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Why we (often) upgrade the wrong things (first) and ignore the important things

I continue to be impressed by this person. See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jWM0NzE_us&t=50s

He argues for applying a bottleneck principle to audio upgrades: system performance is always capped by its dominant constraint, so upgrading any non-limiting component produces only incremental refinement, not genuine improvement.

The hierarchy of constraints, roughly in descending magnitude, runs: room acoustics and speaker placement (capable of 10–20 dB swings), amplifier headroom and load stability, gain structure alignment, DAC output characteristics, and finally cables. Most audiophile upgrade behavior inverts this hierarchy — people swap DACs and cables because they’re easy, not because they’re limiting.

The gist is a distinction between **audible change** and **ceiling removal**. Any swap can produce a detectable difference; only removing the dominant constraint raises the system’s maximum capability. 

He gives a way to test it. When we remove a constraint, that feels unmistakable and immediate — dynamics expand, you stop gear-monitoring and just listen — whereas novelty-driven changes require effortful attention to detect and fade in significance.

Room treatment and gain-structure analysis are effortful; cable swaps are not. Making this worse are the ways we mis-focus on novelty, which amplifies perceived differences. We think we’ve made a structural improvement but we have not, actually.

 

hilde45
dayglow
2,443 posts
 

@squared80    You have pushed the ASR and Cheap Audio Man mantra to an extreme level. Realize they are being payed to play the anti-HEA characters which might be an exaggerated or even fake act. Maybe you are being showered with "Snake Oil".

cleeds
6,559 posts
 
squared80

... there is no regulation in this industry. Snake oil salesman can lie right to your face ... it’s killing the hobby. 

Don’t be silly. The audio and music industries are subject to the same set of laws and consumer protection rules as any other industry. And from time to time, those matters do end up in court. You’ve probably heard of Tuttle v. Audiophile Music Direct, for example. Here’s a link about the case.

So, @squared80, if you can actually demonstrate fraud in the audio industry - have at it! Seek Class Action status. Imagine the riches you’ll reap!

jrareform's avatar
jrareform
190 posts
 

One thing that I don't know if it was mentioned, but although I agree that speakers and room are probably the most important factor, the amp, preamp, DAC, power delivery, source and cables all make a difference to me, probably in that order of importance.

This is to say that cables and other accessories can help a system to get more "dialed in" imo when the system is already very close to the person's ideal sound.  And yes it seems that more expensive components, unfortunately, sound better typically.  There are some exceptions of products that punch above their price point, but synergy seems to be the most important factor when determining pairings for cables etc, NOT price.  My experience with power cables at least helped me with this as I found a plain Cardas Parsec power cable beat a Nordost that retailed for 8x the price of the Cardas.  Those of you saying that expensive cables don't matter have probably not tried expensive cables.  Hate to tell you.  My friend thought he could get the chifi replica cardas etc to try to beat some shunyata gear.  The chifi stuff sits there now as he uses the expensive cabling.  Food for thought.  Don't listen to strangers on the internet.  Experiment yourself and use your brain and ears!

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