Hello, I just joined, primarily for the audiophile products. Looking at purchasing the NHT C3 speakers for our new living room. Space is about 15 feet wide by 33 long and they will fire long ways. Space is just for general listening, music room with all equipment is downstairs, so hoping they will fill it with sound nicely. Cheers.
Mar 18, 2024
Tubes - "Burn In" - noticed drastic changes with some tubes, personally don't think this one is really up for much of a debate.
Speakers - "Break in" - my outlook pretty much mirrors Zeos there
Headphones - see above, except BA-only designs... never noticed it there. Never noticed much of a change in my HE-500's despite reports of drastic changes by some.
Solid State Amps/Pre-amps/Sources - never noticed any changes myself and don't really see many logic based arguments here either.
Methodology - nothing specific... my music collection is extremely varied and I listen a lot... coming back to tracks I know well during the first few weeks of a new purchase and see if any of my concerns/impressions have changed.
New Myth:
Speaker/Interconnect/Headphone Cable Upgrades-
My .02 here:
Speaker Cable - A cable should be of adequate gauge for the length of run and power requirements (long run, high wattage requiring thicker cables than short run low wattage). A cable should also have well constructed and securely fitted terminations. The copper should be of decent quality but nothing ridiculous (looking at you Cardas Grade-1) and I don't believe other metals give enough benefit to warrant the price that is charged for them. I've seen WAY too many blind tests where Home Depot zip cord scored the same/better than cables costing thousands.
Interconnect/Video/Data cable upgrades - again need a solid connector, again don't need anything ridiculous as far as material and balanced cables should be used for extremely long runs or use in an electrically noisy environment.
Headphone - Length, termination type and aesthetics are far more important factors than "this will be an improvement in sound." Changing pad position and/or the pads themselves has always made a much larger difference than a cable swap for me.
*All of these are my opinions, I'm not an EE and do not purport to be. I speak from personal experience with some validation from others experiences and experiments. In the end everyone needs to do what makes them enjoy their music more and put far less weight on others opinions.
Again, I have no scientific basis to derive this opinion but before I got this amp I thought everyone was on crack regarding solid-state "burn-in". I stand corrected.
I am hoping someone can comment on these usb power cleaners. (i.e. the Shiit Wyrd and Audioquest Jitterbug etc.). I can understand that the power coming off of the USB port on your computer can be "dirty", but what if your DAC gets its power from a wall wart? Is there any added benefit to these devices?
Along the same lines what about higher-end USB cables that claim to be "low-jitter". Are these just snake oil?
I believe high end USB cables are snake oil. Just for kicks I did a true ABX blind test (my daughter was helping me switch the cables) between copper and silver coated copper USB cables. I could not do better than 50% at identifying which cable was in use, so I might as well have been guessing.