Back to John's question of necessary funds vs. disposable income—is there a minimum number regardless—I see no fixed answer due to two variables: obsession and ignorance. Obsession worries more than it arguably ought to. Ignorance doesn't know what's necessary, what's excessive. For obsession there's no cure other than getting it out of our system. For ignorance the cure is experience and education. Now we're back on the rails. Those say that if we have a €995 preamp with five inputs and three outputs but only use one each, stuffing the rest with a dozen Clear Lines to well eclipse the component's sticker three times over doesn't seem sensible; not without serious obsession. We've seen this scenario with Aavik already. Three different DACs differed only in the amount of proprietary noise attenuation built in. Yet they covered ground from €6K to €10K to €20K and for it kept audibly improving. So if adding €3K+ in small tweaks to a €1K preamp can make it perform like a €5K competitor… perhaps it's actually a sensible approach?
Further on obsessiveness, with connectors it's arguably Furutech and WBT on the top floor. Oyaide live just one below. Then come many empty floors before occupancy continues. Nobody needs designer trainers or polo shirts with little animal emblems. Yet demand supports even the most elite variations. In our niche, if one wants the best-made plugs, Furutech probably make the Bentley of the bunch. It's functional hifi jewelry with real engineering. If you prefer cheap plastic, wrong address. Now we lock that door and throw away the key: "Be advised that customs stopped your shipment for examination. They need proof of purchase. If the goods are samples, they need to see a mention in the conversation between both parties that the goods ordered were samples when placing the order,." The prior email thread between Furutech and myself showed all the usual solicitation verbiage except for the trigger word 'samples'. My factory contact had to email Irish customs with separate confirmation. Our evergreen isle doesn't mean no red tape. It's why the Irish love jokes.
Did you hear that Irish historians have discovered the headstone of the oldest man to ever live? He was 193 and called Miles from Dublin. Also, it was heavily pouring outside an Irish pub where a large puddle had grown. An elderly man jiggles a stick with a string on it. An inquisitive chap asks what he's doing. "Fishing" explains the old man. "Poor old idiot," thinks the chap to invite the old man in for a drink. Feeling the need to strike up a conversation while both sip whisky, the chap asks "and how many have you caught?" "You're the eighth." Minus the usual six of the moons, that gets us at two RCA plugs on my first catch. XLR were to follow. Luck of the Irish and all.
With two voltage inputs on RCA of which I use just one plus a BNC current input, Enleum's AMP-23R on my office desktop seemed a good recipient for my pair of RCA plugs with locking collar. Ask and ye shall receive? Of course my two BNC remained open. If this game was about shutting all rear doors, some of mine weren't. Would I hear any difference? I had Final D8000 headphones and EnigmAcoustics M1 speakers to try my best.
It turned out that the two open coaxial inputs of my legacy Auralic Vega DAC were more sensitive than the amp's analog equivalents. Where I couldn't tell the latter with/out, closing two rear doors on the D/A converter did make the sound a bit more intense. Feeling my way into why, I ended up with slightly higher contrast ratio. It caused images to pop harder against the backdrop which was inky to begin with given Enleum's S/NR. Just so, Furutech's plugs widened the something/nothing delta between sounds and silence sufficiently to register when I really paid attention. This was like adding a skoch more salt. You notice it from one bite to the next then forget. The taste was already great, just a tad mellower.
