The BEST audio tweak for under ~$10 - Page 2

I'm relatively young but had a surprising amount of ear wax build up made worse by using etymotics, until one day I started going deaf in one ear. Went to the doc, was syringed and that was the end of ear-pain/deafness.

When I had my customs made my Audiologist couldnt make impressions because of a blockage. She couldnt get the wax out. She had me use a product called Debrox. It softens up the wax and bubbles to push it out. 3 treatments of that and my ear was spotless.

Just don't clean your ears like that too often. Earwax is there for a reason: protection from all sorts of things that can get into your ears.

In case this was a joke: yeah and I use my fingers to stop stuff getting into my nose.

 

Otherwise: I was more thinking of bacteria...

- take your glasses off... free

- put the foam plugs that came with your speakers IF they came with your speakers in... free

- if you have an old CD or DVD player with lousy audio and digital outs, a cheap video cable for co-ax digital into a home theater receiver is just a couple dollars

- fill your speaker posts with sand... very cheap

- re-burn your CDs. it's supposed to lower jitter over commercial CDs, or at least lets you get rid of a dozen crappy songs to get to that one good one on a disc too

- take your speaker grilles off... free

- use audacity freeware to fix song levels that are too loud or quiet, and edit out silence or annoying intros in songs. if you have a wide digital range recording that still sounds quiet at full volume, you can also normalize it to whatever max you want with any compression level you want with audiograbber freeware. it's also good for recording songs off CDs or any audio online through your sound card instead of relying on mp3 downloads for which 20% contain viruses.

- set your speakers up for best imaging & make both the same distance from side and back walls using a cheap yardstick. even a quarter inch can affect imaging... free if you already have a yardstick. getting a cheap dollar store level also helps with positioning speakers better.

- i think you can sometimes get foam mattress liners to put behind and to the sides of your speakers for under $10. either way, it's much cheaper than acoustic foam and you can find it in room matching white in some stores.

- blue tack your speakers to your stands for better coupling... $1

Edited by budget minded - 11/29/12 at 4:21pm

Learn to equalize your headphones (you are using rockbox, aren't you?), and then do the same for your speakers.

For more than $10 you could also get a decent microphone and use Win7's room-equalization feature. The Microphone will do double duty, so you could consider it as a free bonus to general recording.

At the very least: position your bookshelf speakers at the listening position. Then play a low tone (100Hz?) or some crunchy bass tracks. Move around the room until you find the place where the bass is best. Then reposition your speakers in those places for max bass.

Yeah, but we're all ignoring you because you're not cool. Go and sit on the other table.