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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
prof
3,435 posts
 
duckworp,

Whether all DACs sound the same or not (and I think many that some presume sound different may not actually be distinguishable when you don't know which you are listening to)....

...I think it's certainly defensible that DAC maturity reached a point - and quite a while ago - where one doesn't have to spend a lot of money to get accurate, high fidelity sound, hence it wouldn't make sense to rank DACs high on the scale of an important place to spend your money.
A good DAC is easy to find and not very expensive.  So concentrating money and time on, say, better speakers, room acoustics, proper amp matching etc are going to make more sense.
phomchick's avatar
phomchick OP
209 posts
 
DACs are mature technology and above the $800 point they pretty much all sound the same TO ME
ftfy
Thank you, but you didn’t have to fix it for me. You only needed to refrain from editing out my disclaimer:

"[**]I think that[**] DACs are mature technology and above the $800 point they pretty much all sound the same, with only minor differences."
prof
3,435 posts
 
I’ll just take some issue here:

  • The electronics - preamp and amp / 4 / the amount of money wasted on $5,000 preamps and amps is amazing.

"wasted" is of course subjective and depends on the value anyone puts on something.

My current pre-amp, a Conrad Johnson tube pre-amp, retailed at around $8,000 when new (long ago), but I bought it for much less used. Still...it was pretty expensive.

I’ve tried all manner of pre-amps over the years, solid state, various tube, passive, and I’ve also bypassed pre-amps both using a digital pre-amp, and running a DAC with volume control (e.g. Benchmark) direct in to my amps.

In general I always found I lost one thing, gained another. I own my current pre-amp because it is, to my perception, the best combination of everything I was looking for - a sense of transparency that approached bypassing a pre-amp, yet without the darkening of tone I always found when bypassing a pre-amp, combining fabulous clarity with a tube-like ease to the presentation. I value that hard-to-find combination quite highly so the price paid was far from"wasted" in my estimation.

I would make a similar case for my tube amp (CJ monoblocks).

YMMV of course.

(And, that said, I certainly don't think you need to spend lots of money for "good" or "accurate" sound in many cases regarding amps and pre-amps).


craigl59
307 posts
 

My preference is for a DAC/Pre and the new RME ADI-2 unit just released offers full preamp flexibilities in a single half-rack space. Also have an Emotiva XMC-1, which is brilliantly designed/based on a Linux computer, and use it for a 5-channel control box where it works fine. The converters, however, are far less accurate than the RME ones.

Disagree with phomchick's assessment of DACs over $800 sounding the same. Currently have over 10 DA converters (home and studio) ranging from Oppo, to Audient, to Emotiva, to RME and find they all sound different. The amount of difference depend on how good the rest of the system is (and especially speaker quality). The newly-released RME converter has made a large improvement in my stereo system -- all reviewers and owners have noted its startling realism. Sadly, they are VERY hard to get -- RME misjudged their appeal and has not been able to catch up with production.

The Preamp question is also impacted by computer capabilities. JRiver allows you to add plugins to its DSP Studio. For a number of years have used apQualizr (a German app) in conjunction with REW to tune my stereo room. It has impressive EQ capabilities but is not ergonomic. In the studio world, the standard EQ plugin is FabFilter and it is worth the price (about $180).

Think we are headed in this plugin direction for all room correction and DSP functions and believe it is better handled there in order to achieve the best audio quality.

stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,366 posts
 
re: cables.....in my experience, cables sound different when connected to different components....its the components' reaction with the cable that makes/breaks the effect.  
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