Huh, I change equipment to enhance the music. The issue can be what do you change to improve the musical enjoyment. If you don't know what you are doing, it can be expensive and frustrating.
Is this about music or equipment? Am I crazy or am I such a wise man lol.?
Dear Friends,
Few years ago I decided that I'm happy with my system.
Actually I love it.
In a few words:
I'm the owner of the first version of Martin Logan CLS speakers (panels have been changed twice) that I'm powering by VAC Renaissance amp. The source is a Dell touchscreen computer running Windows 10. The signal goes to the old Denon CD player that was modified by APL 20 years ago and that I will upgrade soon (maybe not). The power to the the most of the system is (horror of horrors lol.) cleaned by an old Tice Powerblock.
In addition I'm using additional Aperion Ribbon Super Tweeters for the high frequencies (ML CLS are quite soft in the high frequency department) and an old Velodyne 18" subwoofer that I'm running through Rolls SX95 filter to limit its' frequency to 32 HZ. Over 32 HZ two Martin Logan Depth subwoofers limited to +/- 45 HZ take over. The signal from DAC to the amp goes through Yamamura 6000 interconnects. I tested the system several times on different frequencies and the curve is almost flat with regards to few spikes and valleys (please pardon this non-technical description) - the only "room treatment" as you could see from my profile photo are bookshelves filled up with books I love, placed on bookshelves behind ML panels. The custom stands for ML speakers I designed and built wit a help of cabinet maker. I'm living in an apartment.
This leads me to the point of my post. A dear friend of mine is at this moment in the phase of improving the sound of his system. His step now is to get new power cords to make his system sound better. And my question is - Is this about music or equipment?
Please see the copy of my email to him and please let me know your thoughts.
"I just did the calculation. My entire system costs me about $50,000 including the changes of tubes. This is is a price if I paid a full price. Taking into the account the discounts and the lower price for used equipment such a VAC amplifier and Yamamura interconnects it would be somewhere around $40,000 spent 20-15 years ago, so considering the inflation, nowadays it still stays around $50 k.
Because I went through 5 changes of vacuum tubes that are costly (8 main driver 300B tubes and 4 6SN7 steering tubes) that were around $2,500 per change.
Now - I have in my collection around 2500 CDs. Some of them are single CDs for the cost of $15 a CD. Operas and other collections such as complete rerecordings' of Bach organ music are between $80 - $150.(I'm not mentioning Rammstein, Dr. Dre ant French hip-hop I love depending on my mood ;-)
So let's round the average cost of CD to $25 (very low estimate).
Please multiply that by 2500 CDs and we are around $60k for CDs.
To me this makes sense - the proportion is +/- 1:1
Now please talk to your "audiophile" friends.
Are they music lovers and are they are listening to the music they are passionate about, or are they the equipment lovers and they are listening to their system?
You'll be surprised by your findings.
I'm not going to comment."
I'm certain that this discussion will be entertaining.
I'm looking forward to hear your opinions - let's have some fun guys.
Love
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I am a psychologist and my first job out of graduate school was doing research in an Air Force flight simulation laboratory to understand what features of the real world flight environment were critical to pilots. The aim was to simulate only those features critical to pilot performance and ignore those things that weren't even if they were "realistic". Indeed, the scenes were not necessarily realistic in an absolute sense, but they were completely effective for the tasks that pilots needed to do. I have done similar research with acoustics and with auditory tones in products, The point is that simply trying to replicate the measurable qualities of music won't necessarily give you the best perceived sound quality and might lead you down a path of optimizing things that aren't very important to the listener. And how do you know what is important. Ah, that's where I come in. I measure perception and correlate it with physical metrics to separate the wheat from the chaff. |
"Baby, you can drive my car Slow down! Life long love of music drives/drove me to get great sounding realistic playback. And the getting into and improving playback is fun. Some kvelling* over one’s system is ok with me. (I love stereo porn too.) Yesterday I jumped up and danced (good thing our identities are obscure) to Vulfmon "Hapejji I" or maybe it was "Boogie Man" That’s the power of getting sucked in and wanting more. My kids told to me to check out Vulfmon. On it.
*(In Yiddish, kvelling (from the verb kvelln) means to feel or express immense, swelling pride and joy, especially over someone else’s accomplishments, like a child’s success, often to the point of bursting with happiness, but without the negative connotation of bragging. It’s a deep, heartfelt delight, like a parent gushing, "I’m kvelling over my son’s graduation!". I’m kvelling of my stereo.
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- 68 posts total