Audio heaven? No, not me, the other guy ...

This follows a suggestion from another member -- thanks, bear! -- to chronicle at least one journey in optimising sound. And, yes, it's not one of my efforts, because the way I do things is very messy: they look incredibly messy, full of false turnings and bits of "I wonder if this is actually doing anything positive now". Enough to get anyone watching closely thoroughly confused ...!!

The story is that a small music listening group kicked off, then faded away. But from that an ongoing exercise began, where a younger, very enthusiastic DIYer was happy to hear my feedback on what path to take with his system, and this has continued for a couple of years, with quite substantial, positive gains in sound quality, to this day.

So, to give a clearer picture of the angle I'm coming from I'll attempt, from memory, to list the steps taken, in fairly general terms, and what the various ups and downs in the process were ...

At the start, when I first listened to his kit, it was a basic Pro-Ject TT, a Quad CD player already tweaked by a friend of his, a reasonable Harmon Kardon integrated, and Tannoy bookshelf units on stands. During a number of music sessions, before this interaction occurred, sometimes it was very pleasant, very acceptable at mild listening levels; but other times it had far too much of the classic "hifi" sound, quite fatiguing and unsettling after only a short time.

Okay, that kicks the story; next post will get into the guts of the journey ...;)

Frank