Most unexpected sound improvement

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Andy Pandy, Apr 8, 2021.

  1. Tone?

    Tone? Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    *****?
    Lol

    now I have to try this as well. Since I have LED bulbs in my living room.
    Was the light on the same plug as the stereo gear?
     
    Meehael likes this.
  2. VapourTrailUS

    VapourTrailUS Internet “Person”

    Location:
    California
    Ive found having stuff plugged in creates a kind of.. hard to describe. Sound? Unplugging your gear and just listening to the vinyl in your hand is true audiophilia.
     
  3. Sneaky Pete

    Sneaky Pete Flat the 5 and That’s No Jive

    Location:
    NYC USA
    No it wasn’t on the same outlet but it was on the same circuit. I did a little research and apparently some bulb brands are more likely to create the problem. Since I couldn’t find any consensus as to which bulbs are best I went back to incandescent bulbs.
     
    jusbe and Tone? like this.
  4. Sneaky Pete

    Sneaky Pete Flat the 5 and That’s No Jive

    Location:
    NYC USA
    Yes but you have to put in ear plugs when you do it to stop interference from outside noise entering your head and distorting the sounds in your brain. YMMV ;-)
     
  5. Khorn

    Khorn Dynagrunt Obversarian

    There’s a short film that has exactly what you’re looking for, it should be on line somewhere:

    “The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959)”
     
    jusbe and Sneaky Pete like this.
  6. Ingenieur

    Ingenieur Just a dog looking for a home...

    Location:
    Back in PA
    It's similar to a balanced audio circuit.
    The 120 is transformed into 2 x 60 of opposite polarity. They each have a noise component to 180 degrees out of phase (like the V itself).
    When added back together to get 120 the noise cancels since they are mirror images, a + and a -.
     
    HiFi Guy 008 likes this.
  7. avanti1960

    avanti1960 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago metro, USA
    possibly a bad bulb causing the issue? every bulb in and out of my house is LED and we have no issues.
     
    Ntotrar and Sneaky Pete like this.
  8. LakeMountain

    LakeMountain Vinyl surfer

    Location:
    Netherlands
    Have you listened in the dark for an A/B comparison?
    LED’s have usually low tech switch transformers, which generate HF noise in your circuit. Same goes for non-audio digital equipment, a PC or a phone on a charger.

    I found out about this when the Xmas-lights automatically switched on one day when I was listening, lol! And even audio grade digital equipment benefits from a more solid AC to DC transformer, like an SBooster, Keces or similar. Gains can be unexpectedly large;).
     
    trd, goer, Sneaky Pete and 1 other person like this.
  9. GME

    GME Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Denmark
    well you’ll often wanna diffuse the back wall and obviously work on the bass trapping and broadband absorption rather than kill the mids as you seem to have done. Don’t dismiss professional people’s advice mistaking it for bad advice due to your lack of understanding this deep technical subject. I’m just starting to get it (really get it, not just reading about it, trying a few things then moving on) and have been involved with music for 30+ years.
    Sure any room can be fun and flattering in it’s own right. Doesn’t mean it comes anywhere close to matching a well treated room. It’s kind of weird to me, how little room acoustics are thought about, compared to how dramatically it screws up/alters/adds to the sound source.
     
    MTB Vince likes this.
  10. Sneaky Pete

    Sneaky Pete Flat the 5 and That’s No Jive

    Location:
    NYC USA
    That could be. I have a lot of LED bulbs in various rooms. I also have LED task lighting in the kitchen, but its all on different circuits.

    I also took the dimmer switch out of my listening room years ago.
     
  11. gmcjj

    gmcjj Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mid Michigan
    For me it was adding a butchers block under my turntable. Didn't expect it to improve the sound but it did.
     
  12. thebisch

    thebisch Forum Resident

    Location:
    upstate ny
    Biggest "upgrade" for me was getting off the audiophile merry go round and using regular person gear and some vintage, as well as using tone controls. I listen to and enjoy music now rather than listen to gear.
     
    Icethorn, jusbe, Vignus and 8 others like this.
  13. LakeMountain

    LakeMountain Vinyl surfer

    Location:
    Netherlands
    Good to hear that you found your “happiness level” gear-standard for listing to music. However in order to get there you need to test gear otherwise you might just as well listen through your smartphone speaker.

    There are many on this forum who are still exploring to find their “happiness level” gear-standard. I found my gear standard for my vinyl rig some time ago and after that I went on the search for my CD standard.

    I found it recently in the 512s Sparkler DAC, which has an analog processor to correct for phase and upper harmonics that where affected by the limits of the 44.1 kHz cycles during the digital recording process. The results were much better than what I had expected! Music sounds now incredibly natural with a good soundstage! I am there now and listening through my entire CD collection.

    However to get there (for me) it was not only audio components, but also a whole range of tweaks, like vibration control, room acoustics, clean power etc. That is why I find threads like these extremely useful!
     
    Icethorn and doctor fuse like this.
  14. Ingenieur

    Ingenieur Just a dog looking for a home...

    Location:
    Back in PA
    That is a common misconception. Does not really matter much, same outlet, same circuit, even a different hot leg...they are ALL on the same bus and transformer.

    In some cases for example when an HVAC unit starts it dims the lights in the whole house. The impact is not limited to the units branch circuit.
     
    goer and thebisch like this.
  15. Claude M

    Claude M Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    The problem: extremely bad feedback from the TT, to the point where the volume knob couldn't be turned up further than around 11 o'clock. If the knob wasn't turned down within seconds, the volume of the hum-like feedback increased like mad all on its own (on its way to blowing something up for sure). I added a 1 gram 1 mm shim to my cartridge as was pointed out by avanti when he was helping me with other questions (problem wasn't know to me yet at this point). I used to get this hum with a MM cartridge but only when foolishly screwing around with the bass on a Loki I had been messing with at the time (Loki no longer needed in phone chain with MC). The set of spikes you see in photo were unused and purchased on a whim because they looked cool and the price was right. Decided it was a good thing to try. The feedback is completely gone now. Changing two variables at the same time left me with not knowing what corrected the problem. Was it the shim, the spikes, and also, the spike lifted the TT about 3 inches which might have corrected the problem too. That corner is the absolute worse location for a TT, but it's the only spot I have. There is a terrible room mode going on there (can hear it playing loud from dac...boom...boom....boom when sticking head in that corner).
    [​IMG]
     
    Khorn likes this.
  16. elvisizer

    elvisizer Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Jose
    I added 10 squares of acoustic foam tiles to my listening room yesterday. for something that doesn't even affect the entire audio spectrum, I was surprised at the amount of impact I heard from adding them.
     
    Claude M likes this.
  17. BSU

    BSU Forum Resident

    Location:
    Indianapolis
    I agree on power cables, there are a bunch of Chinese made power cables on EBAY that have made a big difference in my system. It's a really cheap upgrade that's immediately noticeable.
     
    motorstereo likes this.
  18. bluesky

    bluesky Senior Member

    Location:
    south florida, usa
    Sansui!!
     
    Micke Lindahl likes this.
  19. bluesky

    bluesky Senior Member

    Location:
    south florida, usa
    The biggest sound improvement for me: switching Back to LPs from CDs. :)

    Many CDs 'sound' fine.
     
    Icethorn, bever70, Jim0830 and 2 others like this.
  20. Jim0830

    Jim0830 Forum Resident

    What is the record sweeper you are using and how do you like it? TIA.
     
  21. rjp

    rjp Senior Member

    Location:
    Ohio
    confused by the italic 'sound'.

    you don't think they sound fine?

    you do think they sound fine?

    you are insinuating something i do not understand?
     
    LakeMountain likes this.
  22. Gary

    Gary Nauga Gort! Staff

    Location:
    Toronto
    Often some music sounds just fine. Then, for whatever reason you swap out the speakers or amp or whatever for another brand. Wow-za! Now music reproduction has improved dramatically!

    I have all of the released CDs from one of my favourite Canadian artists, they sounded just great! No complaints at all. Then she released limited edition LP releases of her work. Wow-za! A huge improvement over the CD releases!

    So the CDs sounded fine, not overly harsh or brickwalled. But the music was further revealed to be - glorious :D - when it was released on LP.

    Make sense?
     
  23. rjp

    rjp Senior Member

    Location:
    Ohio
    it does, but i have found that same thing going the other way.....an older, well-loved gently cared for album that you hear on CD and "boom" amazing improvement over what you had been listening to.

    to each their own, that is the one 'for sure' around here, to each their own.
     
  24. George P

    George P Notable Member

    Location:
    NYC
    Toeing out my speakers just another 1/4"
     
    Ted Torres Jr, Alright4now and BSU like this.
  25. shug4476

    shug4476 Nullius In Verba

    Location:
    London
    I've had dozens and dozens of bits of kit over the last few years. The biggest upgrades were both unexpected. One was moving from my Arcam A80 (dedicated stereo amp) to an Arcam AV9 (AV pre-amp). It was such a huge jump in transparency, imaging. I did not think AV could perform that well and I have seriously struggled to significant improve upon the AV9 even with very nice two channel kit.

    The other was the Chord 2Qute DAC. It was one of the few bits of kit I have purchased where the difference it made was obvious the instant it was put into the signal chain.

    Most disappointing has been subwoofers :rolleyes:
     
    LakeMountain likes this.

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