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'Audiophile' Products Random Selection: Would any of these actually work?
in DIY
I did a trawl through various Oz 'hi fi' websites yesterday and came up with:
- CD Mat, $350 (put it on top of your CD to provide 'additional clarity of sound')
- record cleaning machine, $2,000
- ETI Kyro binding posts, $300 pr
- Gravity One LP weight, $350 (removes vibration from the record)
- Speaker Bullets, $1,000 ea (they contain "special wire" and give you a 'super effect internal purifier')
- anti vibration turntable platform $500 (a slice of granite on which you put the turntable)
- cartridge enabler (fits between cartridge and head-shell, 'reduces vibrations', $50
- Linn Limited Edition turntable, without arm, $62,000
About the only thing I couldn't find were bags of 'speaker rocks', which at one time sold for about $200.
Of course there were the special $400 per metre speaker wires, $400 capacitors, carpet isolator bridges, $50 bottles of terminal cleaners etc. But those above really caught my eye.
As far as I can make out, the only one which would be worthwhile, albeit at considerable damage to the wallet, would be the LP cleaner
Geoff
Comments
The granite slab may be beneficial under a turntable depending on setup.
. . . or on top of a speaker cabinet . . .
Get the granite slab from a landscape business for a few $. It's also good for resurfacing heads.
As in guitar amps, or other heads?!
Geoff
I went to my local audiophile meeting, and a guy was showing off isolators that were about 1/2" high, with neoprene and aluminum parts. Everyone was very impressed that they were "only" $800 for a set of four. Meanwhile, the high-end turntable would bounce and skip if you didn't walk very lightly. Sheesh!
Tape heads.
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I had a friend who had a stack of 3 granite blocks under his turntable with neoprene (IIRC) spacers between them. He was running 4 24" woofer mounted IB using his basement. He added steel post under the floor to keep it from moving. The only system I've been around that could make you believe you were at a rail crossing when a train went by. He was into pipe organ music and his ultimate goal was to get his system flat to 8Hz.
Ron
Yeah, but isn't it a hard fact that speaker sound will feedback into the turntable cartridge?
Unless you isolate the turntable in a chamber...
But I like his goals!
>
Maybe the Get Smart 'Cone of Silence' ?
Geoff
He missed it by that much....
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Get Smart, guys . . .
I was thinking cylinder heads.
But cylinder heads offer measureable performance, hmmm...
Audiophoolery is fun. Most audiophiles run less than great speakers and will never accept that they are by far the weakest link in the chain.
Resurfacing the sealing surface of a cylinder head. Done hundreds of mx bikes and quads over the years.
Okay, you were right! I just guessed...
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I think that his isolation scheme was the only way he could play records without feedback.
I liked some of his goals but not all. He wanted to recreate the ambiance of a concert hall and in the early days had tubes in the basement with a speaker on one end and a mic on the other to created his own delay lines. The last time I heard his system he was using the synthetic hall effects of a surround sound receiver. I found neither scheme particularly appealing. He also was a fan of piezo tweeters and had lots of them everywhere. I quit hanging out with him because although he had never heard any of my speakers he knew they just wouldn't be enough and he knew what I needed to do.
Ron
Anyone who LIKES piezo tweeters would not be on my visiting list. They hurt my ears!
Kinda like the guy who has stacks of monkey coffins and raves about how awesome it sounds. No thanks.
I read Piezos used to be better. But I wonder how much of that is objectively true, or if standards just weren't as good then compared to today. I don't know if I've heard one. Probably have in PA, just figured it was a crap compression driver. Probably the ones that sound like a jet engine blasting in your face instead of real sound.
I feel like the biggest problem is implementation. They are almost super tweeters.
Piezos ring badly. Maybe I'll measure one sometime and post the results.
Yeah hard no on Piezo tweeters. Pretty much any $10 dome will outperform the best piezos.
Now that I've installed the speaker bullets (facilitated by selling my car) I can hear everything that was recorded, so I can now hear that the second violin in 'Eleanor Rigby' is very slightly out of tune and the cello player has a cold.
If you find that hard to believe, would you believe I can hear the violins on Eleanor Rigby?
Would you believe I can hear that Paul McCartney is singing?
Geoff
I took out a second mortgage on my house and bought all the enhancements, but I no longer hear Paul McCartney - I only hear Aretha Franklin. Maybe I microdosed too much this morning....
