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What Matters and What is Nonsense

I’ve been an audiophile for approximately 50 years. In my college days, I used to hang around the factory of a very well regarded speaker manufacturer where I learned a lot from the owners. When I started with audio it was a technical hobby. You were expected to know something about electronics and acoustics. Listening was important, but understanding why something sounded good or not so good was just as important. No one in 1968 would have known what you were talking about if you said you had tweaked your system and it sounded so much better. But if you talked about constant power output with frequency, or pleasing second-order harmonic distortion versus jarring odd-order harmonics in amplification, you were part of the tribe.

Starting in the 1980s, a lot of pseudo scientific nonsense started appearing. Power cords were important. One meter interconnects made a big difference. Using a green magic marker on the edge of a CD was amazing. Putting isolation dampers under a CD transport lifted the veil on the music. Ugh. This stuff still make my eyes roll, even after all these years.

So I have decided to impart years and years of hard won knowledge to today’s hobbists who might be interested in reality. This is my list of the steps in the audio reproduction chain, and the relative importance of each step. My ranking of relative importance includes a big dose of cost/benefit ratio. At this point in the evolution of audio, I am assuming digital recording and reproduction.

Item / Importance to the sound on a scale of 1-10 / Cost benefit ratio

  • The room the recording was made in / 8 / Nothing you can do about it
  • The microphones and setup used in the recording / 8 / nothing you can do about it.
  • The equalization and mixing of the recording / 10 / Nothing you can do about it
  • The technology used for the recording (analog, digital, sample rate, etc.) / 5 / nothing you can do about it.
  • The format of the consumer recording (vinyl, CD, DSD, etc.) 44.1 - 16 really is good enough / 3 / moderate CB ratio
  • The playback device i.e. cartridge or DAC / 5 / can be a horribe CB ratio - do this almost last
  • The electronics - preamp and amp / 4 / the amount of money wasted on $5,000 preamps and amps is amazing.
  • Low leve interconnects / 2 / save your money, folks
  • Speaker cables / 3 / another place to save your money
  • Speakers / 10 / very very high cost to benefit ratio. Spend your money here.
  • Listening room / 9 / an excellent place to put your money. DSPs have revolutionized audio reproduction
In summary, buy the best speakers you can afford, and invest in something like Dirac Live or learn how to use REW and buy a MiniDSP HD to implement the filters. Almost everything else is a gross waste of money.
phomchick
phomchick's avatar
phomchick OP
209 posts
 
+1 with both @craigl59 and @barrarich

Class D amplifiers, DACs, and DSP processing are all high enough quality and cheap enough that the following high end stereo system should be just around the corner.
It will have WiFi connectivity to something like JRiver or Roon and this will feed the high quality internal DAC. It will be controlled remotely by an app on your cellphone. The speakers will have multiple drivers with each driver having its own Class-D driving amp. The output of the DAC will go into a multi-channel DSP circuit which will have a channel for each speaker driver.
The system will ship with a measurement microphone which will be used to measure the frequency and phase response at the listening position. Using software embedded in the system, the DSP channels will be optimized for each driver in each speaker. Such a system would probably work best with two smaller satellite speakers and a servo controlled subwoofer.
The technology now exists to build this and end up with a very high quality system. The downside is that you won’t be able to obsess about preamps, amplifiers, interconnects or speaker cables, but such is progress.

craigl59
307 posts
 

+1 phomchick

Another downside...we all have that "purchase a new box" urge. Those that have gone the Lyngdorf way are both smug and lonely at the same time...

aalenik
67 posts
 

Geoffkait wrote...

"it appears the most vociferous, outspoken and persistent skeptics and anti tweakers are the very same ones who frequently report getting no results"

BINGO!  And those people have a point - sort of.  They don't hear results, so they should not waste their time or money.  The common mistake is in assuming that others hear exactly what they do... which is (sorry) stupid, and trying to pass on the(ir) "truth" to the rest of us.

There is also another group of virulent nay-sayers who have not even listened, and just 'know' that everything with a price-tag is 'snake-oil' and 'audio jewelry'... and need to tell the world.  

amg56's avatar
amg56
887 posts
 

@aalenik There are a group of music and system appreciators "sit on the fence" until they can see benefit or proof that the act of that tweaking (not twerking), or that the product (if it even is a product) is worth the price tag.

Note I called a group "music and system appreciators" rather than audiophiles. Not all music lovers are audiophiles per se'. Some like music very much, and as such spend the appropriate money on the system that satisfies their need. Indeed they love live music and seek to see that their system plays this out, to a point. Free tweaks are always appreciated though.

Audiophiles go all out to acquire the system that best reproduces a sound that is closest to live music. What ever the cost is some cases. These people are the ones who appreciate tweaks, go out and afford to themselves inch thick speaker cables, gauge to the 1/2 degree, toe in or out of speakers. These people expect to attain the best reproduced sound, through hardware, source accuracy, reproduction accuracy and tweaks to get even more from their system. Some will pay big dollars for it if it has been represented correctly. Some will blow hard of tweaks to gain legitimacy in a forum.

I am admittedly from the appreciator group. I know I simply cannot afford the big stuff. But free tweaks I can appreciate. Advice on how to set a room up by moving things around (wife's permission is mandatory) is a great tweak. I like live music, and appreciate my system to represent as closely as I can afford, the music my wife and I enjoy.

Cheers. A.


uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz
13,381 posts
 
Most interesting thread that I have read but refrained from posting to.
I am pleasantly surprised at how civil it has remained with some very good posts.

I can agree with a lot of the original post but not quite all....lol.

No matter what I have found different ic,pc and sc have a large impact on tone in my system for sure.
Now this may point as much to failings in my system and I will not argue that point at all.
After all if we are being honest who can claim to have THE perfect system where they can improve no further?
If any individuals have been lucky enough to achieve this Zen like status then God bless you as you have surely managed to step off this crazy and eclectic merry go round of a hobby we share!

But for the remaining mere mortals left on planet Earth we are by human nature always striving to find the next improvement.
Some achieve by "tweaks", some by spending large, some by "tuning".
All have the same goal....to enjoy the music!

To that end after months of reading reviews I have just placed my order for Tekton Di speakers. In Red. Sans grilles.
$3075.
If they deliver half of their promise I will be a happy man indeed!
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