Everything Matters: Down the Rabbit Hole with Tweaks

As he placed the trade paperback sized piece of metallic graphite on top of the amplifier, and stepped back ... the bass improved, and the clarity took a jump up.  He then muttered something like a curse word and removed it and stepped back.  Yep.  A bit muddy.  Back it went.  Clarity and defined bass.  He sighed and returned to his listening chair looking somewhat defeated, but not daring to remove the thin brick from the top of the amp.  The subtle improvement proved far too significant to ignore.

Debunkers?

Welcome to my world.

Cognitive dissonance.  Insanity.  It goes by many names, but for a technically minded audiophile, there is a point once where it dawns on you that everything matters, and some things that seem to have an effect on the quality of sound simply makes no sense.  I think a lot of audiophiles can develop coping mechanisms when faced with this.  The simplest thing is to deny the evidence of your senses.  Which is likely cheapest and best path for this kind of thing, you can read a host of literature to reenforce this stance when it becomes difficult, and, of course, there are loads of studies carefully carried out saying everything except speakers do not make a lick of difference.  If you can gain satisfaction from reading something, and if the power of suggestion is as powerful as those studies claim, clearly you can suggest it all away.  My powers of mental suggestion and faith are not so powerful as that, when the evidence of your senses says something different than a ream of papers, I cannot help thinking that the studies could simply be wrong.  Or something in them is missing something, or some other factor.  Doubt and trust in onesself is the key to a good life, but it doesn't make it an easy one.

As you probably sense I am about to say a whole bunch of things make a difference, that the skeptics deny, and have lost my marbles you are correct.  About the skeptics.  If you feel I have actually lost my marbles, it's my problem, and nobody elses' ... unless you wish to engage in a lengthy debate trotting out pages and pages of calculations and studies, in which case, I'd gently suggest that you find a hobby other than debunking, and go and listen to some music, and not bother with the rest of the article.  And if you feel you have achieved sonic nirvana, it is truly a special gift only a few achieve - so go forth, and thank your lucky stars you have it, and go on to enjoy your music.  Because I will have nothing for you.

Ok, for the scoffers, and the deeply satisfied, you have had a paragraph to bail out, so I assume at this point the ones that are left will approach an article about something like this with an open mind and may find it useful.  Because after writing about how cables make a difference, we're about to go one deeper and talk about all manner of tweaks and our experience with them.

The Kit of "Pure Evil"

Our friend and one of our favorite salesguys from Forefront Audio had assembled a kit of tweaks - various EMI and vibration control devices, and cable elevators - and nonchalantly dropped it off for us "to try and see how well some of the stuff worked."  

We got a case of tweaks to try to see if they would make a difference.  Included was a set of cable elevators, a couple of Golden Sound "Magic Rings", 5 sets of cones (some metal, some ceramic, and some carbon fiber/plastic), two Shakti stones, and four on-cable Shakti stones.  My wife, upon seeing it, declared it a "kit of pure evil" given how the most innocuous thing can seem to make a large difference in making sound more realistic.  Since the items in the box mostly seemed to mean business.  Though she did experess some skepticism on the on-cable Shakti devices.

We will leave you as we're staring at the kit, and our stereo, wondering what to do next ...