Paladin79
Previously MOT: Cables For Less
We rarely have to buy the items, last DAC listen we used mostly what our group owns and we rejected DAC’s selling for more than $10k. We can borrow other gear and will most likely have to this time.I neglected to mention the Paladin79 approach to decision-making in the audio hobby:
* buy one or more of every candidate on the short list
* have a block party with 100 selected friends
* do a design of experiments for double-blind testing
* have a subset of the "most proficient listeners" participate in the blind testing
* enjoy wine & cheese etc during the event
* have a statistician analyze the results
* distribute findings to the group
That's not really a heuristic approach.
We did buy some 6SN7’s since we wanted to hear all we could.
The testing is generally done in an engineering lab and any partying is after the fact.
As far as listeners, we do like to use younger people who can still hear high frequencies, as part of the mix.
Expectation bias is eliminated as best possible. The results are the results.
That being said we have not done speakers or tube power amps so my approach on those were heuristic.
There are often deals that allow me to obtain gear for very little money, then I keep what I truly like and dump the rest. Oh and I can do my own design on specific items so that situation may be a little unusual.
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