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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
duckworp's avatar
duckworp
256 posts
 
@glupson - interestingly when I was growing up in the UK in the 80s it was the opposite to the way you describe it. The hifi mags (apparently egged on by the then-almighty Linn) were suggesting it was wise to spend half on the source. I remember distinctly they suggested a system partnering a Linn Sondek LP12 (which then was one of the most expensive turntables) with a Wharfdale Diaomond speaker (at the time about the cheapest hifi speaker on the market). This advice lasted for many many years.
twochannelami
5 posts
 
 Wow! You guys don’t know me and I give you fair warning I am old school. Spent a lot of years in the business of better audio. Got my first job selling audio at 15.
 Stick with the basics and be careful not to have a weak link in the chain. Those great speakers only sound as good as what you feed them. 
 Don’t care about the recording so much as I care about making it come through as unscathed as possible. Both sides are right about the cable thing. Good connectivity and pure copper will give you the benefit of hearing the difference in the preamp upgrade you just did with the money you saved on cables. It’s always about balance and understanding the weaknesses. Don’t care about the room either. If that’s what the band would sound like in your room then you are good. My system is in my living room not some “listening room” in the basement so other than proper placement I am limited.
 My advice to all is don’t shy away from those less than great recordings, listen longer, listen louder.
 Preamp is likely the weak link in most higher end systems.
phomchick's avatar
phomchick OP
209 posts
 
Preamp is likely the weak link in most higher end systems

This is why I got rid of my preamp, which is possible If you don’t need phono.. DAC -> AMP. My presmp is a straight wire with no gain.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
No preamp here, either. No power cords, no interconnects, no speaker cables, no fuses, no big honking transformers. They all degrade the sound. Hel-loo!
phomchick's avatar
phomchick OP
209 posts
 
“interestingly when I was growing up in the UK in the 80s it was the opposite to the way you describe it. The hifi mags (apparently egged on by the then-almighty Linn) were suggesting it was wise to spend half on the source.“
This was reasonable advice back when the source was universally vinyl.  The most important parts of the audio chain are where something mechanical  changes the domain.  This happens at the microphone, the cartridge, and the speaker. You can tell that these are important and difficult transition points, because the devices at those nodes easily sound different from one another. 

Although the DAC isn’t mechanical, some would say it is as important as the phono cartridge used to be. That isn’t my opinion. I think that DACs are mature technology and above the $800 point they pretty much all sound the same, with only minor differences. 
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