it
look like the underside of a Ford pickup. It's not petroleum jelly, its
a very fine emulsification of oil and water. You use a very small
amount, one micron thickness is enough. When I put it on my friend's
cd, you didn't even notice it was there, after it was spread evenly
across the surface. The idea is to put it in places where it isn't
going to get wiped off. Which is why people apply it to speaker
baffles, the underside of equipment covers, the back of equipment, and
so on. Yes, I believe the cream electret still does its job over the
course of time (none of the Belt products or ideas are "temporary"
ones), and it doesn't attract an inordinate amount of dust or dirt, and
doesn't matter if the dirt collects on it. Its presence on a "quantum
level", is all that matters.
True, some things require more fuss than others. The L-shape for
example, morphic messages or the 5-pinhole tweak. They require "fine
tuning", to determine where they are best applied to be of full
benefit. But other things, like the cream electret you mentioned, are
pretty much "fuss free", IMO. You unscrew the jar, you apply the cream
to hifi gear or cd's, and once done, that's it. I'd say the stuff is
better in certain locations than others, but you just need to know a
general rule of where its best applied, no problems there. You don't
have to experiment with it, it will always be of benefit. Where does it
end? Well, that's up to you decide. Alternative audio isn't heroin, you
know. You could say for example, "I will stop at $40" (the cream
electret costs about 20 pounds, I think). Then you open the jar, apply
the entire thing at once to various parts of your system, the plumbing,
the hot water tank, a few mirrors, some of your favorite cd's.... then
once its gone, you stop and you're done with it. If my non-audiophile
friend could hear the effects from treating a single cd, I am quite
sure anyone here can ascertain differences from an entire jar. Even the
objectivists. Whether to proceed from there or leave your system as is,
depends on, I suppose, how much of an effect it has, and how satisfied
you are with that. "Fella" seems to be quite satisfied with only
fitting a single 5 pinhole tweak in his system, and by the description
of the sound he is now getting, I can see why. So that should answer
your question about how to know where to stop.
He's a thought, Mr. Sound: why don't you tell us about every tweak
you've got in your system and the improvements they've made, and we'll
decide if we want to follow your lead. And if you're not a Belt
salesman, better tell us how much it all cost as well.
Don't be a silly twit. Belt doesn't have any "salesman". As far as I
have ever seen of this, the entire Belt sales force comprises his wife.
Belt doesn't advertise either, I've never seen a single ad anywhere.
Unlike the conventional audio companies, that will pimp their wares to
you any chance they get. PWB also offers a money back guarantee on
every product they sell. I don't know of any conventional audio
companies doing that, either. So who's the real charlatans here? PWB,
or the whoring audio companies that curry the favour of audio
journalists through the smell of their mighty, powerful advertising
dollars?
I'm not going to describe for you every tweak I have in my system, and
what each sounds like. Are you kidding me?! You have no idea of all
that comprises of, and this post is already 65 times too long for you
and the average RAO citizen to read. But its an interesting question,
so I'll attempt to answer it. First of all, I have several audio
systems. So I'll assume you're talking about my "el cheapo" system (the
heart of which contains a 30 year old receiver and who's current value
I put at about $300), the one I mentioned in my first post here and
that I used as a test bed for most of my tweaks. The money I put into
transforming this into a high end kit that puts a lot of budget
audiophile gear to shame, cost me about $15. And that is no doubt a
great overestimation. (There is as of yet, actually no genuine Belt
products used on this system, although there are some "Belt-ish"
products used). Some Belt products cost more than the entire audio
system is worth, and I didn't feel it was very prudent to use my
precious, precious Belt stash on this very humble piece of kit. I've
opted to use the Belt products on others systems.
Many of the tweaks that I've applied to this system, I can't tell you
about. Well I could, but I don't want to. In doing so, I would be
revealing many of my best exclusive "Beltish" tweaks that I came up
with. And I would never do such a thing, because I feel it would be
like a reward to a group that has been extremely hostile and malicious
toward me from day one, extremely closed-minded, and does not deserve
it. So instead, I threw you a few bones with my "Advanced Audiophile
Tweaks", but I keep the "good stuff" for myself, and my friends. So
while that rules out a lot of stuff that I did, I suppose I can
generalize a bit... Without telling you how I did it, I can say that I
treated the various fuses in the components in various ways (including
orienting them for best direction), and as well, I treated all
electronic parts (caps, resistors, ic's, the like...), I modified the
PCB boards, I modified the interior casing, I modified the exterior
casing, I applied various products to the internal and external wiring
(both power and ICs), I "dealt with" the free jacks, in the amp I
removed the output transistors from their attached heat sink, I
grounded the cd player to the amp as well as both speakers, I treated
the insulation in the speakers, I attached L-shapes to the inside of
each of the speaker walls, I added a 3" piece of white quarter round
dowelling to each right angle inside the speaker, I made sure all the
slotted screws were vertically aligned (not just on the speaker drivers
but on the electrical outlet and switch plates in the house)... I froze
each component in the system, along with the electrical outlet, along
with the speaker drivers and x-over, along with all the wiring and
cabling, my watch, my kitchen cutlery, my pictures, my special red x
pens... and of course, I also froze my holy water. I added positive
"morphic messages" with the red x pen, all over the equipment, needless
to say. Some of them indeed say "soundhaspriority". But if say I needed
'specific improvements'.... well, some might say "this bass driver has
excellent response".
That's quite a small example of some of the things that was done to my
modest system. But you said "every tweak in my system" and the sad fact
is, many tweaks were not done to the system at all. For example... I
tweaked every light bulb in the room with a treatment (a product not
unlike cream electret). This made it so that every time the light was
on, which is normally something that worsens the sound, sound got
better. I also treated the rugs and the couch and the curtains and the
walls and some of the furniture and the computer and the pipes in the
bathroom and the dryer plug (no, not the outlet, the plug), and the
kitchen sink pipes, and the toilet, and the mirrors, and the doors, and
the electric meter and the water tank and the toaster cord and the
window blind cord and the corners of the windows... you know, now that
I think about it, I suppose there can be a bit of "fiddle-arsing"
involved, if you can call it that. But the important thing is, you're
always learning something.
I expect there'll be no end of criticism toward me for all that, but I
say, if the option is learning something while improving my sound still
further, or sitting here expending a nova of negative energy to fight
with ghosts with no productive result to ever come of it, I think I
will always prefer the former.