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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.
128x128phomchick
glupson
7,842 posts
 
If anybody is keeping a tally, one more vote for mostly agreeing with the original post. I would add a few points to amplifier, though.

As far as cables go, I feel it is worth investing in them a little bit for cosmetic/visual effect. I have not yet, but would.
rnabokov's avatar
rnabokov
10 posts
 
The only tweak I did was add a Monarchy Audio AC Regenerator to my system (tube preamp and tube phono stage) and it made a significant difference - more low level information. Nice.
tutetibiimperes
202 posts
 
@markalarsen 

I’d disagree about electronics being more important than speakers.  I’ve demoed B&W 804 D3s powered by an Integra receiver running through a Magnolia switchboard and they still sounded excellent, and a clear step up from the CM10 S2s even with what would be considered a big electronics mismatch.  

Can electronics sound different?  Sure, and tubes in particular can introduce euphonic distortion that many find pleasing.  I’ve heard some tube amps that sounded great, and I may play around with one in one of my systems at home, but they’re not necessarily more accurate (which may or may not matter to the individual listener). 

Still, tubes aside, once you’ve found an amp that’s capable of handling your speakers’ load (which will be more demanding for difficult to drive speakers like Revel Salon2s, certain electrostats, or a notorious amp killer like the Apogee Fullrange), you’ve found enough power to drive your speakers to the desired dynamic peaks in your room, and the specs on the amp are good enough to not introduce audible crosstalk or noise, the differences between electronics should be pretty slim, other than DSP features which can have a dramatic effect on the sound.  

The distortion introduced by speakers and room effects will be orders of magnitude greater than that introduced by electronics.  Spend the money on the speakers and the room, and enough on electronics to drive them without limitations.  
duckworp's avatar
duckworp
257 posts
 
I don’t know why I rise to the bait of these provocative posts, but I do. If the OP had just added a small caveat that this is his humble opinion then all would be well. But no, we have an objective position described, even down to scoring each element out of ten. Oh dear.

I have 40 years in audiophilia (I mention that as the OP states his/her 50 years gives him/her some God-given right to be right) and 30 years working in the music industry including much time spent with mastering engineers at one of the UK’s biggest recording and mastering studios. I can categorically state that the OP may be stating his beliefs, but they are no more than that, and by no means are they definitive truths.

Let’s take the mastering studios as an example: very expensive amps, cables and DACs are present. And remember these guys, as mastering engineers, need the most accurate sound from their source. And interestingly different engineers spend different proportions of their budget on different elements. But if you only take the elements in the studio that match home Hifi, none of the engineers would recognize your assertion of truth, and indeed in none of the studios are the speakers the most expensive item from the dac/amp/room treatment/cabling.

And my own system? Having heard near perfect audio reproduction in the studio I knew what sound I wanted to achieve. After endless home demos along the way, only spending when an improvement was heard, I ended up with the following spends:
cdp/dac (34% of the total cost),
integrated amp (38% of total cost),
speakers (14%),
cables/rack/grounding/isolation (14% - and yes, these have made as important a contribution as the speakers).

The sound I have achieved is not as perfect as the mastering studios, but it’s pretty amazing.

The difference is, I would never say that you or anyone, should follow my spending allocation, nor that of the studios, nor that of the OP. Every person is different, every room is different, every system is different. Let people find their own truths and please stop proclaiming yours as THE truth.
glupson
7,842 posts
 
duckworp,

Never having set a foot in a studio, save for Compass Point with no music playing, it was interesting to read your short observations of them. I wish you elaborated more on that, but it is probably a topic for some other thread.

Despite agreeing with you 100% on...

The difference is, I would never say that you or anyone, should follow my spending allocation, nor that of the studios, nor that of the OP.
I think you are a bit harsh on OP. I had a feeling he simply made his thoughts public, rather than preaching that is the only way it should be done. More like an advice to a friend who is asking for help navigating. Maybe I misunderstood it.

When I was growing up, I heard that half of your budget should go to speakers and the rest would be divided between whatever sources you chose. It was to be some golden rule. Has anyone else heard of that logic? It just stuck with me and I, not intentionally, happen to have achieved almost perfect equilibrium these days.
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