1st Post Intro & Ramblings


Hi all, I have been a member for about 10 years and never posted anything although I do read a lot. Figured at some point I would, 10+ years later......

 Profession, Audio Visual Tech 22 years. I mostly work in house corporate, conventions and trade shows. Spent some time building clubs, worked a few concerts and home audio has been more of a hobby for a very long time and I have designed and built a few very high end setups years ago. I always hated working professionally on home audio, the customers and sales people are either to cheap or knee deep in marketing and cannot take advice from professionals. My experience has led me to be more aware of the budget, a vast majority cannot spend $10-20k on a stereo and yet some of us spend that on a just 1 component. 
I think that will suffice as an introduction, next I will post some of what I have learned along the way. Keep in mind, most of my recommendations come with a budget mindset instead of $$$ all out performance $$$.
kreapin
After 10 years of casually reading, I can definitely attest there some high level professionals here. Since they’re here and maybe reading, I have a question that for the life of me I cannot figure out. I’ll start with “I don’t know everything but” from what I remember, Many moons ago some scientist sat in the audience at a moving picture show. single speaker (mono) sitting dead center, that was it for sound. As things ran across the screen, it bugged him because the sound didn’t move also. He went home and now we have stereophonic imaging. Move forward, we realize that the stereophonic was limited to a sweet spot. That’s what brought about theater sound, so everyone could enjoy this magic 3D stereophonic image. I think you get where I’m going. In my opinion (legal disclaimer), a very large percentage of the population usually watch movies in pairs, so the stereo image would be superior (assuming it was mixed correctly). The question is Why do so many stereophiles, audiophiles and/or avid listeners still go full surround to watch a movie?
I'm sorry but I thought I got it at the beginning of the discussion but by the end I had no idea.
Fantastic dialogue.  I view the YouTube vids as entertainment. Some great stuff coming out of Canada.  And those Japanese JBL vids are great. 
Cables. WTF is what comes to mind when looking at the price tags. I am a firm believer in spending some in cabling. Starting with shoring up your power as far as you can afford, literally swap out the 14 gauge cables in the wall if you can. Amplifiers are dynamic and need loads of current in waves, this is where all the life in sound comes from, power. Almost all of the amps I have enjoyed the most have always had 1 thing in common, large toroidal transformers. Clean, quality power is important for sound quality. But a few grand for 3ft of cable touched by thanos? Most amplifiers will see an improvement in overall performance starting with a quality 10 gauge copper cable, after that initial jump it really gets expensive for a marginal increase in performance. I still say to invest in quality cables, your whole system can and will evolve but cables and bass always stays put.