Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

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RE: As you've discovered, the placebo effect doesn't explain what you're hearing.

Posted by Paul_A (A) on March 4, 2009 at 19:29:16

In Reply to: RE: As you've discovered, the placebo effect doesn't explain what you're hearing. posted by boodles on March 4, 2009 at 07:09:40:

The soundstage width increases, but also the sense that the musicians are in the room. The sense of having the musicians in the room on certain recordings has increased strikingly with these tweaks. I have noticed this on string quartets where I am guessing the musicians were sitting around the microphones. On these recordings, you really feel submerged in the sound. On recordings made in larger venues, I really seem to be able to guage the dimensions of the room. The recording that shows this most strikingly is Wagner e Venezia by Uri Caine. It was recorded in the Piazza San Marco in Venice and the sense of being in the Piazza is really quite amazing.

I haven't noticed the difference that you're talking about with quiet passages. What I have noticed is that instruments sound much more precisely renderred--all of the Stereophile gushing talk about palpability and hearing exactly what the sound is that is coming out of the instrument.

Here's another interesting tweak, and it's probably the strangest one in my arsenal--a Schumann generator. The one that I use is by Earth Calm. I think that this tweak is almost certainly due to a psychological change in me--but that doesn't mean it isn't happening. A friend of mine listened to the Schumann generator with a switch to turn it on and off. He said that without it, he could sense edges of the sound stage. After it was turned on, the edges seemed to dissolve. If you are interested in entering the territory of the truly strange, you could try one of these devices.

My rig has an awful lot of tweaks, so it can be hard to distinguish which one is doing what. I can say though, that before I started tweaking, I didn't have much at all in the way of three dimensional imaging. Now I have it in spades and it's obvious to anyone who hears it. People who hear it for the first time--non-audiophies--usually get a goofy look of disbelief on their faces. No shit!

• Wagner e Venezia   (Open in New Window)

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