I’m gob smacked. What were you’re aha moments?

Going from tubes to class D. I am never going back. 

Are you saying you doubled or trippled your bass by replacing your OPPO UDP-205 with a  Bryston BCD-3 CD player?  Is this even possible?  If so, could you please explain the electronics behind this?

lmnop-

@millercarbon. You’re a tweaker. That’s so not me. Not my skill set. I’m more a set it and forget guy. But gonna look into your anti-static advice. Static electricity is brutal where I live.

Wasn’t always like this. Was in fact very, extremely, unbelievably skeptical of all of this stuff! Once wrote a letter to the editor telling him to quit wasting space on such useless nonsense. Then I tried a few things. Cheap stuff. Cheap as in zero cost. Elevating speaker cables improves sound? I got wood. Paper cups. Plastic. Try it out. Nothing to lose. Damn, it does make a difference!

Not all tweaks work. An awful lot do change things, but not always in an unambiguously good direction. Lots of cones for example improve some aspects but not others or even make some things worse. Same goes for interconnects, speaker cables, power cords, conditioners, shelves, all of it. Same as amps, phono-stages, CD players. All of it.

Some of these we call components. Others we denigrate as tweaks. The epiphany is when you realize those distinctions are arbitrary. A fuse is as much a component as a CD player. Don't believe me? Try upgrading your fuse with a Blue Quantum fuse. Then try upgrading your CD player by $150. And tell me which made the bigger difference. I already know the answer. A fuse is just as much a component as an amp or a speaker.

That’s just a fact. That many, probably most, haven’t come around to understanding this does not in any way diminish the truth of it.

I sometimes take the easy way out and agree that yes I am a tweaker. Because I tweak. But the deeper more meaningful way of looking at it is that I am a value oriented audiophile. I do whatever gets me the most SQ for the money. Tweaks do that. In spades. To not tweak, its like leaving money on the table. Why would you do that?

Three moments stand out for me. In each one my musical life shifted and things were never the same after...

1985, I want to buy a pink triangle turntable and go listen to it at a posh london snobby dealer. Annoyingly the Linn sounded better, but just before I prised my wallet open the dealer said "you might as well hear this new one we have just got in", put it on behind me (I couldn't see) and Whoa! What a difference. Really exciting, fast, bouncy thrilling music. Turned round to see it was a new fangled thing called a Roksan Xerxes. Bought it. I was a joy to see the old buffer of a dealer bopping along to Human League. 

2011, NYC. I buy a second hand Krell KSA 50 off eBay to replace my perfectly fine Peachtree amplifier. Put it on, it sounded nice, sweet, fresh, I was happy, then a track I know well comes up and Whoa! a wall of bass hits. I never knew the track had a base line. Room rattling stuff from my little bookshelf speakers. 

2018. After endless dead ends I end up with a Roon Rock + a Tidal subscription. Suddenly all my music is findable, with the right art work, I click on Shipbuilding by Elvis Costello, its a fave track of mine. I am happy, then I notice that Roon is telling me that lots of others have recorded this. I click on one (by Brian Case), its completely different. And there are many many others. Suddenly a new world opens. I can't go back. 

1-year ago I was having two issues 1) grounding issues with my turntable and 2) lights dimming to the beat of my SVS SB16-Ultra sub when turned up.  Installing (2) dedicated 20-amp circuits not only solved both issues but also improved overall SQ with lower noise floor.  Bonus was the picture quality on my 4k TV also improved.  Not a sexy purchase by any stretch ... but worth it.