How do you know when a stereo sounds good?

 

wturkey

402 posts

11-28-2021 7:04am

“How do you conclusively prove to yourself that your system sounds good to you?” The proof is in the pudding. 

+1

Actually a pretty good question.

When I opened my shop in 1973 I asked the same questions.  SO, luckily, I had a shop full of gear from high-end manufacturers (and some middle-range and some used high-end stuff).

SO, I brought in my trumpet and my guitars.  FIRST, I hooked up a basic system and swapped out speakers one pair at a time.  Took me almost a month. I never had to pick up an instrument during this phase.  It was pretty obvious that my favs from college--stacked Advents--were, to be kind, not that good.  Nothing against Mr. Kloss--he was clearly a genius and his speakers were terrific for the time.  BUT, next to other stuff they showed their weaknesses easily, as did many others that we carried.

Rather than bore you with the whole journey, what I learned was that different designers had different price points, thus compromised as you would expect.  This ain't a charity--this stuff was made to be SOLD for MONEY.  No money, no stuff.

Following an extended listening process, I was lucky enough to sell Audio Research and Magnepan products.  We also had Marantz and McIntosh for a while--long story.

In the end, there was no doubt--the Audio Research stuff on the Maggies were a revelation in reproduced sound IF the source material was solid.

Now, this combo did NOT sound as good in some customer's rooms for whatever reason, but we had lots of good stuff for them as well.  Given the better rooms, that combo was clearly the most accurate and remains so today.

Cheers, and happy listening.

+1 emrofsemanon

When I get up to find more music and realize it is 3 am and I should have been in bed a few hours ago!

I guess you know it sounds good when it's fully loaded with expensive Synergistic Research wires and widgets. 

@ted_denney You should pose the same original question on ASR and Whatsbest and writeup a comparison of the responses. That would be entertaining! Cheers,

Spencer