7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system

[What Hi-Fi?]

Even the best hi-fi systems need care in set-up to shine. Here are some overlooked factors that can make all the difference to system performance...

7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system : Read more

 

[giggsy1977]

Even the best hi-fi systems need care in set-up to shine. Here are some overlooked factors that can make all the difference to system performance...

7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system :

Some good advice on rooms and speaker placement. Less so about hifi racks and speaker cables perhaps (IMO)!

 

[tones]

Agreed with previous commentator - IMHO the cables bit is complete nonsense. Just avoid actual bell wire, but any decent wire will do, so forget all these exotic materials/oxygen-free copper things. Normal electrical copper is 99.9% pure Cu, so, if you want to use normal lighting flex and save the money for better equipment, go for it. Treat yourself to 25m of this:

Orange 2 core Speaker cable 2.5mm² x 25m | DIY at B&Q

This 25m orange speaker cable is ideal for audio installations requiring a flexible 30V cable. With 2 cores and 47 wire strands, this stranded copper cable has a cross-section area of 2.5mm². The PVC outer sheath and standard sheath properties make this an excellent choice for low voltage...

www.diy.com

and save a bundle.

I once asked John Borwick (audio editor of Gramophone back in the day) about wire. He replied, memorably, that, in his experience "one good wire is as good as any other, but I would never discourage a person who wants to give his super system a birthday present, if paying over the odds makes him feel better."

Ditto exotic stands - any decent solid support will do. I've been mucking around with hi-fi for over 50 years, have tried all of these things and have come back to a simple system .

 

[giggsy1977]

When designing components, what cables do manufacturers use? They will design a component to sound a particular way I assume (it's own signature if you like). So whatever cable they use for testing for example would need to be completely neutral. All this about timing being improved in cable reviews (how that happens I don't know!), should a difference be heard, what is the baseline it is tested against to determine whether the cable is doing a good job of replicating the signal and sound in it's truest form?

 

[tones]

Speaking of manufacturers, John Dunlavy, CEO of Duntech speakers, used to do a demonstration of cables to customers for his speakers. He'd have his technicians hold up the cables prior to connections, and the customers would hear night-and-day differences when the exotic hi-fi cables were held up. There was only one catch - no cables were changed...

In another manufacturer demonstration, by Quad, people noticed the thick, orange cable used. It turned out that they didn't have the necessary wire, so they went up the road to a hardware store and bought a length of the cable used to power electric lawnmowers!

 

[giggsy1977]

What hifi did do some blind tests years ago now with blu-ray players and people saw a difference. Not sure I would have but I wasn't there! I used to subscribe to the mag but when I started reading about hdmi cables making a difference and the like I lost respect for the publication as in my experience I wasn't getting the same outcomes and the science I read didn't back up the findings either. I still look at TV reviews but that's about it. I'd like to see more home cinema stuff (subwoofers for example) but rely on other publications and sites for those.

 

[tones]

Michael Fremer of Stereophile had a long and acrimonious (on Fremer's side) with myth debunker James Randi on the subject of blind tests, which are, after all, the scientific standard method of evaluation. Fremer held that a blind test put the poor dears under pressure, and they therefore could not make a valid judgement! Fremer never did, by the way, take Randi's one million dollar offer to show that there was a cable difference. Unlike Ivor Tiefenbrunn of Linn, who was sufficiently honest to take a test with analogue and digital sources - and admit that he was wrong.

As I wrote at the time:

Try blind tests

Try blind tests

See how they run

See how they run

If they don’t give the results your wife

Should hear (tho’ she’s deaf), say the stress, which is rife

Negates the results, cling to that for dear life

Deny blind tests

 

[Horowitz]

Even the best hi-fi systems need care in set-up to shine. Here are some overlooked factors that can make all the difference to system performance...

7 crucial mistakes to avoid when setting up your hi-fi system : Read more

One critical factor so far not mentioned is maintaining the condition of your own ears!! Earwax removal often dramatically enhances mid-range, treble and stereo imaging, especially if you haven't had it done for some years. I have very narrow ear canals and tend to get them syringed at least annually; the perceived improvement in listening pleasure is invariably spectacular!

 

[giggsy1977]

Down to the individual that! Line has to be drawn somewhere as to what factors are possible to control and what aren't in terms of reviewing! How anyone can tell the difference between similar spec cables or a between a wooden and glass hifi rack is beyond my capacity I think!

 

[tones]

One critical factor so far not mentioned is maintaining the condition of your own ears!! Earwax removal often dramatically enhances mid-range, treble and stereo imaging, especially if you haven't had it done for some years. I have very narrow ear canals and tend to get them syringed at least annually; the perceived improvement in listening pleasure is invariably spectacular!

The other hearing factor is, of course, age. Your hearing is at its peak in your early 20s, but starts to deteriorate after that, with an increasing inability to hear high frequencies. As I approach my 76th birthday, hearing tests have confirmed that my hearing is excellent - for my age. But it is not a young person's hearing, and there's no point in deluding myself that it is.

Ultimately, your system has to please only one person, you, and if others don't like it, tough. If that means exotic cables and expensive stands, why not?

 

[giggsy1977]

The other hearing factor is, of course, age. Your hearing is at its peak in your early 20s, but starts to deteriorate after that, with an increasing inability to hear high frequencies. As I approach my 76th birthday, hearing tests have confirmed that my hearing is excellent - for my age. But it is not a young person's hearing, and there's no point in deluding myself that it is.

Ultimately, your system has to please only one person, you, and if others don't like it, tough. If that means exotic cables and expensive stands, why not?

You're right, it only has to please the buyer! If they wish to spend a lot of money on cables, supports and the like then fair play. Their decision, I just don't like to see people paying more for something than is required without them being able to make an informed decision.

 

[Friesiansam]

How anyone can tell the difference between similar spec cables or a between a wooden and glass hifi rack is beyond my capacity I think!

Probably beyond the capacity of most people who say they can hear a difference...

 

[tones]

Gordon Holt, editor of Stereophile, wrote a brilliant analysis on the strange gadgets of Peter Belt. It goes a long way towards explaining why these things "work". Some excerpts:

Psychological tests in other areas of human perception—vision, touch, taste, smell—have proven how unreliable they are, and how much they can be influenced by expectation or suggestion. There's no reason to believe aural perception is the sole exception to this. ...
For self-styled golden ears to be claiming, and trying, to be "objective" is to deny reality, because perception is not like instrumentation. Everything we perceive is filtered through a judgmental process which embodies all of our previous related experiences, and the resulting judgment is as much beyond conscious control as a preference for chocolate over vanilla. We cannot will ourselves to feel what we do not feel. Thus, when perceptions are so indistinct as to be wide open to interpretation, we will tend to perceive what we want to perceive or expect to perceive or have been told that we should perceive. ..
Despite heroic efforts to educate our population, the US (and, apparently, the UK) has been graduating scientific illiterates for more than 40 years. And where knowledge ends, superstition begins. Without any concepts of how scientific knowledge is gleaned from intuition, hypothesis, and meticulous investigation, or what it accepts today as truth, anything is possible. Without the anchor of science, we are free to drift from one idea to another, accepting or "keeping an open mind about" as many outrageous tenets as did the "superstitious natives" we used to scorn 50 years ago. (We still do, but it's unfashionable to admit it.) Many of our beliefs are based on nothing more than a very questionable personal conviction that, because something should be true, then it must be. (Traditional religion is the best example of this.) The notion that a belief should have at least some objective support is scorned as being "closed-minded," which has become a new epithet. In order to avoid that dread appellation, we are expected to pretend to be open to the possibility that today's flight of technofantasy may prove to be tomorrow's truth, no matter how unlikely...

 

[Hugh Jarse]

How anyone can tell the difference between similar spec cables or a between a wooden and glass hifi rack is beyond my capacity I think!

We'd all like to witness them do it, don't worry about that Giggsy.