Do you know of cheap tweaks that can sway an honest objectivist?

[caesar]

Ayre Irrational but Efficacious CD for $20. No one seems to know why it works, but boy, does it work?

Do you guys know of any other high value / dollar tweaks?

 

[NorthStar]

Cleaning all your jacks, your speaker wire terminals, your interconnect's ends, your banana plugs (or spade lugs), your AC power cords, your inside wall electric receptacles, your junction breaker box, and all that Jazz ... :b

 

[MylesBAstor]

Cleaning all your jacks, your speaker wire terminals, your interconnect's ends, your banana plugs (or spade lugs), your AC power cords, your inside wall electric receptacles, your junction breaker box, and all that Jazz ... :b

+1

 

[MylesBAstor]

Ayre Irrational but Efficacious CD for $20. No one seems to know why it works, but boy, does it work?

Do you guys know of any other high value / dollar tweaks?

Replacing your worn AC receptacles. Drops the system's noise floor and improves dynamics and resolution.

Making sure of the correct AC line polarity for your AC plugs.

Replacing the throwaway AC cord on most digital gear. For whatever the reason, AC cords make the most difference on digital gear. Even a correctly chosen, modestly priced cord provides a significant improvement.

Though not necessarily the cheapest ($360/4 panels to treat a room), the Cathedral sound panels really help tame room acoustics. Be careful though: a few inches can make a sizable difference in their performance. http://www.ultrasystem.com/usfeaturedPanelsdescript.html

Don't put the turntable on top of the speaker.

 

[NorthStar]

...Or the subwoofer.

 

[NorthStar]

Cleaning all your jacks, your speaker wire terminals, your interconnect's ends, your banana plugs (or spade lugs), your AC power cords, your inside wall electric receptacles, your junction breaker box, and all that Jazz ... :b

Oh, and regulalarly. Say every six months or so (at least every year).

 

[rockitman]

trreating the room is the most important thing you can do. Too bad it isn't cheap.

 

[treitz3]

Adding weight to stands and placing even more weight on top of speakers, the coupling or decoupling of speakers, isolation of gear and the cheapest of all? Plants to diffuse. Along with what has already been mentioned.

Perhaps the cheapest of all? Moving your rig to a different wall or room within the house.

 

[MylesBAstor]

trreating the room is the most important thing you can do. Too bad it isn't cheap.

$360 for the Cathedral Sound panels

 

[rockitman]

$360 for the Cathedral Sound panels

what frequency range are they tuned for ? I suppose that is a good inexpensive way to go but I'm not sure you will come close to a flat frequency response room with them. Something like real traps where they are frequency tuned for bass, first reflection mid/hi and all frequency traps behind the listener makes for an optimal sounding room. They are much more expensive, but you get what you pay for. I spent close to $5k to properly treat a 16 x 16 space.

 

[MylesBAstor]

what frequency range are they tuned for ? I suppose that is a good inexpensive way to go but I'm not sure you will come close to a flat frequency response room with them. Something like real traps where they are frequency tuned for bass, first reflection mid/hi and all frequency traps behind the listener makes for an optimal sounding room. They are much more expensive, but you get what you pay for. I spent close to $5k to properly treat a 16 x 16 space.

The link is above

While they may not be ultimate, for under $400 they do they job and bring you a large part of the way to the final destination. Rich was over one day and couldn't believe how much of a difference they made in the sound of the room!

 

[fas42]

Where does one start? There are so many things that can be done, all which will improve the sound, but will often just make the more "obnoxious" recordings sound worst if just done in isolation. The greatest tweak of all is to do everything in one hit, that you know influences the sound in the direction of revealing more detail in the recording, and see where that gets you.

Dump all tweaks that make "difficult" recordings "nicer" to listen to because you lose a bit of everything; you're going the wrong way there ...

Frank

 

[DonH50]

Speaker positioning. An hour or three can do wonders for many systems.

 

[NorthStar]

Drink less. ...Not only it's cheap, but you save money too; for buying more good music. :b

...And of course, you hear with more clarity and better concentration.

 

[Syntax]

Drink less. ...Not only it's cheap, but you save money too; for buying more good music. :b

...And of course, you hear with more clarity and better concentration.

True. But drinking Alcohol makes the most components sound better. PRaT is the key word.
Much better. And you can hear details which were not there before.
I think, downing a bottle of wine is in general the most popular tweak.

 

[NorthStar]

And drinking alcohol makes for more 'lively' discussions as well. :b

 

[garylkoh]

Speaker positioning. An hour or three can do wonders for many systems.

+1 - definitely the best value for money tweak there is out there.

Another is the positioning and support for the turntable - a $20 Ikea butcher's block, a few hockey pucks and/or felt pads.

 

[andromedaaudio]

+ 1 more , i would add also cleaning switches inside with contactspray , do leave the stuff of the grid for considerable time

+1

 

[Syntax]

Speaker positioning. An hour or three can do wonders for many systems.

Go for this one.
There are some voiced tracks, put your Speakers on Rollers and when your adjustments are done, they ARE done ("I am 5 feet from the microphone...I am moving to the rear----to the middle---I am walking left..."

http://www.amazon.com/XLO-Reference-Test-Burn-In/dp/B0000015AL

 

[fas42]

Remarkably simple: once gear is fully warmed up, conditioned, and you feel the sound could be a touch, or more, better, switch off everything, especially all digital gear. Leave for 30 secs, or however long to let all the smoothing caps discharge to a near zero level. Then switch on again, immediately start replay, and pay very close attention to how the quality changes, or doesn't change, over the first 5 or 10 minutes or so.

Could possibly tell you something ...

EDIT: I'm gung-ho about power supplies. My last self-designed effort had very large reserves of effective charge; I could pull the plug on the amp during playback at normal volume levels and still get clean sound for another minute to 2 minutes, depending on the source material, until the voltage dropped too far.

Frank