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Tweek v. "Upgrade"

tpetsch said:
Yes..
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That’s what I thought. I’ve sorted out a few people’s DSP and it’s the tweak that makes the dramatic difference, yet the upgrade of purchasing the capability doesn’t alter the sound at all.

So I guess upgrade must mean a spend on something with greater potential and tweak is an adjustment made by the operator.

I think that’s pretty much what Tony said about 3 posts in and I can imagine getting a deck or new cartridge and it sounding less than it’s best until it’s been setup properly.
 
Sibbers said:
I think that’s pretty much what Tony said about 3 posts in and I can imagine getting a deck or new cartridge and it sounding less than it’s best until it’s been setup properly.
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I grew up with hi-fi in the late-1970s where most of the mags had a ‘tuning tips and tweaks’ section where you’d be encouraged to do all manner of things for free or negligible cost, e.g. damping turntable plinths with plasticine and lead shot, decoupling speakers from shelves with foam, trying solid-core twin & earth mains cable as speaker wire etc etc. A whole world that existed apart from today’s consumer mindset of simply throwing money over a dealer’s counter and opening a new cardboard box when you get home.

I certainly view tweaks as DIY tuning tips that are usually free or really close to it, often just a better knowledge and understanding of how to set stuff up, and upgrades as opening a new and often expensive box.
 
Tony L said:
I grew up with hi-fi in the late-1970s where most of the mags had a ‘tuning tips and tweaks’ section where you’d be encouraged to do all manner of things for free or negligible cost, e.g. damping turntable plinths with plasticine and lead shot, decoupling speakers from shelves with foam, trying solid-core twin & earth mains cable as speaker wire etc etc. A whole world that existed apart from today’s consumer mindset of simply throwing money over a dealer’s counter and opening a new cardboard box when you get home.

I certainly view tweaks as DIY tuning tips that are usually free or really close to it, often just a better knowledge and understanding of how to set stuff up, and upgrades as opening a new and often expensive box.
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Turntables were mechanical devices why actually benefitted from damping, and with no risk of electric shock.

The cables and accessories became a thing, and things can be profitable. So now the de-coupling tweaks are done through commercial accessories and the cable dance is probably the most profitable source for the industry. It feeds distributors, dealers and magazines. And the added value is surely immense...
 
Sibbers said:
That’s what I thought. I’ve sorted out a few people’s DSP and it’s the tweak that makes the dramatic difference, yet the upgrade of purchasing the capability doesn’t alter the sound at all.

So I guess upgrade must mean a spend on something with greater potential and tweak is an adjustment made by the operator.

I think that’s pretty much what Tony said about 3 posts in and I can imagine getting a deck or new cartridge and it sounding less than it’s best until it’s been setup properly.
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Removing the carpet grabber nail strip to get the back of DMS -in my case- closer to the wall is a Tweak.
To toe them in or not toe them in -which ever sounds better in your room- is a Tweak.
To put your gear on a rack with spikes -or perhaps not spikes- is a Tweak, changing the shelf material is a Tweak.
To put your bookshelf like speakers on a proper metal on-wall bracket is a Tweak.
To put your bookshelf speakers on a proper metal floor stand is a Tweak.
Running a dedicated Mains Line to your system is a Tweak.
Rearranging your plugs/outlets is a Tweak. Upgrading your PlugStrip is a Tweak.
New Hospital Grade outlets is a Tweak.
Unplugging and re plugging in all the connectors on your system every few months is a Tweak.
Finding a better seating position is a Tweak. Changing the chair you sit in is a Tweak.
Adding acoustical room treatments such as a rug on the floor in front of the speakers on a hard wood floor is a Tweak.
Cleaning your stylus is a Tweak. Retorquing your cartridge is a Tweak.
Changing an Interconnect is a Tweak.
Cleaning up that bunched up spaghetti mess of wires behind your system so that they all hang well is a Tweak.
Not stacking gear on top of each other and giving piece of gear it's own shelf is a Tweak.
Moving power supplies as far as you can from the devise it's powering and turntables is a Tweak.
Air around your gear is a Tweak.
Setting up your speakers on the long wall instead of the short wall is a Tweak.
Setting up your system on a cement floor instead of a suspended wood floor is a Tweak.
Adjusting the speed and finding the best tracking weight & Anti-Skate on your TT is a Tweak.
Adjusting an Activ x-over so that it compliments your room/dimensions is a Tweak, although these Tweaks are a bit more tricky and things can go very wrong in boxes such as the Naxo where it's near impossible to get back to zero once you make a change without the right tools.

And so on and so on..

All these tweaks can take months doing them one at a time and listening for several hours afterwords. Don't make too many changes at once otherwise you can get easily lost and loose the tune. For some it never ends but the benefits can be very satisfying & rewarding for very little to no money, actually all this for some simply falls under "Proper System Set-Up". ...I'm an ex-Linn/Naim shop worker and have reverted dozens of Linn/Naim systems that have somewhere taken a turn for the worse back to their glory, and unfortunately for some having gone down the aftermarket tweaking rabbit hole can lead to some of the post you see here when people say things like, "I never really got on with my Naim System or my system sounded bright, thin or boomy" and so on, when the thing is it was perhaps never properly set up -and Tweaked- as best as it could have been in the first place.

But we all need something to help us judge what's better when you make a change, and this is why I speak of the "Tune Method".
 
Yeap. I can get along with that. Thing is, this audio thing - it’s a journey mostly made of wrong turns, incorrect conclusions and endless biases. Often the surest and most insistent views are based on correlations from experience but missing something vital. C’est la vie and all that. Tweaking is where most of the fun lies, especially once you cracked something.
 
I was never seriously into tweaking. Nevertheless, like others here I have had an audio system since the late 1970s and for a few years I tried quite a lot of tweaks until I decided that the difference they made was too small to matter in comparison to different recordings or different concert halls. So in 1983 I acquired Quad electronics to go with my Thorens/SME/AKG source and Celestion loudspeakers; and I mostly just listened.

Over the years, I have kept "a little list" of equipment infelicities, and audible inconsistencies I perceived between what I heard in the concert hall and what I heard at home. I became an occasional upgrader to address the highest priority shortcomings. Firstly adding CD playback and changing to better loudspeakers. My last upgrade was a good few years ago and I currently don't perceive anything above the threshold that makes me want to upgrade again. That may change, of course.

I think this is down to how people enjoy the hobby. Two axes I observe in what people like are: simplicity vs complexity; and upgrading vs tweaking. I think broadly there is a connection between these but I observe it's not a 100% correlation. I learned to like simplicity and that made me an upgrader rather than a tweaker.
 
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