Since you’re being entry-level for your post, you made no mention of any of your cables.
It’s normal at first to hope that cables don’t matter too much. But, after you try spending $300 for a cable for your best piece of gear, even though it hurts your wallet, it’s a whole new world of upgrading, where a cable swap can make your gear sound like the version that was 2 models up the line, except it will still be at a place where the standard cable wasn’t giving that piece very much love.
I didn’t want cables to be upgrades at first, but after buying the same cheap $60 power cable for 5 items, and it worked for the slight improvement of everything in my signature, I am now happily planning on spending 2x as much for a system that will easily beat all of my components with only standard cabling on them, it’s just going to have to be too bad for my wallet.
No sleep lost after finding out I COULD spend money on cables that will make my components beat what they are at first. Nobody has to, and my system is already amazing with it’s choice of components on cheap cables. Actually, I prefer being able to only spend $1k on a power cable, digital in, or analogue out cable to upgrade my $2.5k DAC, rather than having to find a DAC that beats mine for ~$3.5k, but with just stock cabling on either.
A system with cheap unpurified cabling will not be able to make it to sounding "special" to critical listeners. Same with my expensive pro monitor. The reviewer who loved it, and proved it’s benchmarks were top of it’s class, still didn’t mention putting even a $60 better power or signal cable on possibly the best monitor in the world, so too bad for him, (even though I don’t want to be mean to him, I’d tell him about it, too).
So, lots of people will tell you that upgrading your earliest cables will make everything work better, but I splurged for an Uber headphone cable first, and it opened up a big clear window to any changes I make to anything before it. You’ll have to wait for my next USB cable upgrade to hear about whether or not I think that makes more difference than the last cable getting upgraded, headphone/speaker cable. Of course, each cable should be getting it’s upgrades, and you will be able to guess hearing a weakness of any part without full power/in/out cable upgrades.
Today, I have a $1k power cable arriving in the mail. I will replace the $300 one on my DAC with it, since I’m choosing the DAC as the recipient of power cable Numero Uno. I will also listen for 2 or 3 days learning how the new one is different than the $300 one, before I upgrade the bridge in front of my DAC with the $300 one also. Oh shoot, I can’t wait to hear what that sounds like! Nope, discipline and restraint will let me learn what the $1k Cardas cable alone is doing differently, better. Then, it will isolate the improvement to my bridge, after that swap next. Hey, it’s going to be neato getting to shuffle cables down the chain, now that I’m getting into paying more for my cables!
