Anything you have done that really helped out your setup?
Yes absolutely, great thread idea!
1- In my 2.0 and 2.1 speaker based systems I will SWEAR by speaker placement. Sometimes it’s a small toe in or out, other times like this week it was full on pull the speakers 6 ft away from the wall, (ie 1/3 into the room) Tiny toe in and place on stands with lower height.
2-experiment with subwoofer floor placement and height. This is much harder to do unless you have a pure dedicated room, still i have suffered through poor bass output many times because i was unable to move the subwoofer to the best location. There are many articles on the subwoofer crawl and others on multi-sub use, along with folks like REL who have their own suggestions for their make of subs.
3- I have also personally had excellent success with de-coupling bottom loaded subs from the floor and raising front firing subs off the floor too. I have used both marble slabs and massive hardwood butcher blocks for the down firing decoupling. To raise the front firing subs i have used hard rubber moving dollies with hard rubber wheels.
4-Room treatment! Using heavy rugs and curtains to deaden reflections, large bookshelves loaded with different sized books, cloth canvas artwork with absorbing material stuffed behind, large plants in massive clay pots, if you are not as frugal as me, please feel free to research proper room treatment materials and techniques, all mine are of the cheap-bastard variety and school of “GOOD ENOUGH!”
5- BENCHCOOkIES, i love these things, not as cheap as using books to de-couple and raise bookshelf speakers to proper height but allot cheaper than the audiophile grade gadgets. NOT as good looking though. Don’t forget depending on your goal you have to buy ALLOT of these.
6- counter stools used as speaker stands along with rubber feet. Yeah, i use all sorts of bar, counter, and foot stools for my bookshelf speakers through out the house.
7- heavy gauge speaker cable purchased in bulk and terminated by hand. I personally like http://www.knukonceptz.com/home-theater/speaker-wire/kord-speaker-wire/ Knukoncepts brand. I still flip flop on banana plugs, spades, and raw terminations. I have purchased a few pre-cut, pre-terminated cables for the aesthetics but having over 400ft of HT runs in multiple rooms, my go-to is the referenced brand Terminated in some fashion by me.
Headpone comfort: Dekoni nuggets, these things are great! They stick well and are super comfortable, beware nugget hair though, it’s a thing😂
Quality pads, everyone has their own idea of what quality is, pads that i have paid a premium for sold by custom manufacturers have been worth their price in my experience.
Fitting your IEM’s with the correct size earpiece for YOUR ear canal!
Avoiding RF interference and back-up drive noise from your computer and phones. I now unplug my back-up drives from my laptop when just listening to music and keep my cell phones at least 5 ft away from my cables at all times. Some of my equipment Is sensitive to interference and drive noise.
Really comfy chair, good sitting posture and lumbar support! I am nursing a pulled lower back muscle yet again because I didn’t follow my own rules 2 days ago. Yeah, this too is a thing for some of us, especially since many of us spend long long hours working and listening from chairs.
Re-tightening RCA and other connections often and using pink wicking grade loctite on these same connections. I also use blue loctite some times, depends on the connection and if i desire to have access to it later on. The cables NOT your RCA plugs on the gear!
Using a heat gun do get the jank out of cables. Doesnt work on all and be careful not to burn cables and rugs, ask me how i know😤
Learning proper power down, power up sequences and NEVER pulling an RCA or speaker connection from a live amplifier!
Knowing when to use a UPS and when to use a power conditioner. Knowing if you have 15amp or 20amp conditioner and keeping cables TIGHT especially in high traffic areas.
Teke the time to dust out and clean your gear once or twice a year, dust build-up WILL eventually cause you some sort of disruption if not failure!
for ear buds for additional sealI use double foam on them to add better seal also found doughnut foams that add comfort but havea hole in the middle underneath anormal foam which adds seal but kills the highs less than 2 double normal foams.