Hardware
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Just ask an audiophile for a tour of their rig, and they're happy to have you stick your head against the wall to peer back there and see his $2000 worth of stupid cables. He'll even hold the flashlight.
And it's definitely a "Him," no other pronouns required. I've never encountered a female audiophile. The woman of the house (if there is one) is always in the other room, rolling her eyes, and sighing. Audiophile gear already has a very low WAF - Wife Acceptance Factor - an actual audiophile thing - and expensive cables are among the lowest WAF of all.
I mean, what else are they going to do with it, besides show it off? Play music? They've only got three records, and two of them are German sound effects, and the other is the 1812 Overture that skips when the (Actual! Real!) cannons go off.
I have. Although TBH they were both on the spectrum, albeit not in the same way. One was even back in the early 90s, and had a bangin’ car audio system as good as any peacocking young man.
Oooo… insufficient vibrational isolation. That’s a low bar to cross with turntables; you either get or build a dedicated stand (not difficult), or your deck has that isolation tech built-in (upper midrange or higher). The easiest way to check for built-in is to tap the platter (from the side) and see if the entire deck shifts or wobbles in the case. If it does, it’s vibrationally isolated. Although how well it is, is dependent on a number of other increasingly technical factors.
Of course, this also predicates upon having this system in a space where you can crank the sound up to 11 without having the cops knock on your door with a noise violation in hand.
Isolation:
In the 90s, I had a buddy with a system that ran above $50k. He kept the system in a separate room, and punched holes in the wall to run the cables to the speakers in the living room. That was to offer isolation to the rack from the speakers.
The rack that held his system was square tubular steel, and he baked sand in the over to eliminate all moisture, and poured it into the tubing, tapping it down. The rack weighed a ton when it was done. I don't remember what he did with his turntable, but he probably had those little inverted cones as feet. I remember it had a really heavy base.
He got divorced.
In college, I knew a bunch of guys who put their turntables on a shelf hanging from the ceiling, closely resembling a kid's playground swing. It was supposed to isolate the turntable from footsteps in the room, but I liked to point out that it's really exposed to someone walking around upstairs. They didn't like hearing that.
BTW, the reference to the 1812 Overture was a real one. When I worked for Telarc, we put out an LP of the 1812 using actual cannons. When you looked at the vinyl, you could see where the grooves had to spread apart to capture the wild track of the groove when the cannons blew. MANY, perhaps MOST, turntables couldn't track it, and audio stores used to love to use that LP, and other Telarc releases, to demonstrate their wares. I used to get calls at work from fans who would actually BRAG that they blew out their giant expensive speakers with that recording. Well, good for you buddy, thanks for being a loyal customer, I guess...