How competitive are you with your system?

@bjesien 

Great satire...sounded like the orange one, on any subject 😄

My system is the best system ever. We’re talking tone like you wouldn’t believe. Texture is off the charts.  Soundstage? So wide it makes your living room feel like Madison Square Garden. I’ve had audiophiles — big-time people, very serious ears — come over and they’re trembling. Tears in their eyes. One guy said it was better than his wedding day. Everyone says it.

It’s a fascinating pursuit- music is magical and putting together a system to get the best out of the resources I’m able and willing to spend is challenge enough. 
 

I note, however, that for a decidedly uncompetitive group we frequently engage in heated, sometimes vicious discussions concerning tubes vs transistors, the effect of cables, switches, fuses, crystals, vinyl vs. streaming, the meaning of measurements, cheap vs expensive, and so on.

cognitive dissonance.

@thebrokenrecord  My most recent experiences of being Social are within what I refer to as my Local HiFi Group. 

The Local HiFi Group come about as a result of my having travelled 200 miles north from my home attend a Forum Annual Show and demonstrate my system.

Individual who come forward to ask to add their own device into my system introduced themselves, and the result of one introduction was that two individuals were living 40 miles east of my home and were part of a local audio group. Contact Numbers were swapped and the rest is history, this is nearly 10 years ago.

Prior to this In the Old Old Days I would communicate with Individuals at events and suggest a meet was worthwhile at another time, to demonstrate certain devices that were of interest, this evolved on the 00's into meeting others at Public Invite Forum Events and Private Invite Forum Events. Friends are made and then Private Invites become more of the norm.

Today recent friends made in the Local Audio Club, travel with me on occasion to meet with friends made at earlier times.

Much of my listening is done to day as a Social Get Together, this is how I started out with my enthusiasm for music, meeting friends and heading off to see a live performance in a small venue, this is maintained but with a difference being recorded music is the interest. I still do do live music on occasion, I even put the Home System Powered On for the Grandchildren to get in front of an have supervised dance, and that is very very joyful to be taking part in, especially seeing the Video of the Grandad Moves.     

Certainly comparison doesn't have to be competitive in the sense one is ranking their system against others, but I'd have never developed a reference for how I wanted my system to sound if I hadn't heard 'reference' systems. From this I desired to achieve this 'reference' sound in my own system. Question then becomes, can desire be completely devoid of competitiveness? I could also use the work ambition in place of desire. I find it odd so many resistant to the idea of competitiveness in audio, since when did ambition become a negative with no redeeming qualities?

Matthew,

Have you tried Parcheesi?

Not yet, but my system is so competitive that this afternoon it challenged me to a bench-press contest.

Matt, are you hearing voices in your head? Was your system turned on at the time?

My system was down all day and I asked "what’s wrong?"

"I am the worst,  even a soundbar can beat me" it said. "I wish we were more competitive" 

My system challenges me to a fight every time i turn it on.

We have a saying in our house- “comparison is the thief of joy”. So I don’t compare and my kids don’t compare to other kids and their families. It works very well. 

@goodlistening64  Thanks for the nudge.  I’m not sure I’ve got the same passion for golfing anymore, but maybe I’ll give it another shot.  I’d have to dust off the clubs and see if my swing still works!

I've had the Lintons set up that way in my living room for a while. In my case, the missing piece was the right DAC—something I hadn’t been able to find until I finally settled on the Topping D90 III Discrete and the Harmony micro DAC.  It’s great to know you’ve also endorsed a similar setup. 

I enjoy music. Always have. Blessed to be able to indulge myself in some good stuff in my retirement. Wow! What fun! I have some upgrades in mind, but the end point is very close and I’m really not interested in impressing anyone else except myself. 
Cheers to all. Unfortunately we are a dying breed. 

Hard to frame it in those terms. Many variables. 

I've tried to whip some competitive interest from my gear, but I'd done it in jest and it was interpreted as a challenge to mess with my mind and patience....
Ground faults, 100db feedbacks, 24/7 test tone sweeps with the volume on mute....(speakers are all passives, so no reason to involve them.....like nuk'ng Switzerland for going 'Huh?'.....).....dialing down the ac from 110.....105....104.5...

Nope.
'Bout as competitive as roadkill....

I'm fine with the current stasis locally....Always room to improve, but that's not the 'end all be all' of it by my means or desires at this time.

Yes, there's the basic 'enjoyment', but 'serious' gets applied in contrast to my diy's in some respect or qualities....and one can only guess at what I'm up to...🤷‍♂️😏

I enjoy what I have.  Love leads to contentment.  Comparing leads to jealousy and misery.  

Being competitive with an audio system would be even worse than keeping score at golf - not only would it suck the fun out of listening to music but there would be no universal metric to score the results.  Just dumb.

Mine is not competitive at all.  It just sits there unmotivated until I turn it on.  I suspect that it is putting in minimum effort to please me.  it is like owning a cat.  Still, I do like it a lot.

What would my system be competing for anyway, even if it were motivated.  Is there a goal, a standard of excellence, a competitive mark to hit?  Given that there is no consensus standard by which a system can be compared to, I think it is sensible that my system has chosen to just sit there and do its least.

0% for me.

Op nice thread. I only like to listen to other system to see what is out there and learn . At axpona I heard an amazing system that made me feel and think Iam on the venue listening on live concert . The system is Wilson speakers and Dan Agostinos gear.set up by Quintessence. My question is can I achieved that performance in a very small way? I did try , only when I got my x1 Borensen speakers I felt I am feeling the experienced in a small way . That’s good enough for me.My friends long time ago when we listen they always say in my system it sounds like this and so on? They drove me crazy.not good to compare and compete in this hobby.

I think it’s stupid to compare or worse rank my system with anyone else. Sounds like teenager stuff. Just enjoy the music without stupid games that make one look like they are 12 years old.

OP - Interesting topic. Once a year after I come home from a HiFi show I turn on my system and smile. That’s as close as I get to competitive.

Always room to improve

no pun intended @asvjerry 

I like my system.

No interest in comparisons.

Do you try to rank your system with others’?    NO
Or are you content with enjoying your rig for what it is? YES

Not sure if "competitive" is the correct term here.

I think a better question would be "how do you brag about your system and, if so, to who and how often..?"

Hard to be 'competitive' when the vast majority of hobbyist 'alumni' interactions are virtual and not in person. Yes, virtually you can share photos, video, audio - but (obviously) the quality of something audiophile-caliber shared online is no where near the in-person experience.

But you can certainly brag about your gear without anyone having to actually be in the same listening room with you... 

In those sort of crazy car stereo competitions, there was a criteria and a fixed goal--how loud can you get your system to play.  But, unless you have that same criteria for your home audio, I don't see it as a competition is there is no way to establish a "winner."  The only bragging rights would be for "how much was spent" which is at least objective, but does not say much else about the sound.  I am definitely NOT into even that sort of competition--few people have seen my system and I certainly DON'T want anyone to know how much it costs; most people would think it mad.  

I could more think more deeply about my competitive nature and how it relates to audio, but I am not one to duel others by recording system playback to phones and uploading those recordings to YouTube. 

IMO, I was not in competition, but rather trying to learn what is this high end audio really mean to me, just me. All this just started during covid lock down. How does a certain bracket of $$ affect the sound. As i journey to this hobby, i heard what replacing a component (from amps to source to cables) do. After getting what i can afford and attending recent Audio Shows, making changes, I feel/think (based on my wallet :) ) i have reached a level wherein I am happy now. 

Another thing that was on side was I was able to travel outside the US and purchased gear from other countries and took it back home. 

I know that in this hobby, everyone has their opinion and believe that we all have what got to make our system the best. And, I truly respect that because we all hear music differently. so no competition..

"The only bragging rights would be for "how much was spent" which is at least objective, but does not say much else about the sound."

That would depend on your crowd.  Those at AK typically take the opposite approach..., i.e., "how little was spent for the results obtained".

Unfortunately, it is impossible to accurately portray all aspects of the "results obtained" over the net and this requires attendance at the venue.

BUT, a good YouTube video can go a long way, and while you’ll never portray all the nuance, you will hear anomalies in the response and get a good idea of what the system is capable of, and you will know if it is garbage.  Of course this assumes that you have a fairly neutral playback system on which to hear the videos or listen over good headphones and the video was well done.

@mwinkc I only know people with the best ears. They come listen and they won't leave. I can't get them out. They will tell you. :)

toddalin

... a good YouTube video can go a long way, and while you’ll never portray all the nuance, you will hear anomalies in the response and get a good idea of what the system is capable of ...

YouTube uses lossy audio - not unlike mp3 files - and it sounds like it. The visual component adds no value. YT just can’t tell you much about how a system sounds. Of course many people are happy with lossy audio. Just look at the popularity of Spotify!

I don't see how any reasonable evaluation via youtube is possible.  First, it takes a master recording engineer to do a recording properly and good microphones cost many thousands of dollars each, and many are needed so that the right microphone for the job can be selected.  Even with all of that, how will one know that the recording is faithful to the original without playing it back on a system which has its own sound; the only way to sort of close the loop is to hear the system in its original venue and hear the recorded playback immediately on multiple systems to confirm that the recording is reasonably faithful.  And even if you have that, the youtube watcher has a completely different system coloring the results such that any comparison is hopelessly flawed.  The only way to compare systems is to hear them in person, and the result is a purely individual, subjective assessment, not all that useful unless there was a big panel of judges that makes it sort of like a baking contest--the "winner" is a rough consensus choice.

Any "contest" comparing systems is NOT about the sound because there is never a valid sonic comparison.  It is about something else--how nice something looks, how much was spent or how little was spent, or how may pieces made the Stereophile category A list, etc.  

@cleeds

That’s because you don’t know how to use it.

It will tell you if a system has a smooth frequency response in the room and if there are peaks and nodes (assuming a good recording).

Also, to do this, you need to go back and find the original direct transfer and that is what you are comparing the system too.

You are not listening to "what it sounds like" but rather "how close does it sound to the direct transfer" when listening on your quality monitoring system.

If you do comparisons in this manner, you will hear what the room sounds like as well as deviations in the system.

Sure, you loose imaging, soundstage, and the like, but you can tell trash from treasure.

I don’t care what others think of mine. There’s  likes are no business of mine. 

I'm kind of anti-competitive. 

I see speakers or gear on Stereophile and think "Wow, I've got a better sounding system than that and I only paid 10% of the cost!" 

My take is that I think it’s almost impossible not to wonder how your system compares to others’.  I believe it’s human nature. 

Generally speaking, as a principle I avoid comparing to others like the plague.  
When one compares, the creative mind can always find examples of others better than you AND examples of others worst than you.  The former can lead to feelings of envy/resentment, while the later can lead to feelings/attitude of superiority/pridefulness - both to be avoided.

In high-end audio, we strive to build our systems to be subjectively sonically pleasing, realizing that it’s not the same as a live event (reality), but can get very close at times depending on equipment and subject preferences.

@rvpiano - normally, after significant investment in time, resources, and effort, we are supposed to have increasing satisfaction with our systems as we raise subjective sonics in our system building.  I highly suspect it’s not a “comparison” issue with you, but rather a dissatisfaction/disappointment with the Sonics of your current system - if you loved your Sonics, you wouldn’t be looking elsewhere.  If you are disappointed that it doesn’t sound like reality/live music, then you have an unrealistic comparison as audio chains are at best a facsimile of reality, and the quality of recordings are all over the map.  

I don't know how or why my system got so darned competitive; I'd like to think that it was just an innate flaw in its nature and nothing that I did, but I am sure that it is probably due to mistakes I made when it was in its formative years.

If you think about it, if one were to use AI, they could do a digital rendition of a direct transfer and the recording and have the program "overlay" them looking at any differences in the bits.  The fewer the differences, the higher the score?

I did not realize that I was supposed to build a system that competed with other. I built it for my listening pleasure 🤦‍♂️

Mihorn has shown my case.

Here is the direct transfer:

https://youtu.be/CoOp12ayIVg

And his wavetouch version:

https://youtu.be/lM-vtW-bygs

Load them in separate browsers and listen alternately back and forth at the same volume level.

Ignore soundstage/imaging/separation.  These are not comparable unless close-up micing is used and even then the playback equipment may not support it for what it is in the room.

OK...,  it doesn’t matter what you are listening on if it is decent.

Where did the bass go???

Where did the harmonics go?

Why does it now sound "boxed in" and not open?

The closer one gets to the direct transfer, the higher it scores.

What matters to me is whether I'm moved by my system.

I’ve had friends with far more costly rigs. They sounded very nice but didn’t actually draw me into the music any more deeply than mine. 

I don’t know how you can compare subjective listening experiences, let alone rate them, especially given that dfferent guys prioritize different aspects of said experience.

Sure, you can do it based on dollars spent. Not anything I’m interested in spending time doing, but as they say, "different strokes".

And how do you account for the fact that spending more doesn’t guarantee better sound? 

@kennyc 

i sometimes wonder just how my system ranks with other systems, although I’m very happy with the sound I have — think it’s among the best I’ve ever heard. 
 It’s interesting that the majority of the many people answering the question claim they are not competitive.  Why do they bother responding to this thread if it didn’t occur to them at some point how others’ systems sounded.

Is it not " How System Curious Are You? " in place of 

" How competitive are you with your system? "

I stand by the notion it is curiosity that has been the underlying character trait that has led me to discover and experience a large range of audio systems and as a result at certain time have made extremely influential experiences.

toddalin   --- Mihorn has shown my case. 

  -- Here is the direct transfer:  ttps://youtu.be/CoOp12ayIVg

  -- And wavetouch version: https://youtu.be/lM-vtW-bygs

Ignore soundstage/imaging/separation.  These are not comparable unless close-up micing is used and even then the playback equipment may not support it for what it is in the room.

Where did the bass go??? Where did the harmonics go? Why does it now sound "boxed in" and not open?

Hello,  

The purpose of hi-end audio is recreating the original music. My system recreates the orig music faithfully. My room isn't recording studio. So, my video includes the sound of my room (with minimal acoustic treatment).

My system consists same simple gears at shows and at home for videos. The Show 2021  Microphones in my recording are 6ft from speakers. You can see in this which I speak and record music non-stop. 

Where the bass go? My speakers woofer is 5.25" and goes down to 44hz (-6db) and I like it. When I want more bass, a sub can be added easily - 2024 audio show (w/sub). 

Sound boxed in? Not open? - my system sounds the most neutral, open and cleaner than any system in the world. 

My system's sound-stage and images (especially mid-range) are the most life-like. Compare Wavetouch vs. others below. Every ears are different. You might like different from my liking. Alex/Wavetouch audio

Original - FINK

Wavetouch audio - FINK 

Focal - FINK ,   Thiel - FINK ,  PMC - FINK ,  Montemer Horn-FINK ,  Avantgarde -FINK

@mihorn 

In the YouTube listening exercise laid out in your above post, the recording of the Thiel 3.7 sounds closest to the Original, followed by the recording of the Avantgarde.

For what it's worth.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, I'm not sure it is worthwhile to compare lossy audio of different systems recorded in different rooms by different people with different recording devices and different recording skills; however, the sonic differences between the various videos are striking.

I let the sound of my systems speak for themselves. I never hesitate to let others hear their sound qualities, which can be discerned even through audio recordings of them embedded in YouTube videos. In my head, I know where their sound quality ranks & how it compares to others systems I have heard and it is always, in the words of the great Bad Brains, “I Against I”. 

My system challenges me to a fight every time i turn it on.

Are you gladiator? Who are you going to fight with? Why do you wish to pick up the fight?

It’s interesting that the majority of the many people answering the question claim they are not competitive.  Why do they bother responding to this thread if it didn’t occur to them at some point how others’ systems sounded.

Just don’t force the issue. Most of the AGs here aren’t interested in competing with each other’s systems. Rather, they respond to posts like this to express their views on what they believe is the right or healthy attitude. In my opinion, your goal should be to assess how closely your system can reproduce the sound of a live performance on stage. The evaluation criteria can include timbre accuracy, tonal balance, soundstage, imaging, detail retrieval, and so on.

That said, my observation suggests that something may be lacking in your system. For example, in a previous thread, you highly praised a particular CD—a compilation of excerpts from various classical masterworks. As I noted at the time, in some tracks the cello timbre seemed off, and the mixing lacked proper center-stage image / focus. The music appeared to come only from the extreme left and right channels. Furthermore, since the CD is just a collection of excerpts, it feels disjointed—something many classical listeners wouldn’t even find appealing.

I didn’t mention all this earlier out of politeness. But if your system is truly as outstanding as you’ve claimed, why didn’t it reveal those flaws to you? Is your setup capable of exposing such deficiencies? If not, I wonder—how competitive is it, really?

@rvpiano 

Why do they bother responding to this thread if it didn’t occur to them at some point how others’ systems sounded.

I very much doubt there’s anyone here who has never considered how others’ systems sound. I thought the whole focus of your thread was whether it matters and to what degree. For some of us, it simply doesn’t matter much.  And now you’re saying that somehow disqualifies us from participating? Weird. I’ll know to steer clear next time. 

@rvpiano 

Why do they bother responding to this thread if it didn’t occur to them at some point how others’ systems sounded.

Curiosity is different from competitiveness. In addition, I believe one can enjoy improving their system based on what gear and new innovations are out there, as well as their own budget, without viewing it as a competition with others.

@lanx0003 said,

In my opinion, your goal should be to assess how closely your system can reproduce the sound of a live performance on stage.

Certainly to each their own but, my goal is for my system to sufficiently allow me to enjoy listening to music in my home.

Weird. Yes I agree. For myself I have a listening environment that gives me much enjoyment, relaxation, fun and something I look forward to do, listen to music in all its wonderful glory and nuances. Why would I want to bring competition into it? It seems to me…to be counterproductive. I have been part of groups including other audiophiles who are really tremendous and cool. We listen and enjoy and sometimes share advice, often we offer unfamiliar artists and songs to explore new music. Above all we enjoy our time with the music. If I were really into competition or ranking, I wouldn’t really be able to enjoy the hobby the way I do. As for others who have a competitive nature, try something different and just enjoy the music??