I’m not taking sides here - because "it depends". Yes a system is only as strong as its weakest link. I’ll go one further, no component sounds good, but some distort the sound less than others..
That said, i do think that within reason, speakers have the most variation, both in style and in quality. Bear in mind this comes from someone who designs - and occasionally makes money from - everything **except** speakers. I have every reason to say the opposite.
But as pointed out above, you heard the differences in part because you have revealing speakers. And somewhere along the line, the electronics didn’t totally lose what you created with your new source.
At the given state of the art i would postulate this: The easiest thing to make good sounding, at a reasonable price, is an amp/preamp combo. I can get good sound, reliably, at low cost - not perfect, but remarkably good. The recipe is known. Turntables and speakers on the other hand deal with mechanical issues and materials science. Size and mass matter (e.g.; as much mass as possible for the platter and as little as possible for the cantilever assembly). Big cabinets cost. Vibrations must be tamed. Blah, blah.
Digital is still the wild west and begin tamed. There are big differences in everything from source jitter to DACs (let’s put aside the biggest issue in digital, which is recording/mastering, and varies from superb to abysmal). In fact i just blogged on jitter and its effect on PAM. Sadly we cant control that process for any sum of money. Well, i guess you could buy every studio and run them for art rather than profit :-)
Bottom line - what you really found out is that the weak link theory is well. And that what you hear is the contribution of each and every component, added up -- PLUS the interactions between them.
Hey, if it was easy....
G
That said, i do think that within reason, speakers have the most variation, both in style and in quality. Bear in mind this comes from someone who designs - and occasionally makes money from - everything **except** speakers. I have every reason to say the opposite.
But as pointed out above, you heard the differences in part because you have revealing speakers. And somewhere along the line, the electronics didn’t totally lose what you created with your new source.
At the given state of the art i would postulate this: The easiest thing to make good sounding, at a reasonable price, is an amp/preamp combo. I can get good sound, reliably, at low cost - not perfect, but remarkably good. The recipe is known. Turntables and speakers on the other hand deal with mechanical issues and materials science. Size and mass matter (e.g.; as much mass as possible for the platter and as little as possible for the cantilever assembly). Big cabinets cost. Vibrations must be tamed. Blah, blah.
Digital is still the wild west and begin tamed. There are big differences in everything from source jitter to DACs (let’s put aside the biggest issue in digital, which is recording/mastering, and varies from superb to abysmal). In fact i just blogged on jitter and its effect on PAM. Sadly we cant control that process for any sum of money. Well, i guess you could buy every studio and run them for art rather than profit :-)
Bottom line - what you really found out is that the weak link theory is well. And that what you hear is the contribution of each and every component, added up -- PLUS the interactions between them.
Hey, if it was easy....
G