How do you know when a stereo sounds good?

Ted, look at it this way. If your system costs less than $100,000 you have a ways to go. I'm not joking. This is the only measure I can use to give you some idea on what I think it takes to build a system that I would be happy with. Your own happiness is up to you. It is more about values. How much are you willing to spend for better sound. None of us have systems that can not benefit from something somewhere. Technology always advances.

mijostyn

5,486 posts

12-01-2021 7:28am

Ted, look at it this way. If your system costs less than $100,000 you have a ways to go. I’m not joking. This is the only measure I can use to give you some idea on what I think it takes to build a system that I would be happy with. Your own happiness is up to you. It is more about values. How much are you willing to spend for better sound. None of us have systems that can not benefit from something somewhere. Technology always advances.

i hear systems all the time that cost a lot but fail to impress. In fact audiophiles with “shiny box syndrome“, seldom have great sounding systems unless they also pay attention to set up/synergy. I’ve heard systems with modest speakers and electronics outperform six-figure systems, and by a wide margin. This is because while the millionaire audiophile may have all the best shiny boxes, oftentimes they fail to pay attention to set up whereas the guy on a budget, may not have the money for the best gear, but he pays attention to set up and so, gets good sound. Ultimately tuning on anything other than your own subjective enjoyment, like spending a lot of money on shiny boxes and assuming that will give great sound, seldom yields great results. And I’m not saying measurements are not important, they are, especially when pairing electronics with speakers, or dealing with low frequencies in a state of the art listening room, but ultimately if you’re not tuning based on what sounds good to you, you’re not going to get a system that sounds good to you. This should make sense to most successful audiophiles.

Yours in music,

Ted Denney III

Lead Designer/CEO Synergistic Research Inc.

hilde45

This will be my last post on this subject. You said: "That's not a question I can make sense of without some kind of science fiction scenario." Not being able to make sense of it sounds to me like it was meaningless to you.

The whole point of my first reply to you was that I think you misconstrued the  original question so construing it in another way that changes the intent and meaning of the question does no good.

And you were the one that wrote "science fiction scenario" but can't elaborate on it? Now that seems very strange.

First, I have to address @aewarren's post. Unless you like to whine, Adele will never be listenable. If I didn't speak the same language as Adele and didn't interpret every song as a whine fest, perhaps I may like her. Unfortunately, short of a brain injury that is not going to happen.

@winnardt , i sort of see where @hilde45 is coming from, and perhaps it is the crux of Ted's post. Without a "reference" how do you know if your system is good or bad? And even with a reference, how do you know that the reference is good. From there, what is "good". Quite obviously one audiophiles good is another's crap. People will say "when it sounds like a live performance" ... what venue, where are you sitting, what was your mood, what was your concentration level. Even for a live recording, what is on the recording is never any more than what the recording/mixing engineer thought it should sound like with their system and their ears and brain.

I will take a different tact. Few people have the tools or knowledge, and far fewer the inclination to do the work and understand what, for them, or even in general, "sounds good". You can only "explore" what sounds good, even to you, when you can control for variables. Some of the people who have done this over time we know very well, i.e. everyone knows who Floyd Toole is, perhaps the king of "measurements" in audio, but no one questions that because the result of his measurements is targeted at what we prefer, in general, subjectively. One could say the same about Nelson Pass who intentionally makes amplifiers that are not accurate, never really claims they are except for specific aspects, and who even communicates and markets as such to suit the tastes of his customers. Then there are people behind the scenes intentionally adding distortion and even noise because they know for their target audience, in general the result will be preferred. Floyd, Nelson, and the people behind the scenes learned all this by controlling variables (which includes mood and bias).

I got a private message on my first day, suggesting a look at system pictures, as it would be eye opening. It was. I thought most hard core audiophiles would spend far more time and money on their listening space. I was wrong. How can these people know if their system sounds "good" if they don't even know what their system is capable of or what could be wrong with it?

How do I know my system sounds good?  I know the distortion of my speakers is low. I know the distortion of my electronics is low. I know the on-axis frequency response is flat. I know the off axis response is smooth and controlled and room response is close (but not exact to what Toole and others recommend). I tuned that to my liking, including too much time on acoustics and an unhappy handyman/carpenter. I suspect age may play into my preference for a more elevated high frequency response.

Does this guarantee that my system "sounds good". No. Does my many audiophile buddies saying "wow" when they hear it suggest it sounds good? Possibly.

Here is the crux, everything, including my turntable goes through DSP. I know, heresy! That means I can control everything. Want the system warmer, it is warmer. Want some nice tube distortion (also another form of warm), you got it. Want to center the image a bit, throw in some crosstalk. Want a perceived wider soundstage/concert hall, through in a touch of reverb. I still don't have that one where I want it yet. For me personally, it is normally pass-through, though I find with some music and my mood, the tube "simulation" sounds better to me. When I have friends over who are die hard tube fans, they are amazed that with a few buttons I can turn the system into something they associate with tubes. Some really like the touch of reverb, but I don't think it sounds right yet.

How do I know my system sounds good? Because I built the best "reference" I could within budget and time limits, which gave me a system I could isolate variables with which allowed me to explore what I like and which sounded good to me, but which I could adapt to others preference or my moods. There are some things I want to try to give me even more flexibility, but time is never our friend.