[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Any one know anything about the little isolator blocks you put under the feet of cdp?

[russj]

Isolation makes no difference to the sound in the real world (turntables
excluded for obvious reasons).  It might do in a dedicated listening
room or in a lab, but in the real world its just not worth it.  The
differences if any are so minute that they are not worth striving for. 
I've been there with my audiophile hifi which i've slimmed down to just
amps speakers and a squeezebox.  All the expensive cables, CD transport
and DAC, milimetere perfect positioned speakers and accoustic damping
have bit the dust.  Some of the things we audiophiles do to try and
improve the sound quality is crazy, and when you find yourself testing
music between different cables, or blue-tac under the speakers vs £150
titanium cones, desperately trying to detect a difference, well it
smacks of psychological instabillity to me.  I decided to listen to the
music intead of being obsessed by sound quality. When it comes down to
it, audio equipment doesnt need tuning, its great out of the box.  Just
find a setup you like the sound of and get on with enjoying your music.


-- 
russj

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[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Where is the incredible sound?

[russj]

An interesting mixture of comments.

I have ditched my exotic hi-fi, a mix of pre/power amplification two
box cd setup, expensive cables and ridiculously expensive speakers. Ok
it sounded outstanding but for a £3k outlay it ought to have.  I was
won over by accessability of digital and now all that graces my hifi
stand is a squeezebox plugged directly into my power amps (all i kept
from the old system along with the speakers).  It basically sounds the
same as my old system - and thats down to the speakers, and to a much
lesser extent the amplifiers.  Flac does sound better than ogg, but to
a minute degree, and yes it is better than mp3, but only if you sit
down and subject yourself to listening tests, which i dont really want
to do.  If all you are thinking while listening is it could sound
better then the listening experience is being marred in my
opinion. 

After finding myself obsessed by cables, plugs, power supplies, i
decided it was time to abandon the quest for the elixir of sound
quality (which essentially can never be obtained - not least with
digital and compressed music) and listen to the music instead.  

I set a limit on bitrates to no lower that 192kbps (160 with ogg) and
the sound equals the original as far as my ears are willing to
scrutinise.  Its certainly no less of an experience that listening to
my old £3k worth of hifi.

Basically, plug your squeezebox into the simplest amp and speaker setup
you can get.  You dont need equalizers or anything else that alters the
source music - if you do, somthing is very wrong with the music.  Any
modest power amp (just use the SB's in built volume control) and
quality bookshelf speakers will give you a superb listening experience
which you can enjoy without becoming obsessed by frequency ranges,
dynamics, resonance and all the other senseless things that us
audiophiles, me included, all to easily take as the be all and end all
of the audiophile listening experience.


-- 
russj

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