If coiled cables strewn across the floor is good enough for Tyler Childers and John R Miller it’s good enough for me.
Well it’s good enough for me too, when I play a live gig.
Indeed two very different things. Agree
Live is in terms of fidelity the shi***est environment there can be. No one should want to replicate that at home.
Sky Hooks…
Valid points.
Priorities in studios are rather different to those at home. There is a need for robust equipment and cables/connectors that can withstand heavy use and are resilient to less than careful handling. They need to be good enough for the job, on sound quality grounds, but no moere than that. Indeed the same applies at home - it’s just that many of us choose to go the extra mile in order to extract the very best from our systems.
One hears of ‘studio types’ dismissing audiophiles who spend thousands on special cables etc. Mostly one suspects that this is borne out of ignorance or a sort of blind belief that because they work in a professional audio environment they are somehow superior to amateur audiophiles. I’ll wager that many/most of them have never heard an expensive audio cable in their lives. They just ‘know’.
But of course it isn’t a requirement to buy expensive cables or racks or anything else. One can get by quite satisfactorily without any of this paraphernalia. Many of us think it’s worth the money to get the best sound we can - we hear the differences it makes. Some don’t hear it or just aren’t interested.
Each to his/her own.
But don’t knock it unless you’ve tried it.
This interests me and I wonder what does extracting the very best from your system actually mean? Is there an end game or is it a lifetime of being dissatisfied?
Lifetime😅
No but all joking aside. It’s a hobby and there is or can be a fun element to discovering what will happen if…
This goes for a lot of different tweaks, at least for me. So it’s not just about the music. It’s fun to experiment and evaluate.
So, to me, it’s not necessarily a question of being dissatisfied.
That’s a fair comment, thanks
Getting the very best from your system, hmmm what does this mean.
IMHO it simply means that when you sit down and listen to music courtesy of the gear you own and if this puts a big grin on your face as you listen then you have achieved it.
If what you hear makes you happy and content then that is all that matters, that is you getting the best from your system.
For many this is utopia, every time they sit back and listen they are more than satisfied with their lot and have no inclination to change anything.
But for others there is this notion that if they bought X (whatever X maybe) their sound will improve, maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it is an actual improvement, maybe it is a psychological improvement, only they know.
There is nothing wrong with this approach, in many ways we all go through it at some point, a house move or personal circumstances forces us to change an item (s) in our setup to a different make/model or sticking with the same brand but jumping a rung or two on the ladder.
At the end of the day whether you have a one box or multi-box setup is immaterial, all that matters is that you enjoy the music on your system.
Hanging them from elastic from the ceiling might work.
Many years ago I knew a guy that owned a fairground waltzer and he was moaning about his 45s jumping when the ride was on fast.
So I got four bungee luggage ties and suspended his old deck from the cabin ceiling Sorted.
Nothing wrong going the extra mile or two, as i also have the T shirt, and hat, as they say.
But at the same time i am open to it all, and see certain things very suspiciously.
You could argue that we home users are indeed just trying to dig out all we can from the recording we are given, by using cable lifters, cables, etc.
You could then also argue if you believe in above, that as like i said, the damage is already done to the recording before it even gets to the master recording machine, with what cable’s have been used, and how them long cable’s react to arround them on the way.
After all these cable’s are easily the most important in any chain. As once you lose it, or add to it, then as it’s the master, then it will always be there for ever.
You certainly dont see chord music range off cable’s used or anything near that on cost, i am sure chord would be more than happy to fit out a recording studio with all it’s cable requirements, but obviously they don’t. Obviously that would cost substantial money, but you would think if it was so much better or needed, they would use something like this to maximise the quality. But they don’t.
That really says it all.
Absolutely @Dunc @anon77199223, Just look at Naim. They make £100k amplifiers so you would think they are making a fortune?
Their turnover is around £40m, gross profit around £15m and net profit around £5m.
As big as Naim are, they only make £5m a year (yet sell £100k amps, £25k steamers etc).
Like many companies, a profit of around 10-12% is ok, and that’s all that Naim are making.
Sure they might make a little more on cables, but it’s not like it’s making them super rich or anything.
As a long time audiophile. Truthfully, speaking purely for myself:
No.
Yes.
This doean’t mean it hasn’t been lots of fun and still is!
I’ve been chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for around 53 years, since I was 10 yrs old. I think my current system is truly awesome, at least for me and what I want. But I can still see ways forward. Just waiting for a second Chord Ground Array to arrive - this will be for my EE8 switch - already got one in BT Smart Hub 2. But even before it’s arrived I’m already thinking how good it would be to upgrade the Plixir PS on my Melco to the new top-of-the-range model.
And so it goes on - ad infinitum. I’m a sad case.
They do make Instrument Cables. My wife has these on her Nord Electro 6D keyboard. They do make an improvement over the cheap give-aways that Nord supply.
How about THC
Then you will be yourself off the floor
(N.B. This response is not specifically aimed at you, but just picking up the audiophile reference.
The question of course is what is an audiophile, or perhaps what makes a true audiophile? is it a person who pursues perfection to the nth degree, constantly trying to find improvements to her or his system? Or the person who assembles a system that plays all, or at least the vast majority, of music they like, excellently?
The trouble is that pursuing the nth degree is inherently doomed to failure, resulting in forever throwing more money and time at it but never being truly satisfied. A primary flaw is that recordings are not perfect, or at least those that approach perfection are very few, while the vast majority are very variable, so that whatever works best with one recording’s signal may not be the best with another. It was recognition of this which made me not even try the myriad of tweaks others swear by - or swear at, not infrequently over time compounding one ‘improvement’ with another and ending up reversing changes.
A related question - can anyone be a true audiophile if they don’t acoustically treat their listening room in order to minimise room effects on the sound? It seems wholly incongruous to me that some people spend fortunes on their systems and then on tweaks like cables or peripheral gear power supplies, etc, but nothing at all on taming the elephant in the room, namely the room itself.
Not only can they but in my view, if they are approaching it seriously and the goal is an “in the room” sound, then they absolutely should not overly treat the room.
I treated a room heavily once and it makes it sound like you are an ant trapped between a giant pair of headphones. Probably good for mastering but rubbish for music it was. It is the imperfections in the room and non linear response that actually give the audible illusion of the band performing in your room. So while you might want to temper the worst of it, room treatment is best done with a delicate touch in my opinion.
In my view, deleting the impact of the room is best for surround sound when the goal is to put the listener where the action is. But for stereo music, where the goal is the put the action in front of the listener, the room imperfections are the magic sauce.
It is of course all a matter of how and to what extent. one treats the room, and indeed a truly ‘dead’ room would is highly unlikely to be desirable - but so many people seem to do nothing at all, suffering (but not recognising) the muddying effects of early reflections, and maybe excessive reverberation time, etc, yet pursue other tweaks to distraction.
Surely, at least to my mind, an audiophile worth his/her salt would minimise ay least the most damaging room effects - and there is one new thread on the forum detailing one individual’s discovery of the remarkable improvement even very simple and limited treatment can bring.
The best sound from any system I have heard, ever, was from a lesser system than my current one, but outdoors, with virtually no room effects, but far from acousticallly dead.
Not only a dead room will ruin the experience. My room is “delicately” treated. However, by chance since I don’t measure the room. Point is, When it was treated I tried all kinds of different treatment which I threw out because it ruined the sound. And it was the kind of treatment and the placement of it rather than the amount. I, for instance, tried sounds of science hertz absorbers at the speakers first reflection to the sides. It absolutely killed the enjoyment and that was only treating first reflections - which is said to be a no-brainer that should be done. Go figure🧐