Which is the most important part of a stereo system?

The most important part of the stereo is bragging about how much money I spent.

After that, the room.

rbyington711,

I get where you’re coming from but personally I think the camera and recording studio analogy works a bit better. Wouldn’t you agree that it’s the microphones and lenses that do the vital capturing work?

Maybe a loudspeaker is more like the monitor you might use to later view the captured image.

Couldn't a poor loudspeaker be likened to a poorly calibrated monitor, introducing far more serious distortions than anything else in the chain?

Come to think of it, even a good loudspeaker will do that, just far less obviously.

Unfortunately recorded audio, existing in a circle of confusion without any established standards or reference points, does not yet have the equivalent of an international colour chart as used in photography (or film/TV).

So loudspeaker playback can only be an approximated guess at what was put down on tape, unlike a well calibrated monitor which can accurately reproduce what was captured on film.

Going further, maybe the captured image should be likened to the finished recording. Once it’s finished, very little can be done to improve it. For sure scratches and dropouts can be repaired the same way Photoshop etc can repair damaged prints but nothing can improve the captured resolution.

You know when you mentioned a $2000 lens I recalled a glossy black and white photograph taken of my sister at school back in the mid 1970s.

We still have this photo and to this day it remains amazingly sharp. None of the many many photographs since have come as close to that one for sheer image precision. It’s almost uncannily detailed and sharp.

Unless I ask her, and unless she remembers, I’m going to assume that it must have been an excellent camera placed on a tripod!

Or maybe the photographer just got lucky. Could happen!?

I can’t help you with the Marantz issue except to say that my experiences with Marantz (1 amp and 2 CD players) has shown them to be unusually reliable products. The only fault was with the CD remote control which needed cleaning and reassembly after many many years.

http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/10/audios-circle-of-confusion.html?m=1

Rbyington I get your analogy perfectly and just recently improving my source improved everything else down the line especially my enjoyment of listening to my favourite music however all source components are not created equal .
A new and improved dac didn’t do it , neither did new speakers or wires or anything else to the extent that I got from improving source components IE Innuos Zenith 3 server and the all in one box Innuos Phoenix USB regenerator, power supplies and data clock. 

Of course like a quality camera lens and choice of fine grain slide film back in the day the quality of the recording itself is equally important.

Your Ears.

Your Ears.

7 years ago this answer would make me cold.....Now it seems the most clear revelation from my last years journey in audio with the experiments about embeddings an audio system...


Speakers+Room+ Ears are ONE......