Your golden rules for buying Hi Fi

Buy cheap sell expensive

Don’t take any notice of forums

Haim Ronen posted:

 I only buy from Republicans who always take much better care of their equipment.

 

 

Follow the forum and only buy components that have blimey in the title of the thread. Plus the seller must be wearing Diesel jeans. 

Never buy secondhand or ex-dem, never try to barter for a better deal, and never shop around,  because you can maximise your expenditure and so i) maximise tax saving if you can hide it as a business productivity inducing system, and and ii)  maximise your bragging rights about how much you spent on your system.

spurrier sucks posted:

Follow the forum and only buy components that have blimey in the title of the thread. Plus the seller must be wearing Diesel jeans. 

Is it OK if some other brand but with Diesel fuel spilt over them? (For the same authentic smell)

spurrier sucks posted:

Follow the forum and only buy components that have blimey in the title of the thread. Plus the seller must be wearing Diesel jeans. 

And have University level punctuation and grammar skills I mean skill's.

After studying every single "sock" picture on the site I can confirm that I work on the inverse approach, namely if the poster has poor taste in socks, which many undeniably do, then their choice of hifi will be something to aspire to....except all I can usually afford in the pics are the socks!!!!!

Research,Research and Research.  

Get to know the good side of your grumpy dealer.  

  Be willing to throw the rule book out the window.

Always steal your gear: it's as cheap as it gets, there's no buyer's remorse and if you don't like it you don't mind throwing it out and picking something else up.

Occasionally, you'll get caught, but lawyer fees are cheaper than the gear, so no worries.

My golden rules are so ineffective that I suspect they are very very thinly gold plated plastic rules. Anyway:

* BUY WHATEVER OBJECT STRIKES YOUR FANTASY: Who cares if you have speakers for which NAC280/NAP250 are commonly recognized as the minimum necessary? An AV2 and a NAP150x will be more than adeguate. Never mind if it sounds like a 1950 tube system.

* RESELL IMMEDIATELY SOMETHING YOU PRESENTLY DON'T NEED, EVEN THOUGH YOU KNOW YOU WILL SOON NEED IT AGAIN AND THE PROFIT WON'T CHANGE YOUR LIFE (OR YOUR WEEK, FOR THAT): Like a Snaic, a HiLine, even a HiCap.

* BUY TWO SAMPLES OF A SIMILAR ITEM IN THE MOST CROWDED SECTOR OF THAT SPECIFIC PRODUCT, WITH A VERY SIMILAR PRICE, TO HAVE THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE OR OF FORTUITOUS UPGRADE: Like two ICs in the €150 area; so you'll spend long and totally pointless hours deciding which is better.

* IF YOU HAVE DECIDED THAT A GIVEN PRODUCT IS NOT FOR YOU, AND WON'T WORK IN YOUR ROOM, DON'T ASSUME THAT IT MIGHT NOT MIRACULOUSLY WORK INSTEAD AFTER SOME TIME: Buy it again. Some things can be re-bought up to four or five times, each time resetting one's own judgment and beliefs. At worse, it brings a thrill in a boring period. The thrill of realization of one's silliness.

* WHEN YOU REACH A SYSTEM THAT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE REAL, AND IT'S YOURS, WITHOUT FLAWS OR DEBTS, DISMANTLE IT AND SELL IT: It will give you plenty of chances to try again other lesser things you had already discarded much earlier, and feel the shiver of pleasure that an overlooked discovery brings. Then, you'll buy the better system again.

* (I have personally followed, scrupulously and repeatedly, all of these rules.)

* REGULARLY CHANGE YOUR FAVORITE HIFI BRAND. At least once a year, based on reviews in your HiFi magazines.

* SUBSCRIBE TO HIFI MAGAZINES: HiFi magazines have a much broader view than your dealer and can recommend hifi gear from an extensive portfolio of HiFi brands.

Don‘t listen without half a bottle of Montepulicano or 2 Mass Weissbier!

Get the best other half to buy it.   Save you some money.

Stop.

G

If something sounds good in your room, it is good. This even applies if said product is not a forum darling. Buy it  :-)

Wait for the next big thing (i.e. has its own thread, bought by at least four forum members to extol its virtues, at least one of which says that everything else in comparison "sounds broken").

If at first it sounds average to you, spend time and money on fiddling about with rack location, cable dressing, new interconnects, power supplies, mains etc.

Get the techno nerds to confirm its superiority by blinding you with incomprehensible  science.

Get that warm feeling that you're  now a member of the hifi cognoscenti.

Discover that there is a new product that is even better that is being talked up on the forum.

Sell the last next big thing for half the price you paid for it.

Repeat the cycle ad infinitum 

Christopher_M posted:

If something sounds good in your room, it is good. This even applies if said product is not a forum darling. Buy it  :-)

I don't think you're entering into the (ironic) spirit of this thread, Chris. 

M

That's me, irony bypass.

My aunt from Singapore whom I helped upgrade her Hi Fi system (to Goldmund mono-blocks into Martin Logans) reminded me of a few more golden rules I had mentioned to her:

*NEVER DO BLIND TESTING - why burst the grand illusion bubble?

*ALWAYS START A NEW SYSTEM FROM THE GROUND UP - which means sorting out speaker cables and power chords way before giving any consideration to source or amplification. 

* READ HI Fi REVIEWS OF MY GEAR STRICTLY IN THE BRITISH PRESS - which is so politically correct that it will never say anything embarassing about it.

Source first, source first, source first.

First I start with the orchestra/band/artist. Bring them into my home. Then I particiton them off with soundproofing panels, set up microphones, mixing desk etc insupide, going to an ADC. A cable comes out through the soundproofing into the main part of the listening room to go through the rest of my system - as good as I can afford, but of course focussing strongly on the speakers because they most characterise the sound. Sit back and listen, and imagine that the orchestra/band/artist were in my own home...

ALWAYS MEASURE BEFORE BUYING - buy a microphone, download software, produce lots of graphs. Then ignore them, and buy whatever sounds best and is within budget.

BENEFIT FROM THE WISDOM POSTED ON AUDIO FORUMS - and ignore all the crap posted on audio forums. Which is which is left to the reader as an exercise.

LISTEN TO LOTS OF DIFFERENT BRANDS - then buy Naim. Obvs.  

Always wait for the next model.

Buy a home within driving distance of MangoMonkey.

leni v posted:

Always wait for the next model.

Is that before or after it’s been announced?