What are the odds......

I am afraid there is no odds here...Or odds are not enough which is what the OP think about....

Like buying a house or a car, buying an audio system ask less for odds than for a minimalistic search for knowledge and experience....


There is no "taste" also in good sound or in bad sound....There exist variations between systems tough,but variations are not reflective of some predetermined taste first but reflect more the many differences in systems with their embeddings dimensions....Instead of taste i prefer to speak about different perspective in sound presentation and interpretation....It is often "habits" disguised in taste....😁

We must all learn to listen... Listening experiments and experience are our personal journey and personal history...It is true for sound quality and it is true for music... Nobody is born with an immediate expertise in S.Q. acoustic nor with the irrepressible taste for Scriabin....All that is learned ....😎



A good natural timbre of an instrument is easily audible modulo a minimal experience in the listener...

Bad imaging is audible....

Harshness, or warmness, compressed soundstage, poor dynamic are all audible facts...

No tastes here....Only habits veiling or hiding limitations...



I discovered how to improve controls in mechanical electrical and acoustical dimensions where any system is embedded...It was an adventure in thinking, reading, and experimenting and funny, very rewarding....

It is the ONLY road i know....Please explain to me if there is another one, i will listen to you...But beware, my road had cost me peanuts...Costly solutions are NOT solution in my world....Anybody owning the money already can pay 500,000 bucks for a good system, no great challenge here.... It is more difficult to reach great results with 500 bucks for a system and peanuts for the embeddings controls devices.....😁

Then this is the road for me and the rest is most of the times costly upgrades...

But almost all good system, even costly one, need less an upgrade than a good embeddings controls, that is a fact....

When is good good enough? YMMV.

You answered yourself.... When you listen music without thinking too much about upgrade this is it....

All the rest is hobbying or obsessing.... We have the choice....

My best to you mapman....

MC you selectively quoted me to make your point omitting where I asserted that chance or luck alone is not enough. So we agree on that, I think.

What are the odds......

....of making a really good sounding system better?

That's a complete quote.

If it is really good odds are it is very hard to make better.

That's another one.

If it gets better all the time chances are it may not have been very good to start with.

Nothing edited there either.  

Just how much of what you write must one quote in order to no longer be "selective"? Come on, man! We all know its nothing to do with being selective. You simply think its all a matter of chance, which makes sense, especially if you don't know what you're doing. 

What are the odds of that?

“I guess it’s safe to say when the odds are against you luck or chance alone will not suffice.“

You conveniently missed the point again.
Stop telling me what I think and say. Worry about yourself Mr. Libertarian. If you must at least try to get by your biases and get  it right.

I must add a subtle and paradoxically evident point about improvement in audio....

Nobody can hear or listen to what is "missing" in his own S.Q. and more than that from a files or from a cd, what you will listen to is ONLY what your system will give to you...
BUT unbeknownst to you you will miss sometimes a whole dimension or even the presence itself of some instruments or their evidence or importance in the recording....

Then 2 aspects may be missing: the level of quality of the S.Q. by itself for example unnatural timbre, and the perspective and presentation or even presence of some instrument in a specific recordings...In 2 words the sound and the music....


The only possibilities to discern if it is the case or not and becoming conscious of that fact are simple, they are 2 ways :

Whether you upgrade a component, suppress it or change it or add something new like a conditioner , a cable etc...In this case there will be positive or negative additions and sometimes positive and negatives effects at the sames times relatively to the specific forces and weaknesses of your system.... For me this road was not practical because upgrading many components and adding new ones to complement them cost a high amount of money if we want great increase in S.Q.😂


Or whether you make simple changes in your mechanical, electrical and acoustical embeddings dimensions, organizing some sets of simple listening experiments adding low cost devices of your own making to do that...
This was my road... And incredibly without expecting it, because nobody had warned me of the existence of this manageable road and its viability, incrementally for 2 years, each week my S.Q. increased in quality.... It was so fun and rewarding than my imagination was creatively in a storm of experiments....And i succeeded....




But i understand that anybody with a very costly system may mock my room and my peanuts cost altough very good system, BUT my solution is valuable for all those who are frustrated by the lack of money to buy their dream....Or simply for those that love to play without throwing their money easily 😊Anyway who is the more silly, some who add a many thousand bucks equalizer to their system, or some who play with peanuts cost acoustic solutions? Nobody is silly at the end  for sure except those who judge negatively others....



No money is necessary for audiophile experience, save a relative minimal amount that is different for each of us, contrary to all the necessary marketing publicity that sells products at very high cost, their saying is not a lie, i dont doubt the value of their products at all, but it is an half truth they spoke about..... Some high level of audiophile experience may indeed be accesible and cost peanuts....Dont think a second that my system is the best, it is not, but dont think a second that i contemplate with the same envy now the many beautiful systems in the virtual pages.... When the piano is in your room with his natural timbre sounding, nothing else is necessary....You listen and stay mute in your head....

Unleash your own creativity, and try some ideas, especially those who cost almost nothing....

My best to all...