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.
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.