Astonishing CD tweak? Zanash do try this!

I was of course describing the extremes of tweakery vs non-tweakery; many will be happy to try 'sensible' tweaks like putting cones under equipment, or bi-wiring speakers, but will draw the line at the weirder stuff like shaving bits off CDs or smearing hand-cream over them.

 

..except that there is a statement that one side is ''has a desire to clear the dilusions of the other''... and not stating the opposite as an equal fact, that ''the believers try to convince others of the one true way to tweakydom''

or whatever.

It's easy to see what side of the fence people sit on depending on the answer that they give.... like... ''I agree, apart from one side being rude'' = I'm not part of them, I'm on the other side of the fence.

 

Certainly my circumstances precisely.

I ahve to make the best of what I've got , using limited resouces.

 

Of course. I was going to add something to that effect, but couldn't be arsed. The problem is dogmatism, the solution is agnosticism.

 

The problem is audiophilia, the solution is listening to The Stooges.

That should cure everyone of the desire to tweak.

The great secret of good home audio is that it is easy to achieve really good sound and needn't cost very much. The problem is, once achieved, many people get bored with what they have and are prepared to do all sorts of things to make it sound a bit different. But the answer to boredom is not to play that Pink Floyd or Dire Straits record yet again and see if lathing the edge off it has improved the treble, but to buy some new records that you haven't heard before and listen to them instead.

-- Ian

 

Let's face it, the Stooges are the solution to almost everything.

 

I maybe wrong.....

Are you saying I should be buying a new xyz cdp/amp whatever instead of expoerimenting with vibration reduction to get improvements??

If so, unfortunately (with a telephone bill to pay/ new tyres needed on my van) ........it can't be done!

 

Tony can tell me if I'm wrong but I don't think its what he's saying. I think he's saying they should market their products at potentially new customers by telling them to buy XYZ because it'll make their music collection sound great, rather than at HiFi nerds by telling them you should buy XYZ because we've used silver plated wires in the output transformers.

Edit and possibly also make XYZs which appeal to normal people rather than obsessives.

 

ok....

and yet thre is probably room for both approaches...??

 

not sure you need to be obsessive to know some materials are going to work better than others in the constrution of equipment.....?

eg..people buy diesels because they are more economical

perhtps a poor analogy....

 

and yet thre is probably room for both approaches...??


Not if the loonies who care what the internal wiring is constitute a mere 1% of the target customer base.

 

No, not at all. The point I was trying to make was covered better earlier by Julian I think, i.e. that the age of audio buyers is raising. Every time I go to a hi-fi show it seems that the average age of the geeks walking aimlessly around the corridors of the sweaty claustrophobic hotel is exactly one year older than the year before. The industry is failing to get new punters in at grass roots level.

Compare this to the music market – 7” single sales are up over the past few years. There is an incredibly buoyant indie scene powered by countless wonderful new bands pressing their own limited edition product and advertising on MySpace etc. One would think this would boost sales in hi-fi dealers… except said dealers don’t tend to stock affordable record decks any more and are more interested in shifting 800 quid interconnects to the terminally gullible middle-aged. Enthusing said student with their rucksack full of exceptionally cool 7”s into ‘proper hi-fi’ does not seem to be a priority at all so they loose this young punter forever to the local pro-music shop who happily sells them a 1210, a mixer and a pair of cheap powered monitors.

The answer is for manufacturers and dealers to recognise what is happening within the music scene and pitch their products and stock accordingly - the growth areas are downloads and 7" singles. If they do not do this the whole industry will die, and deservedly so IMHO. Audio equipment needs to follow the music.

Tony.

 

Right.

I can believe what you are saying.

Stuff changes (increasingly so) and sometimes very regrettably.

By the sounds of it new technology is not doing us any favours at all.....but it won't go away!

Don't know.

 

Absolutely. When the ugly desire to tweak reappear yet again and you wish to be cured you should go the Classical session and pick one or two discs that people there talk about with names like Beethoven, Bach or even Shostokovich.

My friends once put it nicely.

If these music are boring to you don't listen to it once. Listen to it twice and then once more. Now you will be absolutely bored stiff but you must goes against your instinct and hit the replay button again. And again. Even let it runs as back ground music and then stangely after 20 times you'll notice something strange. Something magical is happen. You might just begin to understand.

After further 10 times suddenly you'll notice all your hair on the back of your neck and arms stand up. You start to talk in strange tongues and all your former audiophiles friends will run away from you. Now you know your old self have trully died and you are reborn. And then worst of all you begin to understand why Still Tones only talk of Bach this and Bach that and appear totally deaf to all things audiophools.

 

loonies or technically informed?

are we sure it IS 1% of target customer base?

 

why the negativity??

 

That bad, eh? Gosh. But be fair, Wolfgang, you must have heard other names such as Monteverdi, Handel, Beethoven... get an occasional mention from me (well, OK, just an occasional mention...).

But you make a good point; when you get Bach (and here substitute the name of your own particular musical fixation for ol' J.S.), tweakiness becomes a mammoth irrelevance. I think Ian feels the same way about his jazz collection - with a good music system and a great music collection, what more is necessary? Sit down and enjoy it. Ignore the fact that it could be better and that you'd like to hear what sort of cymbal the drummer is bashing - in that direction lies only the madness of audiophoolia. I gave that away a long time ago and I've never been so contented musically.

 

:gatling::chop::spank::chair::beat::laser:

 

Which is pretty much what I meant but more eloquently put .

I sell a lot of budget decks and a lot of digitisers. Very few of them to people who are HiFi buffs, mostly to people who have records they want to play. A lot of them to youngsters. One thing I can tell you, their awareness of the product has very little to do with the marketing efforts of the manufacturers, who still put their efforts into sexist ads in the likes of HFW, the same old stuff, to the same old people, in the same old places. Tell UK distributors that vinyl is big amongst the young and they'll come back with "oh but that's just DJ stuff, we don't do that". 10 years out of date and wrong. I have also heard of dealers sniffing at anything iPod related with a "oh but its not real HiFi is it".

 

Both are perfectly valid formats IMHO. If one was to compare either a 1210 or an iPod with a typical 70s or 80s entry level turntable or cassette deck either would be in an entirely different league. They may not be the best sources available, but they are far from being bad - I certainly grew up with far worse. As such the whole argument simply does not fly. The truth is that the industry is lazy, complacent and out of touch. It desperately needs a kick up the arse.

Tony.

PS great to hear you are bucking the trend and selling lots of budget decks. Perhaps websites such as yours are far less alienating to new punters than the typical high-street hi-fi shop.