Though forward progress is always the direction we’d like to move in, sometimes it pays to take a step or two back.
One good example might be removing all the acoustic room treatment and system tweaks before you make a major overhaul. What I have found over the years is that most of the acoustic work I have performed has been specific to a particular set of equipment and setup.
Change either the equipment and/or the setup and now you need to reevaluate all those decisions.
In my experience, time spent stepping back and reevaluating is often less time lost than futzing with what used to work and now needs adjustment.
Start with a clean slate and you’ll make quicker progress than modifying what you had.
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Measurements help so much for setup (except for some characteristics like soundstage)
& for that you definitely need your ears 😉
I absolutely agree with you Paul!
Personally, after 3 years of ‘re-futzing around’ with new home-audio
gear, I’m just happy to be in that place again where I can forget
about the hardware & just enjoy listening to the software 😀
Can’t beat getting back to basics when a change is made…
Redefining a tweak vs an upgrade, now there’s the art.
We can sweep a room till our tinnitus is deafening… Wear ourselves out shifting hardware (well the minions actually, hahaha!) …. All to realise that it doesn’t sound the best. We can get close, but the finishing tweaks made using the things we listen with are the things which will bring us the final sonic pleasure… Usually.
The journey is real.
Ooh yes, and if this change is made in the leaving room, changing the sofa for example, you may need to make changes in the treatment as well :-).
Something that makes total sense, both from personal experience and the experience of others.
At the same time it can be hard to undo everything that may have been done over the course of time. The key words being Major & overhaul.
Think of it like starting anew from scratch. Just like when the home audio ‘bug’ afflicted you for life.
Major Overhaul meet General Panic.
Nice to meet you sir. One of us has to surrender…. And it won’t be me
Or flight or fight….
In lieu of that… complacent
If each of you can stand your ground, there will be no problem, given you are on different continents. 😎
Hey longplayer
😀
Holding ‘the ground’ is easy for both of us. It’s more fun to fight over the proper title. 😉
Yes, and fortunately, neither of you are nuclear powers. 😎
Lp,
I’m working on it 😉
Upgrade your rig and buy more LPs first.
Oh, wait, you’re a CD guy!
Well, upgrade your rig twice, then. 😎
I will if you put AU$20k into my bank account 😀
If you need $20k to upgrade your audio rig, you’re nowhere near able to afford a centrifuge to make high-grade Plutonium. I’m not so worried now. 😎
An audio buddy who was a serious music listener and occasional magazine reviewer had extensive room treatments, all recommended by one of the acoustic consultant firms. His number of devices had increased over a year or so. Even to the extent of having multiple angled panels hung from the ceiling.
Then one day he ask for assistance in removing several of the treatment devices, so another friend and I helped with that task. After removing a half-dozen or so traps the room regained significant life and ambience. Some treatments remained in place so I’m not suggesting they were a bad thing. But treatments can be overdone so careful application is the key.
There’s also the axiom of…
You don’t know where the peak or maximum is until you go past it. The trick is coming back to that peak….
Too much acoustic treatment and you end up with a dead sounding room. Not good!
I agree, Paul!
I think a corollary of this view is to set-up a new system without tweaks: no fancy cables, no power conditioners, no grounding boxes, no acoustic treatment, etc., to start with. I believe in first understanding the system and the room, and understanding the starting nature of the sound, focusing on speaker placement in the room, before fiddling around with anything and making “improvements.”
Is Futzing a special type of Fart?
Could be… 😀
But doesn’t usually require a change of underwear…
No, that’s shutzing.
Boy some Posts just go south fast…
Oh! But as long as we’re headed south… Kinda like the sign I saw in ‘the stall’ in Germany…
No Spritzen just Sitzen…
That’s good! 🙂
Mike,
This version found in the Men’s Room of a Cafe,
“We aim to please, you aim too, please.”
No, You have your F’s confused.
It’s usually something that an ‘old’ fart does Tim 😀
Do any of you ever just enjoy music. It seems it’s mostly about buying, measuring, tweaking, repositioning and buying rainbow colored fuses.
Music is just a necessary evil to obtaining the perfect reproduced sound.
And if you’re buying that, I’ll sell you a famous bridge really cheap 😉
American bridges are falling down, falling down, falling down…
(sung to the tune of ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’) 😉
But the original? London Bridge (1830’s) is still standing. (In Arizona USA)
If I remember right it is missing a span….
Of course we do, this is just the place we do not talk about it. 😉
Mmmmm…bee’s wax…
Ah yes, the audio etch-a-sketch method….