Sound Quality, How far do yo go..?

I think I could have come up with 9 better tips...…

9. Be sure to wear boxers instead of tight fitting briefs. Feeling constricted negatively affects one's hearing.
8. Give your ears a thorough cleaning....ear wax can hamper your listening experience.
7. Make sure your equipment and components are dust free.....loose particles are an anathema to audiophile gear.
6. Try standing on your head while doing your critical listening.....this approach has never been proven to help, but it's worth a try.
5. Make love with your partner while enjoying your favorite music.....never fails
4. Turn the volume control all the way to 10 for 3 seconds and back down to a normal listening level....this is guaranteed to improve sound quality.
3. Rub your cables aggressively for 12 seconds...the warming caused by the friction helps them perform better.
2. blowing on your cd before inserting it into your cd player is a no brainer.
1. quit worrying about ridiculous tips....just sit back, relax, and enjoy the music.

 

How many of the 9 have you tried?

 

At least 5.....but I'm not at liberty to discuss which ones.

 

I also noticed that the mouth does a great role, if you have the mouth closed and jaw tight it's not like mouth open and jaw wide open.

Best perceived sound is when yawning

 

I recommend #8 from Dr. Funk's post.

 

Most of the tips are true. I easily heard dirty power vs cleaner power during the night in NYC. Not much difference where I live now in the country. CDs can sound better at start up as the CD player accumulates processing errors the longer they play. However, pausing does not accumulate errors. (I have not measured these proposed errors, just read about it). Perhaps it is BS, not sure.
I cannot agree with vibrations on speaker wires. There is no way a mechanical vibration can be converted into an electrical signal without electronics connected to the wires itself and the low impedance of a speaker is an electrical short to very low levels of electronic noise. If you hear a difference it is in your head as you expect a difference. And, do note you DO hear a difference as the brain can be very powerful. But, it is not the spacers.

I read the ear drum is not a perfect linear item and can produce large amounts of distortion at certain frequencies. Your brain removes most distortion.

 

Right... As I explained here, the bits get constipated by the buffering process, thus sound bad when you pause.

 

You crazy ??? Some wax has to stay, like the highlander !

 

I'd guess he knows it all without trying anything.

 

Where did you read this?

It's totally BS.

 

I do not remember.

 

Some of these make perfect sense, and I feel like this is only getting the kind of derision it is because of the source...

Some of them are hard to believe, though. Cable lifters have never made sense to me other than if the function they are really serving is to keep the connections still, which I would think is better solved by using better connectors or securing at the point of connection. That CD pause/stop/whatever thing doesn’t make sense to me, either, but I don’t listen to enough CDs to really care.

 

^^^^^ This is the kind of stuff that makes being an audiophile so embarrassing. So long as even magazines-who-should-know-better propagate this stuff, those of us in to good audio get painted with the same brush as being credulous fanatics who will swallow any pseudo-scientific or whimsical claim any audiophile or audiophile company can dream up.

That's one reason why I think it's a good thing to keep vocalizing a more skeptical/rational view. At least it lets others know "if you aren't swallowing all this, you aren't alone."

 

It's only embarrassing if you care what people think.

Audiophiles - such a poor and unfairly persecuted group! Personally I don't see that in my world, but I also don't discuss audio with people who don't share my interest in it. That's just asking for trouble.

 

"This will be a review of the IsoTronic 3000 Bit Polisher. From the brochure: "Just as with vinyl or CDs, streamed music can benefit from removal of the microaccoustical impurities that collect around the data packets in transit. You wouldn't play a grungy CD any more than you would play a dusty vinyl LP. Don't play with dirty streams!"

As per instructions, I unplug the optical cable from my McIntosh Special Edition M11000 network streamer (US $1M) and remove 1 Bit Polisher from the rectangular container. Apparently IsoTronic has mass produced some type of electrostaticly charged cloth...not quite paper but not quite fabric...but very soft. They are truly an amazing feat of static enhanced fibrous wonder.

Using the gentle swabbing motions described in the manual, I carefully remove the microaccoustical impurities that have built up on the surface of the optical connector. Please note: these are my winter cables which I'll review separately at a later date; for now, know only that they are exclusive, expensive and unequalled. I then reinsert the cable into the network player. Upon playback of my go to audio test "WAGNER: Parsifal Hans Knappertsbusch Conducting", the July/August 1951 recording from the Festspielhaus, Bayreuth, I'm met with a wall of incendiary beauty, transported to a time of Gods and Heroes. The results are, in a word, stunning.

Quietly, as the health giving effects of Wagner bathe my etheric countenance in indescribable beauty, I pour myself a wee dram of Dalmore 25, its tawny port finish tickles my palette as I sink into my chair. Tomorrow I think, yes, tomorrow, I shall polish the other end of the cable, to see what auditory delights await. But for now, sweet, blissful, nirvana has been had for a mere $40 dollars a box. Cheap really. " - "Just Add Scotch", January 2020.

 

I tried some cable elevators. They didn't fit with my system. I just have too many sources that require cable and very little room behind the equipment.
I didn't notice much if any difference.

 

lately? as far as my wallet takes me.; )

 

Well, probably not to the Beats and Bose crowd.

 

See post 32. Seriously, I have paused my cd players many times over the years, and I have never thought this sounds worse than what I was just hearing.

 

Of course you didn't. And you have the quality kind of gear the is way beyond what most have in their systems.

If anyone could realize a discernible audible benefit of audio risers, it would be someone such as you.

When people such as this list author suggests things like audio risers and other audio B.S. like in his list, he has zero credibility to me.

 

At tmsorosk’s suggestion I will now start doing drugs alone, wish me luck!

 

Except that every CD player and most other gear that I have ever seen, already come equipped with vibration absorbing feet.

CD's are also successfully used in moving cars, which are subject to a lot more vibration than a CD player that sits on a shelf in an otherwise motionless environment.

I have large speakers and powerful amplifiers, including a 1,600-Watt commercial 15" horn loaded subwoofer that can play program material at constant SPL's of 133 dB. and yet, I have never experienced any vibration issues with my Oppo (or other) CD players.

CD players don't read the disk with the laser and directly play that information, they write that information to memory and then buffer that information before it is sent to the system.

 

Not good feet with most gear, plastic junk that doesn't absorb vibration.

Successfully? Is the sound quality so good?

It's mostly internal mechanical vibration.

The focus of the laser and the internal crystal clock can be affected resulting in jitter.

Why do you think some CD players are better built than others, heavier and sturdier? Are you one of those id iots who thinks every CD player sounds the same?

 

Vibration control for the turntable for sure, and then maybe phono stage and preamp. Not as sure about CD players. But while they all have feet, that is true, the feet vary greatly. They can't all have the exact same level of effectiveness.

I think pt 5 is reasonable. Try it out with a cheap bicycle inner tube to see if you perceive a difference. If so then pursue it. What's the big deal?

I am in the process of figuring out how I want to isolate my turntable. After that my phono stage. I am less likely to it with my CD player as it's very well made and the manufacturer has already gone to great lengths to deal with vibrations. But depending on what player a person has, who knows? Doesn't cost much to experiment and some people are curious to try.

 

In the digital domain you are more likely to have "drop outs" than an actual change in sound quality.