WHY DO PEOPLE FEEL THE NEED TO COMMENT ON CABLES AND EQUIPMENT THEY HAVE NEVER HEARD?

Possibly, for the same reasons you knowingly and willingly chose to type your question in all upper case letters. Makes you wonder why…

@calvinj

If you place high end well built and designed gear in a really great room and acoustic environment it sounds like heaven.

+1

However all of us don’t have the perfect listening environments but a lot of us can still get great sound.

If you want easy peasy a room kit from Sonitus is the way to go.

high end gear in a really great environment if you have matched it properly and it is designed well you truly can hit it out the park.

I chose to go mostly with active speakers where the designer matches each driver with a monoblok amp and an active crossover. Yes, there are many paths but that is a quick one. It also saved me budget from buying external amps and speaker cables on a LOT of speakers.

Now I will say a better matched mid fi system can beat a hi end system if it’s matched properly and placed in the right environment.

This is the nice thing about this hobby, as the OP said earlier, there are a lot of paths to get good results.

My room is crazy. It’s not the best room. It has high ceilings. Wood floors and  I can only place my speakers so far apart and can only place them 2-3 feet from wall. I’m going to be honest. When I take my system to a local show like I did when I had my last amp in dac I got amazing sound in that carpeted room when I had someone come set it up properly. I even had my sub guy come in and do placement because he does that as a regular job as well as he has become really good at placement angles etc. But I have gotten really great sound in my room.  I’m extremely happy with my system. I’m not gonna lie it’s the best I ever had. But one thing that I could do that most couldn’t is that I had a 2 month demo of the amp and dac in my room before I purchased because of my relationship with the company.  The whole reason we lend out cabling at infigo audio is to let buyers try before you buy in your i environment. That’s important but mist in the end can’t allow it in their business model and logistics. 

@designsfx the owner of infigo was working with another company and when he decided to start infigo he told me about the amp and I kind of blew him off the he said he would fly from Canada to my place in Dallas and he did it. We listened to my amp on Friday. Then on Saturday we put  his amp in let it play all day to let it burn in a little and open up. Then on Sunday invited most of the same 10-15 folks we had over the previous Friday. His amplifier blew my 9k integrated out the water. Which for 8 years was my reference. That’s when I decided to work with Hans. I truly saw he was an audiophile at heart. Some folks wanna just sell gear he actually enjoys improving the gear. Pushing the limits and getting the gear to sound better. Reducing noise floors, cutting out distortion, building power conditioning inside the equipment. Isolating internals so that the heat generated limits distortion. In our Method 4 dac. He literally showed me the measurements of each dac chip that we use and each chip down to the 10,000th of a point and he uses a program to update that dac that will allow it to use its settings to limit distortion in the second and third harmonics that is created by the differences in each Sabre dac chip. He even isolated each dac chip from each other. I chose to purchase the gear instead of just keeping it on loan from time to time because he is actually doing things to improve the sound. In addition to that he has done it in a way that still sounds musical. I chose the gear because of it. I chose my Gato Fm6 speakers in a similar fashion because I knew the owner of Gato was a former lead designer at gamut audio whom makes super high end speakers. The Gato along with my Infigo gear and cabling has me in ear heaven right now. I got a great speaker that competes with more expensive ones but Infigo electronics with my Gato has me in a good place. Expensive but really ear pleasing place.

@everyone I’m not downing anyone else’s equipment but I have learned in these years in the hobby that materials, matter, parts matter, technology matter, transformers matter, isolation, matters, shielding matter, cabling matter, implementation of technology matters, eliminating distortion matters, equipment design matters, proprietary programs and technology matters especially in the high end. I know my system costs quite a bit of coin but I chose each piece based on what was in it and how it performed. To some I spent too much but at least I’m musically happy. I’ve seen people spend more and be unhappy and less and be happy. At the end of the day it’s up to what you like, can spend and willing to spend to get there. Some folks it’s not worth it but for me music touches my soul and in my current system it really does that for me. I have an Infigo method 4 Dac. Method  6 stereo amplifier, fluvius streamer and all infigo cabling going into gato fm 6 speakers and I’m extremely happy with the results. For others their happy place is with what they have. Enjoy it. Some people like watches, cars, jewelry for me it’s audio. Whatever you like just enjoy the music. I enjoy mines.