I'm replacing all my pots with ...

peter,
as i pointed out there are stranger things that people think make their kit sound different. why for example would 2 capacitors that have exactly the same specifications have wildly different costs based purely on the supposition that one sounds better than the other. similarly why does a 15,000 ukp transport bathe the cd in blue light and claim an increase in sound quality. why does painting the edge of your cd's with green pen cause some people to hear the music better. why does sitting your kit on something wobbly make it sound different to sitting it on something that rings when you tap it. why do some claim that puting the earliest photo of you that you can find in the freezer can make your hi-fi sound better? why does one length of 9, 9's copper wire cost thousands more than another? these idiosyncrasies and many more are followed by audiophiles all over the world. they all claim to be enjoying their music more with them than without them. if paying 500 bucks for a wooden knob floats your boat then furry muff. at the end of the day if you post on this forum you're already 8/10ths of the way to accepting this kind of thing as you've probably spent over a grand on your hi-fi which is mad in the eyes of normal people when you can get a 6 speaker sony for half that which must be 3 times better than your old 2 speaker one no?
cheers


julian

 

I agree.

Yes it is an alternative point of view which many people have and which in many cases kills any discussion and creates fights. 'Something so daft' is a very subjective opinion and is not always based on facts. On the other way it will be a fact if you test something and then make your opinion on it.
And I don't think it is silly if someone makes an experiment to build his own opinion as long as he doesn't disturb other people.

 

If we're going to have the real technical debate than how about we turn the issue around and ask the question:

How could we design a knob that had a pronounced microphonic (and/or electromagnetic ?) effect on the sound of an amplifier?

For example, a hollow knob with a hole in it could act as a Helmholtz Resonator and could transmit the ringing at its resonant frequency to the cabinet. This could cause feedback with some of the more microphonic components.

Me, I don't know much about electronics but if something vibrates or oscillates ...

 

Yes but at this level of degradation there will be perceived and expected change. The only way to be sure our observations are coloured would be for the object to be double blind tested. Eeek and we get enough of that nonsense over on Planet Salisbury. I came here for some peace, quiet and sanity.

 

sanity??!?? :elephant:

 

Yes, I know! I should have gone to the Rega forum

 

titian,
the second quote isn;t mine and i'm glad you agree given that you are probably bathing in that cool blue glow....
i'm actually quite shocked by the way that something new can be so badly panned without any logical thought as to the possible mechanisms involved in the claims. someone has taken the established principles of microphonic distortion as held within the audiophile community and come up with a product that adresses this issue in an area that hasn;t been adressed before. the main faults with their enterprise is one of pricing and perhaps putting form before function.
i'm half tempted to try whacking a few great globs of blu-tak onto my volume pot just to see what happens.
cheers

julian

 

ffs theyre just wooden knobs !


dear oh dear..

 

expensive wooden knobs.

I'm not sure we discussing knobs anymore but rather the principle of tweakery

 

Thoroughly agree with your first point there, but not with your second I'm another sceptic I'm afraid, but at the end of the day I have no quarrel with how anyone chooses to spend their time or money. The believer / non-believer arguments have all been aired many times before so I think we should all just be friends :MILD:

 

peter,
so you have your kit all piled on top of itself in a cupboard somewhere with bellwire and those cheapo red and white rca leads from comet. you have a speaker on top of a bookcase and the other behind the sofa. in fact the kit in question is an aiwa midi system with 100 flashing lights and tone controls.
i'm not having a dig but if you have bought any interconnects, speaker wire, specialised hi-fi stands, sorbothane feet, speaker stands, spikes, cones, pulsar points or you have your speakers meticulously positioned and toed in or a rug between them or they are on paving slabs or on screw heads through a carpet. if you've ever basso'd a plug or cleaned a socket with a cotton bud or 'dressed' your cables. if you've ever wondered whether any of these things would change the way your kit sounds then sorry, you are an audio geek like the rest of us and certifiable according to the standards of decent society. even tones has given mana a good work out - it didn;t float his boat but he thought it might and THAT is my point. scepticism is fine but denial is unhealthy
cheers

julian

 

I have a very simple solution to all of your audio problems:

Put the hifi system in a different room from the speakers.

How many people will do this? I'm willing to bet not many, they're too busy admiring their blue lights, gold plated mains plugs, marvelling at the way the bubble falls level in the spirit level, and stroking their expensive bi-wired speaker cables.

Seriously, if you believe that those wooden knobs could make a difference, then just apply my solution, and you'll have saved £300.

 

tom,
yes putting your kit in another room with help massively in this regard but it won;t eliminate every vibration. there are still going to be vibrations reaching your kit from passing traffic, footfalls around the home, korean nuclear testing, etc. so you're still going to potentially see a change in performance if you use a tweaking method that aims to alter the way vibration effects your kit.
cheers


julian

 

Not to mention considerable mechanical vibration from spiked speakers transmitted through floors and walls.

 

Now now, there's no need for facetiousness, thought you said you weren't having a dig

Yes, although I didn't hear any difference between a £20 interconnect and a £40 one, after which I lost interest

No, would you believe

Yes...

...and no.

According to the standards of decent society, yes, guilty as charged. This is a hifi forum though, I think we're justified in making slightly finer distinctions between levels of obsessiveness.

All I'm trying to say is that buying into hifi doesn't mean buying into 'tweakery', and I think the lengthy arguments on this forum and elsewhere are testament to that. Without descending into farcical examples I'm sure you can think of things that you'd consider extremely unlikely to have any effect on the sound of your hifi - well, my threshold of 'extremely unlikely' is just a bit lower than yours, that's all.

So have you ordered a signature volume knob yet then? j/k (note the seamless bringing back on topic )

 

This is the irritating thing about these discussions. I know that vibration input to a pot is audible because I've heard it, and measured it. It therefore follows that changes to the mass of the knob are likely to have an impact, dependant upon the pot construction.

But, because some obvious rip-off merchant sees fit to sell a lump of wood for a stupid amount of money, the two get mixed up.

Yes it's a rip-off.

Yes it's likely to have an audible effect (which may be good, or bad).

Frankly plastic is cheaper and lighter, usually

As for moving the system to a different room, I recently tried to measure the motor noise the LP12 puts into the plinth, but found that I couldn't do it in-situ, as the noise floor from the wall-shelf / house structure was measurably higher than the motor noise everytime a vehicle drove past the house.

Made me think!

Andy.

 

I'd take Somerset over say Surrey (where I actually reside) any day of the week!

Cheers

Jason

 

Interesting; any chance you'd like to expand on that?

 

You should move to Scotland

 

Fine time to bring that up - four pages in . Interesting observation though. What did you use to measure it?

Yes, quite right. The two issues are separate.

So should you put your house on spikes, superballs, inner tubes, Mana or Hutter? :duck: