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Speakers vs source/amp budget

I know many audiophiles advocate spending bulk of system budget on speakers with around 50 percent allocated to it. However I have noticed speakers suffer from law of diminishing return much quicker than either the amp or the source (dac, turntable). In fact I’ve noticed for bookshelf speakers especially after around $3k there is hardly much improvement except for the price tag. On the other hand the difference between $2k amp and $10k is night and day and same goes for turntables and dacs.
Am I just testing out the wrong speakers, has speaker technology come to the point there is only slight marginal improvement after certain point? The only rule for speakers seem choose the right size and sensitivity to match the amp and room size and spend the rest on quality amp and the source.
I came to this thought during my latest upgraditis run where I find myslef upgrading the source and the amp while being thoroughly satisfied with my elac vela bookshelves to the point my source and amp (naim 272/xps and 250) cost nearly 10 times the speakers! (I also own wilson audio sasha 2 for my reference system).
plaser

Showing 3 responses by plaser

plaser OP
26 posts
 
Ok looks like I need to up my budget to $10k+ thanks for the suggestions VerdantAudio will check them out but I'm hearing that Focal goes well with Naim so gonna check out Sopra 1 as well.
plaser OP
26 posts
 
cd318, just to give you an example I used to only listen to vinyls on my Linn LP12 Akurate with radikal power supply and Naim superline/supercap phono stage because no DAC however good came close to it (previously used McIntosh D150 at $3500, Chord TT 1 at ~$4000, and Naim 272 all in one streamer/DAC/preamp for $6500ish). Then, I tried hooking up a Chord Dave ($10k) and it just blew all the other DACs away. It sounded so much (natural sounding) like the vinyls that now I do most of my listening streaming from Tidal (Auralic G1 streamer -> Chord Dave DAC -> Naim 300 power amp).
plaser OP
26 posts
 
Just for update, I managed to get a demo Sopra 1 for a really great price from my usual Focal/Naim authorized dealer. It definitely sounds different with the music having more weight but I wouldn’t say "better." In fact my wife when hearing these says she prefers the old setup (she has no clue what the elacs cost vs Focal). I say focals are definitely more musical and meatier sound and elacs are more forward with better timbre but not in fatiguing way but definitely less musical than the Sopra 1s. In fact I think elacs have better sound but focals are more musical and hence focals beat elacs for my purpose (mostly classical music). I’m pretty happy with the upgrade but would have been happy to with elacs but felt the need to upgrade the speakers to higher priced one given elacs cost 1/10th of the source and amp. Well this is how it is in this hobby lol.
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