2. speakers
  3. 176877-166623

everything sounded great until the upgrade

In short: I loved the sound of my modest system, until I upgraded my amp. Now it  sounds pretty horrible. It went from a warm sweet embracing easy-to-listen sound to knives and forks trying to escape from a bathtub.

So...

1. I can just unplug this new amp (used) and sell it

Any other options? I could upgrade my speakers but I have no budget for that.

2. I could sell the speakers and use money to buy used ones that go with the amp. 

3. Lastly I could change the source, but was it the culprit - to begin with?

btw - the sound of the "new" amp is decent with my turntable, and terrible with my CD player.

(If I wrote brands and models it would throw the discussion into "A sucks, B is great")

grislybutter
sokogear
1,095 posts
 

No need to ever turn the amp off unless you are plugging or unplugging cables. Just make sure you turn down the volume when you turn  your source on or off. Eliminates warm up time and sounds even better after beiding played for a little while.

12many
264 posts
 

grislybutter

One thing I wanted to mention as an ex-cd player person - I ripped all my cd to FLAC and now it is all on a USB drive.  This means you don't need a new CD player and it saves space.  Many streamers/dacs can play the digital files directly.  You can then also rip new cds as needed, or buy digital music song by song.  I liked this path because it preserves my existing collection and allowed me to phase into high res and single song purchases.  Something to think about if your CD is the problem and the money you would use for the CD player can be used for a file player dac or streamer.  I have been looking at hi fi rose, but it is expensive, but maybe other options exist.  Good luck. 

grislybutter OP
2,976 posts
 

@12many 

That's a reasonable path, I find CDs becoming a pain, a clutter. Not that LPs don't take up space. So it doesn't matter where I store it, if it connects to a DAC, that's all I need?

 

12many
264 posts
 

@grislybutter

I am not sure about the equipment.  For a while I had a USB memory stick plugged into the back of an AV receiver.  I also use the USB output (from a computer) with a USB cable into a DAC and from the dac to the amp.  I am transitioning to a new system (I had old not great stuff before) and looking at the HIFI rose and liked that it would stream with Qobuz (sp?) and also could load my FLAC files into it somehow (now quite sure).  Thanks can be complicated now but my plan is go Streamer (to DAC inside streamer) to amp to speakers to try to be simple.  I have been saving for years.  

sudnh
92 posts
 

You don’t give much info. 
 

new electronics can take several weeks worth of continuous music playing to break in. Until break in completes sound can be thin compressed and lacking in warmth and bass. 
 

if you have passed the point of break it you may have a bad match. 

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