2. music
  3. 168966-162547

Bad recordings and high end audio

Hello. Have decided that the kids are out of the house and I can dedicate some space and money to my long ignored hobby. What is different now is there are so few audio stores. I firmly believe in listening to products so thus I start this great new chapter of my life. The first 2 stores I went to the people were very patient with me and I listened to a ton of combinations. They asked me did I want to hear anything else and I said  yes, ummm,.. how about Led Zeppelin? I received the same response from both stores which was “all Led Zeppelin recordings are horrible” except for this one version of Led Zeppelin 2…blah blah. So I said what happens if I am at home and i have a desire to play Led Zeppelin or another perceived poor recording? They did not have an answer for me nor did they play Led Zeppelin lol . I ended up ordering a pair of Magnepan 3.7i’s from a different store. 13 weeks until I get them, ouch. I am going to guess that people do listen to poor recordings on great systems because you just want to hear a particular album, right? Or am I missing something? Just looking for a bit of insight. Yes, I know they want it to sound the best so I will buy it but is that the only motivation. Or maybe they hate Led Zeppelin, lol.
daydream816
jond's avatar
jond
5,852 posts
 
A good system will extract the essence of poor recordings, they may not sound better but you should be more involved in them if that makes any sense?


BTW look at good sounding high current SS amps for your Maggies and congrats on the new speakers!
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,318 posts
 
+1. @jond involvement is the thing. 
ghdprentice
7,093 posts
 
I pulled up a copy of Stairway to Heaven from Qobuz, it is remastered an 24bit/96khz. Sounds very good. But then I don’t have a ear bleeding kind of system.

Someone recommended a Pass amp. I think that would be a great choice, a pass x350.x would give the Maggie’s the most punch you are going to get from them. Couple that with the best Audio Research tube preamp and you would have the punch, detail and musicality of a great system. Assuming you have good sources of course. I owned a Pass x350 for over ten years with a ARC preamp and ribbon speakers. I have auditioned Maggie’s many times set up per my request. They sounded spectacular… just can’t get early exposure to electrostatics out of our mind, can we.
russ69's avatar
russ69
3,520 posts
 
"...just can’t get early exposure to electrostatics out of our mind, can we..."

Maggies are planner magnetic or quasi ribbon if you prefer, not electrostatic. The more expensive models have ribbon tweeters. .
daydream816 OP
38 posts
 
Wow! Thank you, thank you, thank you. You guys have  given me a ton of awesome suggestions and comments. I apologize as I did not stick a budget out there. I unfortunately do not have an unlimited budget. I would like to try and keep the rest of the system under 10k. I have a turntable to use. That would be the top of my current limit. This is a tough as I would like to do it less expensive then that. There are so many comments I like to acknowledge but can catch everyone. I did look at the Pass Lab stuff and thought they were out of my price range. Now I did not look at used stuff, I am open for that but would seriously be looking at your guys guidance. I can see myself collecting and searching for nice pressing as an extension of this hobby. Tape was always my dream when I was young and I see it is still around and expensive lol. I do have a tendency to overthink and over analyze. I live in Southeast Michigan. They have just one Magnepan dealer in the area. I did drive to another store that was a few hours away that said they had maggies and only had 1.7’s set up, they neglected to tell me this was the only pair they had and then really pushed B&W’s. I am going to read through your responses again and see if I can provide more information if needed.  I appreciate it each response! I am very excited to get this journey going. 
More to discover