Best advice you ever got/ never got in your long hifi career.

[awkwardbydesign]

Have fun. When the fun stops, stop.

 

[seagullsnacker]

1. Build a music collection around your system.

2. Try various locations for the ship — the Beethoven Borg box, the Du Pré collection, the CD box that has a picture of @Marchbanks, my man on it, etc. — to determine its best position visually. This one is hard to do blind, but try your best.

3. Avoid King Crimson's Islands if possible.

Joe

Awww look at that lovely old NAD CD player

 

[Paul Mc]

Get a good dealer.

 

[gintonic]

When i worked in Laskys on TCR the advice was "play it loud"

 

[Big John]

Whether fault finding or setting up one thing at a time takes time but longer is misspent if you try 2 or multiples & getting lost.

 

[Mick Seymour]

When i worked in Laskys on TCR the advice was "play it loud"

Ah. I remember it well. Hifi heaven to a poor teenager.

 

[richardkendell]

Trust your own ears.

 

[gintonic]

Ah. I remember it well. Hifi heaven to a poor teenager.

i worked there, Saturdays, Weds and holidays from about 1983 to 87

 

[gintonic]

if i can pass on a small portion of wisdom born from experience - dont let cats near your woofers

 

[Beobloke]

A wise chap once told me - “When setting the output bias on a B&O Beomaster 5000, don’t try and hold probes onto the resistors at the same time as adjusting the pot, as the probes will slip, short the output transistors and blow them”.

He was spot on…

 

[Bob McC]

Baz Luhrmann could put this thread to music.

 

[Mike Reed]

In my teens, I wish someone had told me to stop wasting money on hifi magazines -

My friend piles them up and sits on them, but there again, he does have lots of back issues.

Also to not spend big time on discussion fora

Or even forums.

If you have pots on your (valved) power amp, turn them to full (friend's advice a few years ago; instant improvement).

Expect expensive hassles after 10 or so years with Quad ESLs since the 57.

 

[Mike Reed]

When i worked in Laskys on TCR the advice was "play it loud"

Must've been the traffic noise on T.C.R. It was much quieter in the late 60s when I worked there. (it obv. had a good run; wonder when it folded; maybe after Imhof's on New Oxford St.)

 

[paulbysea]

I can't remember, I wasn't really listening.

 

[Colonel_Mad]

When trying out a new component don't play really well recorded music you don't normally listen to at a volume higher than you'd normally listen to. Some right old shite will appear to be an improvement.

 

[Yomanze]

Listen to the music, and avoid listening to the HiFi.

It took me a long time to get off the HiFi merry-go-round and back to where I started before I got into all this stuff - enjoying the tunes, without dissecting the presentation.

 

[camverton]

if i can pass on a small portion of wisdom born from experience - dont let cats near your woofers

Haha.

I’ve recently been trying to explain to my new kittens why they shouldn’t wee on my Quad stats. One of them looked up and meowed “we’ll be more likely to remember if you give us a demonstration“…

 

[agnes]

Go regularly to concerts of well produced music, preferably unamplified if the genre allows it.
That way you will know what real music sounds like - you will know how far short your hifi falls.
Don't buy hifi that sounds just like good hifi. It is not real. Very little music has chest thumping bass, "slam", or pin point positioning of the instruments. Real beautiful music is produced in real rooms where sounds blend and bounce beautifully.

 

[camverton]

Must've been the traffic noise on T.C.R. It was much quieter in the late 60s when I worked there. (it obv. had a good run; wonder when it folded; maybe after Imhof's on New Oxford St.)

Imhofs, what a fantastic place and not a bad record shop on the ground floor; bumped into Bernard Haitink browsing through the LPs there once.

 

[camverton]

Go regularly to concerts of well produced music, preferably unamplified if the genre allows it.
That way you will know what real music sounds like - you will know how far short your hifi falls.
Don't buy hifi that sounds just like good hifi. It is not real. Very little music has chest thumping bass, "slam", or pin point positioning of the instruments. Real beautiful music is produced in real rooms where sounds blend and bounce beautifully.

Good advice to which I might add concentrate on buying hifi that fools you into thinking you’re listening to the real thing.