I agree with 61 in that synergy and your "room" are a major percentage of the total sound quality. I have dragged home both Linn Tukans and SF Concertos to find that my little Castle Isis speakers sounded better overall with my Musical Fidelity amp and our room. I have tweaked with isolation components, power cords, power conditioners, stands and interconnects and have raised the quality of the sound considerably. The Tukans and the Concertos by the way sounded super at the showroom running off of a Plinius integrated amp. Right now I am experimenting with felt dots (screw head size) placed on the front face of the speakers to revoice the speakers. A couple of felt dots in the right spot can have as much positive effect as moving the speaker a foot or so. Sounds crazy doesn't it? This is just to say how much a little change can effect the sound. My next course will be to upgrade the power receptacles to Hubbell or something similar. I also have a pair of mono blocks on the way to bi-amp. This of course will involve more choices for speaker wire. I have decided not to even consider new speakers until I feel that I have squeezed the last drop out of what I have. New speakers will most likely involve running at least half of this course again. Hopefully what I have learned setting up our living room system will make my choices for a second system in a small bedroom easier. One would think anyway.
What does what?
I read with interest on a previous post about how 3 different types of speakers sounded completely different. Undoubtly true but led me back thinking to what does what in your system. Quite complicated I would have thought especially with all those boxes,cables,power cords etc . I know this posting may make me sound like a dafty as we say here in Scotland but I'll continue. I would have thought the source component(CD player etc.) would have given the overall sound and that amplification/speakers would only reveal what is there. Only reality doesn't quite seem to back this up. A while back a friend brought round a Linn CD player to try in my system-it didn't sound too different from my DVD/anti-jitter/DAC set-up-we played around with all different combo's until we got completely confused-ok not a good idea. But to me the differences weren't anywhere near as dramatic as I would have thought. Also recently I bought new speakers-well impressed with soundstage and detail-I thought my system still lacked bass. I tried switching my pre-amp off the direct setting and edged up the bass and voila!Big improvement with no drawbacks-this didn't work when I tried it with my previous speakers. So does this mean that my system wasn't quite matched before? How much of a system is synergy? I would guess this type of confusion leads many of us to throw money in the wrong directions when upgrading. What does everybody think? How can you be sure what should be your next move? Instinct? Pricing of components? Ben