How competitive are you with your system?

@toddalin please post an audio recording/video of the same song playing on your system. Based on the result you may have to reconsider the part that mine in not great. Looking forward to listening to your system playing back this same track.

I don’t have it and I don’t stream to the audio system.

I am lucky that my computer monitor is a classic Advent system that does a really good job with nearfield monitoring. 

And the reason I can tell that it does a good job is that when I listen to recordings of my system, it sounds true to what I hear in the other room except that on the computer in a recording I can much better hear the effects of the room.  And of course you loose much of the soundstage and imaging.

@toddalin  Ok I see. Try to find it on CD. He was a great singer and all his albums have gems. By the way, your system sounds very good. Better than many high dollar systems.

Thanks,

Consider the room and electronics and recognize, what are those high dollar systems really going to sound like?  

Well, I do not see myself in competition with others but, rather, trying to achieve the best sound quality at the cost level I can afford.  Some can spend more than me, some can spend less, but I think the joy or satisfaction comes from being able to assemble a realistic sounding system at whatever price level one can afford.  I am sure others with more money can do better, but I believe I am doing well at the level I can afford.  Thus, the competition, if any, is against the absolute standard of perfection, however one describes that … but with the realization that we probably will NOT achieve true perfection.  We can achieve, however, a level of realism that is very satisfying. As part of that we need to recognize that we have differing tastes, differing hearing, and that “different” sounds are not necessarily “better” or “worse.”  Sometimes they are just “different,” and we can—and often do—perceive them differently.