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Audio Lessons Learned - post your best advice for the newer members!

Hi,
I thought it would be great to have our longtime audiophiles post their "lessons learned" along the way.

This is not a thread to start arguments, so please do not do that.
Just a repository where newer members can go to get a few good tidbits of knowledge.

I'll start - I have been an audiophile for 50 years now.

1. Learn about how humans hear sound, and what frequencies SHOULD NOT be flat in their response.. This should be the basis for your system. "Neutral" sounding systems DO NOT sound good to the human ear. You will be unsatified for years (like I was) until you realize this.

2. I do not "chase" DACS anymore.. (I went up to 30K Dacs before realizing the newest Dac chips are now within a few % of the high end Dacs.) Do your research and get yourself a good Dac using the best new dac chips. (about 1000.00 will get you a good one) and save yourself a fortune. - This was one of the best lessons I learned (and just recently) . It allowed me to put more of the budget into room treatment, clean power, and cables which are much more important.

3. Do you want a pleasant or unpleasant sounding system?
I had many very high end systems with NO real satisfaction, until I realized
why a certain company aimed for a particular sound..

4. McIntosh:
As a high end audiophile, I regarded McIntosh as just a little above Bose for about 40 years.-- (not good)
I thought I was an elite audiophile who knew way too much about our hobby to buy equipment that was well made, but never state of the art and colored in its own way.

This was TOTALLY WRONG, as I realize now.
McIntosh goes for a beautiful sound for HUMAN ears, not for specification charts. This is not a flat response, and uses autoformers to get this gorgeous sound. If you know enough about all the other things in our hobby, such as room treatments, very clean power, and very good cables, you can bring a gorgeous sounding McIntosh system to unheard of levels. I have done this now, and I have never enjoyed my music more!

Joe55ag


joe55ag
ebm
9,311 posts
 
Making a list asap.
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Lots of really important lessons. A few of the biggies:

At the top of the list: Ignore specs. Only two specs matter: speaker sensitivity, and cartridge output. Buy speakers with sensitivity of at least 92dB, and cartridges with at least 0.5mV, and your life will be so much easier you won’t believe.

Next would be: Ignore specs. Ignore amplifier power. Since you used the first lesson your speakers will be easy to drive with only a handful of watts and so you can safely ignore power ratings. Ignore frequency response. This goes out the window the minute they go in your room, where they go and where you sit overwhelms any measurement made in an anechoic chamber, which is the way they do it, measuring in a place no one ever in the history of audio actually uses.

Finally we get to our last one, which really is Number One, which is Go and Listen! Learn to listen. It is a skill, you can learn, and you can always improve. Trust your ears! All kinds of things people will irrefutably prove, with thousands of WORDS to back it up, that something cannot possibly work, if you try then you will hear for yourself and find out if they do in fact work. So ignore the blather. Go and listen! 

But seriously, ignore specs.
stereo5's avatar
stereo5
6,380 posts
 
I have found in my 50+ years of audio, I have learned a lot, but I still have a lot to learn.  
djones51
4,947 posts
 
Looks like an advertisement for McIntosh. Nothing wrong with their equipment but you should have learned SS amps are like DACs. If you like the meters and bling that's fine but you can get a good amp a lot cheaper.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,178 posts
 
My advice is to seek out good advice from reliable sources.
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