Oh, now these tweak products are interesting.

HK Panda

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Johnny Vinyl

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I loved the Knutballs! ROFLMAO!
 

JackD201

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Love the Musicone. For the price however, you should get the entire moonshine kit and the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard! LOL!
 

carolkoh

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Rofl!

if you have found these products entertaining, please consider a voluntary donation to the nathan marciniak starving artist fund by clicking this button.


Heck, it's better than blowing your money on useless hi-fi placebos, and it goes to a good cause.
 

Odyno

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Dec 27, 2011
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Heck, it's better than blowing your money on useless hi-fi placebos, and it goes to a good cause.
Did Nathan Marciniak made a blind test both before making such a statement? ;-)
 

GaryProtein

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Heck, it's better than blowing your money on useless hi-fi placebos, and it goes to a good cause.
Did Nathan Marciniak made a blind test both before making such a statement? ;-)

I completely agree.

Listen with your ears, not your eyes.

Put your money where you actually hear an improvement, not where you think you hear a difference.
 

cjfrbw

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I don't know, there seems to be a huge audiophile market for placebos, maybe he should charge more.
 

Odyno

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A manufacturer of anti vibration devise once told me: As long as manufacturer will keep on having their product on cheap box’s I will continue to make a living on vibration attenuation devise.
Those things have a place in a system after all.
 
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HK Panda

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Nov 28, 2012
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HK
I recently visited the home of a well known audio component manufacturer. He invited me to over hear one of his components that I had a home trial of. I was initially very excited to hear an audio system with some pretty high-end gear. I found it rather odd that he managed to assemble components that (should) of sounded much better than it did. He had no acoustical treatments, no power conditioning, and no tweaks to any of his gear. When we discussed his component stand and anti-vibration techniques, he dismissed the need for any of that. His view was if a manufacturer designed a component, it should be used the way it was designed, with no changes.

I wrote him later and explained to him my point-of-view on system tweaks, and some suggested things to try for his system. I doubt he will try or do any of what I suggested. To each his own.




A manufacturer of anti vibration devise once told me: As long as manufacturer will keep on having their product on cheap bow’s I will continue to make a living on vibration attenuation devise.
Those things have a place in a system after all.
 

cjfrbw

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Many of my components sit on a $18 pine rack I bought from Home Depot in the nineties. Others sit on folding shelves I got from Cost Plus for 20 bucks.

I do use rollerballs, aurios footers, wine corks and other vibe devices under vulnerable tube components.

I can easily afford the upscale furniture, but frankly, I just can't see it. If I thought I heard a difference there, I would count myself cuckoo.

I am thinking about getting an additional vibraplane device to put under my turntable, but I would want to try it out first before committing, SME 30 already has a rather robust vibration attenuation and re-assignment system.
 

GaryProtein

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One could probably mount a solid state power amp on top of a subwoofer and not notice a difference if you were doing a blind test.

I'm not buying into most of these tweaks.
 

HK Panda

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Nov 28, 2012
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Most of my tweaks were trial and error. Mostly anti-vibration, coupling, de-coupling, isolation, damping, AC noise filtering. The net result is music that's much more musical and enjoyable for me. I do know, had I not experimented and tried out new things, my system would not be where it is today.


Many of my components sit on a $18 pine rack I bought from Home Depot in the nineties. Others sit on folding shelves I got from Cost Plus for 20 bucks.

I do use rollerballs, aurios footers, wine corks and other vibe devices under vulnerable tube components.

I can easily afford the upscale furniture, but frankly, I just can't see it. If I thought I heard a difference there, I would count myself cuckoo.

I am thinking about getting an additional vibraplane device to put under my turntable, but I would want to try it out first before committing, SME 30 already has a rather robust vibration attenuation and re-assignment system.
 

HK Panda

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Nov 28, 2012
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Probably, or probably not. Impossible to know without trying. I'm not advocating that everyone goes out and invests in tweaks. Many are system dependent and some are pure snake oil. My before comment about the audio manufactures system, which probably was 10-15x more expensive than my own system, was he apparently spared no expense on many of his components, but didn't address room acoustics, which are hardly snake oil, he had none. Clean AC, nope. Everything running into a Radio Shack power strip. Much of his equipment was tube based, and it's my own belief that trying some isolation, de-coupling, and anti-resonence tweaks would be sonically beneficial. I came away with feeling his setup was being held back from being truly awesome. That's my own belief, of course, and in the end, it's his system and as long as he is happy with it, that's all that matters.

One could probably mount a solid state power amp on top of a subwoofer and not notice a difference if you were doing a blind test.

I'm not buying into most of these tweaks.
 

JackD201

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One could probably mount a solid state power amp on top of a subwoofer and not notice a difference if you were doing a blind test.

I'm not buying into most of these tweaks.

I've come to consider equipment supports as components and not just tweaks or furniture. That kind of thing happens when you get the opportunity to swap out entire sets of supports in stages or in one go. Depends on the amps IME. My 3 and 4 series MLs could be put on anything and I couldn't tell the difference.
 

A.wayne

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Jan 14, 2011
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Ohh no , not stands ! easy guys , I'm still power cord rolling after experiencing the difference they make , don't even want to think about stands ...:)
 

HK Panda

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Nov 28, 2012
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IMHO. In terms of mechanical vibration, a particular component (might) be sensitive to external vibrational energy, or it's own internal vibrational energy such as from transformers. It's either it's sensitive to that to some degree, or it's not. If sensitive to internal vibration, then damping and coupling to a vibrational energy sink can help. If sensitive to external vibrational energy, then decoupling can help. I believe you can't make a blanket statement about all components. The typical rubber feet that are found on most components do almost nothing to help with coupling or decoupling a component. These are, of course, my opinions and based solely on my own experimentation with above mentioned methods.





I've come to consider equipment supports as components and not just tweaks or furniture. That kind of thing happens when you get the opportunity to swap out entire sets of supports in stages or in one go. Depends on the amps IME. My 3 and 4 series MLs could be put on anything and I couldn't tell the difference.
 

JackD201

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
12,308
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Manila, Philippines
IMHO. In terms of mechanical vibration, a particular component (might) be sensitive to external vibrational energy, or it's own internal vibrational energy such as from transformers. It's either it's sensitive to that to some degree, or it's not. If sensitive to internal vibration, then damping and coupling to a vibrational energy sink can help. If sensitive to external vibrational energy, then decoupling can help. I believe you can't make a blanket statement about all components. The typical rubber feet that are found on most components do almost nothing to help with coupling or decoupling a component. These are, of course, my opinions and based solely on my own experimentation with above mentioned methods.

You won't see any blanket statements from me. I just gave examples of equipment that didn't need any.
 

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