As I wrote earlier, maybe we just don’t know what to measure. Maybe we don’t know everything about complex interaction of our brains, all the other senses and hearing. There might be more into it? Maybe we don’t know everything about electronics and their interactions either? Then again, why even try to remove our brains or other senses from the equation when they are and will always be present when we listen to any audio or music out there. They will always affect the outcome.
To me you give this impression of extremely objective and closed minded approach to hifi. Do you ever try power cables, switches etc. in your own setup by just plugging them in and listening or do you just base your knowledge to the fact that there aren’t any measurements to show these differences. Have you measured any yourself btw? Usually the worst expectation bias comes from the people with the most objective approach to hifi. Bias being “there can and will be no difference”. I wonder what would happen if you actually just heard the difference in your own setup and couldn’t explain it? Probably easiest way would be to deny what you heard/experienced and to not accept it.
I also fail to understand your objective on this journey against subjective findings people like to post on this forum. Every single thread about cables, switches, digital products have your endless bombardment of messages questioning people and their findings. It just gets to me… I don’t know why. You need to remember that when someone posts their findings here, it’s not posted as a fact (unless someone states it as a fact) but as his/hers subjective opinion and experience. I’m not saying my experience is a fact since it most definitely is not. But it’s 100% real to me and no one can deny that. And for the 100th time… nothing else matters than your own experience and enjoyment. I like to read about other people’s experience on their journey with hifi.
But we’ve had this discussion before so let’s not get further into it. I respect your views and knowledge and most definitely think you’re a very smart guy. We just have completely different approach to this hobby.
I’m 51 years old and first started my route into hi-fi when I was about 19 years old. I inherited an old Bang & Olufsen Beocenter 3500, a Sony TC-199SD tape deck, a pair of B&W DM2s and I bought a decent Sony CD player at the time.
I’ve since subscribed to numerous hi-fi magazines, had all sorts of gear, auditioned loads of other gear and tried lots of different mains cables, interconnects, speaker cables, equipment supports, stands and a plethora of other nonsense. I’ve heard very subtle differences in interconnects, for instance, but there’s usually a very solid scientific reason - a basic LCR meter can give a very good insight. With everything else, I’ve been suitably underwhelmed with the differences, never, ever experiencing anything like what the hi-fi press hyperbole told me I should have been hearing.
I’ve now gone completely the other way. I started to build my own speakers a few years back, using competent designs, with high quality, low distortion drivers and good quality crossover components. They hands-down sound better than most of the commercial efforts I’ve heard costing 5 to 10 times as much. I have a decent, solidly-built amp with a tube input stage (yes, I concede that different tubes do have an influence here and have settled on a quality, neutral-soinding, low-microphonic model). Source gear is affordable, neutral and well-measuring. Cables are decent-quality (Van-Damme/Neutrik for instance) and competently made, either by myself or a UK based cable builder that I buy from.
My network gear is standard (enterprise-grade) stuff - I have a lot of devices on it, consumer stuff doesn’t have enough ports, PoE capability or backplane.
The biggest difference I have ever made to my hifi setup, is treating the room - £1000 or so spent on a combination of diffusion and absorption in the right places, plus taking some time and effort to optimise the speaker positioning.
Massively greater improvement than everything else with speakers coming in second place behind.
The differences other things make is frankly insignificant by comparison in my experience.
I see loads of setups in the showing (off) your setup thread, where high-end hifi setups’ potential is sub-optimal at best/crippled at worst by the room and the speaker placement within it…
Some things can make subtle differences, but nothing that matches the adjectives thrown around here on a routine basis.
Nothing, in my experience, warrants spending thousands on “audiophile” networking gear. Objective measurements lay waste to the ridiculous claims made by manufacturers. And even where miniscule measured differences can be found, they are so far below the threshold of audibility as to be non-existent.
Over the years, I’ve wasted inordinate amounts of time and money on fruitless so-called improvements that failed to deliver on their promises.
I’m relatively happy for now, though I have a three-way wide-baffle speaker build in the pipeline. Adding a mid-range driver relieves the mid-bass and tweeter from doing things they really aren’t designed to do, improves power response, and the wide-baffle improves efficiency and power response and reduces the effects of diffraction.
I’m not on a crusade, as you seem to imply. I enjoy intelligent discussion and debate. Many things are claimed around here that are scientifically highly improbable/impossible. You don’t have to engage in my posts or comment on them if they offend you. You can ignore my posts or flag them if you feel they’re inappropriate.
Maybe I need to take a break, avoid threads like this, or maybe just get up and walk away entirely from the community?
People advocate huge spend on stuff that gives little or no measurable return in the scheme of things. It’s far better to sort out your speakers and room before exploring any of the other stuff.
If people have time and money to burn, how they spend it is up to them. Spend $2.5k on a network switch and $500 on an ethernet cable. They just shouldn’t make impossibly over-hyped claims about how enormous the audible improvements are that they hear. They’re fooling themselves and lying to everyone else. The improvements are subtle at best or a figment of their auditory cortex at worst.
If they don’t have time and money to burn, my advice is to take care of the big stuff (speakers and room first) and don’t sweat the small stuff. No other big spend will give a fraction of the improvement that good speakers in a sorted room will provide.
Dear Graeme,
Lifting veils is precisely what it’s about - although in words more reflective of professional familiarity with, and ability to describe, the attributes of sound. “Lifting veils” is the consumer equivalent of lowering the noise floor and distortions to the extent that fine detail is revealed and coloration due to interaction of the signal with distortions are gone. Many power-related devices, i.e. power supplies, impose their own coloration on signals as well.
If you actually read the review I appended describing Jim Weil’s designs, you will be horrified at Jim’s design methods.
Because there are large gains to be had in obvious issues like room treatment, speaker placement, and the like doesn’t mean that the remaining factors in refining audio playback are irrelevant. Once first order problems are dealt with, reproduction can be refined considerably by dealing with numerous other issues. This certainly doesn’t mean anyone capable of hearing further differences is under placebo effect. If that were true, professional audio would cease to exist.
Now this… this is the most interesting post I’ve read from you on this forum. Thanks for sharing! It’s fascinating to find out reasoning and experiences people have gone through to get the point they’re today.
I share your views on many things. Even my setup nowadays is based on brands with strong background in pro-audio (ATC) and engineering/designing hifi products (Linn). What I’ve learnt since the early days in the hobby is that money is almost completely irrelevant on how good something can sound. I would never pay thousands for audiophile switches or any cable whatsoever. When I started with this hobby, I used to think that performance steadily goes up while the prices increase… not true. It’s the law of diminishing returns happening in hifi.
Also good point on room acoustics. They are the most crucial thing when building a setup. Unfortunately regular setups usually reside in lving room and there might be limited possibilities to stack the room with acoustic panels and bass traps. Recently I’ve found out the excellence of room correction (in form of Linn Space Optimisation platform) even though few years ago I would’ve been strongly against any DSP happening in my setup.
I try to avoid these threads also and IMO have done pretty well most of the time but sometimes I just feel the need to hit the reply button. Please keep posting, you clearly have vast amount of knowledge on hifi. Just give us subjective people some slack every once in a while.
If they were enjoying their gear why are they looking for the ‘next great thing?’
Worse still why do they feel the need to justify it?
If I bought a Rolex I wouldn’t be telling everyone that it ticks better than a Casio.
And why do you care if someone pursues this hobby by upgrading? Or feel the need to justify why they shouldn’t be justifying? Who’s to say one can’t be interested in audio and music at the same time? See how this works? It’s not a one way street
They are discussing because they care about audio and supposedly are talking to others that enjoy it and enjoy thinking about equipment performance. This is, after all, a topic thread labelled “Audio Gear Talk”. If they were bragging to their non-audio friends about the price of their gear and how it ticks better than a Bose does, it would be different.
Yes, because it’s so much more constructive to continually excoriate and berate people for having bought ‘snake oil’ despite themselves never actually having heard said ‘snake oil.’
Yes, because it’s so much more constructive to continually excoriate and berate people for having bought ‘snake oil’ despite themselves never actually having heard said ‘snake oil.’
I agree with Charles_Peterson, especially as it relates to respect for others.
anon72719171 - I enjoy your resilience here in the face of all these ‘scientists’ who already know
all the answers. Surely ‘science’ is the study of things to learn. Otherwise we would still be letting the blood out or releasing the demons to cure illness. In my system, I hear an improvement with the recent insertion of the EtherRegen directly in front of my streamer / DAC / Roon endpoint. More fool me! Enjoy the music! Ken
I bought an EtherRegen switch some time back because a bunch of folks I know and respect for their views across on Audiophilestyle recommended it. I could hear the difference immediately. Some time later, I read about the impact of external OCXO clocks and bought a cheap AfterDark version from Hong Kong. I reasoned that I could afford to take a modest hit if it made no difference. It made a significant difference. So, guess what? I upgraded the clock to one in the upper mid range of AD clocks. It is still burning in but, once again, the sound is significantly improved.
I am in the fortunate position to have enough money and more to experiment on these things. If you want to shoot me down as a confirmation-biased fool, knock yourself out. On the other hand, if you won’t miss a couple of grand, and in the context of a system that cost as much as a luxury car, then give it a try. If it doesn’t work out for you, that’s what Ebay is for.
Amazing to hear! The EtherRegen also made a remarkable improvement in my setup and once in a while I often bring it along to test in my friends setup which they always enjoyed too.
Funny to read about Afterdark clocks which I currently also consider. There are interesting reviews and feedbacks in various German speaking online forums too.
Are you using a linear power supply for the ER and AD clock too? And which clocks did you test / compare so far?
I use the Uptone UltraCap LPS1.2 to power the EtherRegen;
The AD OCXO clock is powered by a matching AD Black Modernize LPS;
I was initially sceptical about the impact of an external clock so I took advantage of the Audiophilestyle group buy on the Queen 75 ohm square wave model, which I ordered along with the matching PS. It was (almost) the cheapest model in the range;
It made a far bigger improvement to the sound than I dared hope. So when my wife wasn’t looking, I struck a deal with the owner of AD, Adrian, who kindly offered me a 100% buy-back on the Queen. I ordered an Emperor Crown SE, as it appears to be in the sweet spot of performance for the buck, plus his Black River digital cable.
The Crown SE is still warming up (it can take up to a month with continuous improvement) but the sound is already in another league. Presentation and detail is fabulous.
I recently convinced a friend to buy an EtherRegen (they are getting in short supply), but I told him that its really just a vehicle to add a superb OCXO clock to the mix.
