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What Matters and What is Nonsense

I’ve been an audiophile for approximately 50 years. In my college days, I used to hang around the factory of a very well regarded speaker manufacturer where I learned a lot from the owners. When I started with audio it was a technical hobby. You were expected to know something about electronics and acoustics. Listening was important, but understanding why something sounded good or not so good was just as important. No one in 1968 would have known what you were talking about if you said you had tweaked your system and it sounded so much better. But if you talked about constant power output with frequency, or pleasing second-order harmonic distortion versus jarring odd-order harmonics in amplification, you were part of the tribe.

Starting in the 1980s, a lot of pseudo scientific nonsense started appearing. Power cords were important. One meter interconnects made a big difference. Using a green magic marker on the edge of a CD was amazing. Putting isolation dampers under a CD transport lifted the veil on the music. Ugh. This stuff still make my eyes roll, even after all these years.

So I have decided to impart years and years of hard won knowledge to today’s hobbists who might be interested in reality. This is my list of the steps in the audio reproduction chain, and the relative importance of each step. My ranking of relative importance includes a big dose of cost/benefit ratio. At this point in the evolution of audio, I am assuming digital recording and reproduction.

Item / Importance to the sound on a scale of 1-10 / Cost benefit ratio

  • The room the recording was made in / 8 / Nothing you can do about it
  • The microphones and setup used in the recording / 8 / nothing you can do about it.
  • The equalization and mixing of the recording / 10 / Nothing you can do about it
  • The technology used for the recording (analog, digital, sample rate, etc.) / 5 / nothing you can do about it.
  • The format of the consumer recording (vinyl, CD, DSD, etc.) 44.1 - 16 really is good enough / 3 / moderate CB ratio
  • The playback device i.e. cartridge or DAC / 5 / can be a horribe CB ratio - do this almost last
  • The electronics - preamp and amp / 4 / the amount of money wasted on $5,000 preamps and amps is amazing.
  • Low leve interconnects / 2 / save your money, folks
  • Speaker cables / 3 / another place to save your money
  • Speakers / 10 / very very high cost to benefit ratio. Spend your money here.
  • Listening room / 9 / an excellent place to put your money. DSPs have revolutionized audio reproduction
In summary, buy the best speakers you can afford, and invest in something like Dirac Live or learn how to use REW and buy a MiniDSP HD to implement the filters. Almost everything else is a gross waste of money.
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Showing 2 responses by almarg

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almarg
9,670 posts
 
Craigl59 5-21-2018
What speakers have you settled on?
Hi Craig,

I have Daedalus Ulysses speakers, as you can see in my system description thread. I’ve owned them since 2010, and I have no plans to replace them in the foreseeable future.

As you’ve no doubt seen in the main Double Impact thread, member Waltersalas (Chris) replaced the Ulysses he had used for several years with a pair of DIs, and then recently purchased DI SEs. That certainly reinforces the many praises of the DI and DI SE, and the uncommon value they represent, that have been provided by owners such as yourself and by those having significant listening experience with them.

For me, though, aesthetics are a major factor when it comes to speaker selection, in part because my listening room is my living room as I mentioned earlier. And with the DIs and the Ulysses being nearly at opposite ends of the spectrum in that regard, IMO, the DIs would not be of interest to me.

For amplification, btw, I use a 70 watt per channel VAC Renaissance 70/70 MkIII, which uses four 300B power tubes per channel, operates in class A, and provides several selectable feedback settings including zero (which is the setting I use). I believe it retailed for upwards of $14K when it was manufactured around the turn of the century, but I purchased it used for far less than that. I suspect that its similar but less powerful brother, the Renaissance 30/30 (two 300Bs and 30 watts per channel), could be found used these days for not much more than $3K, and would be a great match for your DIs. Although even with only four 300Bs in that amp, the cost of re-tubing would be considerable were it to become necessary.

Best regards,
-- Al
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almarg
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Regarding the relative importance and cost/benefit ratio of speakers vs. upstream components, I believe that the following factors involving listener preferences and requirements have tended to be under-emphasized in past discussions involving that question, and are also significant contributors to the divergence of viewpoints that is commonly seen in discussions of that question:

1)For a given level of quality, the cost of a speaker tends to be dramatically affected by the maximum volume capability it can cleanly generate, and by the deep bass extension it can provide. Both of those factors affect cabinet size, of course, which in turn also affects cost. And listener preferences and requirements regarding those factors tend to vary widely.

2)For a given level of quality and a given class of operation (A, AB, or D), the cost of amplification tends to vary dramatically depending on how much power the amp must be able to provide, and on how challenging a load impedance it must be able to deal with.

Personally, I listen to a lot of well engineered classical symphonic recordings having very wide dynamic range, and consequently an amp/speaker combination that cannot cleanly produce 105 db peaks at my 12 foot listening distance would be a non-starter. And I prefer speakers that do not require me to use separate subwoofers, in part because they would clutter up my listening room which is also my living room. And I prefer speakers having highish sensitivity and benign impedance characteristics, so that as high a percentage as possible of my amplifier dollars can go toward quality rather than toward watts and drive capability. That all adds up to speakers being the most expensive component in my system, by a considerable margin. For others having different preferences and requirements, it could very understandably be a different story.

Regards,
-- Al
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