An Edifying Journey ...

[Summit]

Maybe you should hire a Ghostbusters or exorcist to get rid of those miserable ghosts that seems to be tinkering with your cables all the time 🤭.

[Summit]

11 hours ago, fas42 said:

Or, the devil/ghosts is in the details 😉 ... it always, always comes back to the weakest link in the chain slugging the potential of what you have, and, yes, cables are one of the biggest bogeys in the game. Otherwise, the madness of an infinite number of manufacturers offering a vast array of cable 'models' wouldn't be part of the snake oil swamp - that which the objectivists justifiably spend lots of time rolling on the floor laughing at ...

 

It depends what your goals are ... if you see your rig as an effects machine, which you spend decades playing with every which way, making your "special" recordings sound ever more special, and making everything else sound more awful, then what I do wouldn't make sense. But if you want accuracy, which means that each recording imposes its own personality on what you hear, with the lowest possible contribution from the parts of the playback system, then the "tinkering" is essential.

 

This very, very cheap setup is in a pretty good place at the moment - it didn't miss a beat yesterday ... I'm optimistic that I've got the major weaknesses reasonably under control; because I could just listen to anything without being distracted by playback misbehaviour ...

 

If you need to constantly fix the statics, filters, connections and position of the same 3 cables you have in your audio system you have a  problem that has noting to do with components per se. 

 

May be the weakest link is not part of your system? 

[Summit]

57 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The problem is, that the components are sensitive to electrical noise - to the point where it's easily audible. IME, every rig has this problem, irrespective of the reputation of the maker, or the gear cost. As an example, every time someone says they changed the power cord they used, and that altered the SQ - that's a giveaway that the engineering of the component is not good enough to be impervious to noise factors.

 

You have two alternatives: either buy gear which has been debugged enough in the design to fully isolate from noise interference - this is currently almost impossible, no matter how much money you spend; or, add the necessary isolation, with filtering and other means, and attend to every area of the cabling, doing this yourself ... there are a million posts and web documents out there, describing the huge array of 'fixes' that have been tried.

 

Of course, this is not necessary if you're not fussed about achieving high standards of accuracy - but if you are, then it is ...

 

That components like cables or filters can make a SQ difference is not what I debated. It is the fact that you need to constantly fix the same problems over and over again. And by chance your weakest link is always the same things (built up statics, lousy filters ,lousy connections and cables), all things that you can fix/diy in a few minutes 🤭.

 

 

[Summit]

I bought the exorcist, a bottle of holy water and some garlic and have not had any problems with gremlins 👻 since .

[Summit]

On 12/18/2021 at 8:15 AM, hopkins said:

Picking up on the discussion we left off here:

 

Frank, I understand you use a DVD player with a pair of powered speakers (Edifiers).

 

What are the recipes that you have applied that have increased the accuracy of thay system? Can you be specific? 

 

 

 

 

 

Good luck geting Frank to be specific.. 

[Summit]

16 hours ago, fas42 said:

As said before, this is new territory for me - but rather than going out, and buying some ridiculously expensive, supposed upgrade to the link, I'm going to fool around and see what easy to do tweaking does. This is exactly what I have done over the last 30 plus years, in all the areas of a particular rig - this is how one learns, and understands where the weaknesses are. With a bit of luck, I'll get a far more robust link at the end of it; which will consistently deliver sufficient integrity to that part of the setup.

 

And see how far you have come after 30 years of fooling around 😉.

[Summit]

On 5/5/2022 at 1:31 AM, fas42 said:

 

Where I've come, is to acquire the understanding and experience that allows me to evolve a system, any system, to a level of greater accuracy. I could not put up with the awfulness of most, ahem, hifi reproduction; especially when it costs big bucks - so, what matters is the ability to lift the standard of replay from mediocre, or sub-par, to that of competent sound ... that's mighty satisfying to do ...

 

In the world of computer games there are two sorts of people: those that love playing the purchased game; and those that love developing the game in the first place - the creator. I'm one of the latter - playing the actual game is far less interesting; unless you are trying to understand how another creator went about it, his way.

 

So, what interests me is how far I can push the set of gear in front of me to be more capable - any recording, any volume level, any place when listening. I don't sit down and make it a thing "to listen" - a setup has to work well enough that when I pay zero attention to it, from another room in the house, and also when I concentrate on what's coming out from a particular driver, that it always performs.

 

Digital cables are new to me - so, I need to understand how playing with them alters things ... that then becomes part of the 'toolkit'.

 

If you would had any real understanding and experience you wouldn't try to put lipstick on a pig. Sorry but that's how I see it.