Friends hi-fi system not very good, what do you do or say?

you notice immediately it's just not very good.

Let's turn it around and ask ourselves how would we react if someone said that to us about our system?

Personally, I’d appreciate an honest evaluation of my perhaps quixotic quest in the redux of my diy Walsh by one or more ’experienced ears’ sans pressure and expectations. So far, I’ve had positive responses, but one can still have a reluctance to accept such from ’non-philes’ of unknown experiences....

Nice, normal, ’noia.....*L*

Lacking locals of acquaintance with ’non-adulterated’ listening skills, it’s difficult to properly rate my attempts to do the improbable with the unlikely.... ;)

It’s frustrating, but I trundle on...even if only to amuse self and perhaps y’all can wonder WTH I’m really accomplishing....esp. with non-sota stuff.....

" ’Tis what it is..." How well ’is’ Is?

Some feedback would be nice....

When I listen to other audiophile’s systems I typically think "Sounds good". Not bad but also not "I’ve gotta get out and buy one of those". Not like "It’s so great you just spend 20K on that tonearm and cart". It sounds so much better now.

Ultimately we are limited by the quality of the source. No matter what you do or spend, you can only get so much blood out of a stone. A question is "Do you get better sound from an SACD vs CD than a new set of I/C's, etc?" Of course, if you have no upgrade in source, the only way to get an improvement is more money on components and set-up.

Perhaps hi-end audio is more about the trees than the forest.

I’ve been giving this an excruciating amount of thought over the past few days, and what I’ve come up with is this:

if I thought I could take him, I’d say, "C’mmon, dude; let’s get it on right here in your pathetic listening room, and after I beat the dog crap out of you then I am systematically going to destroy your miserable gear, piece by sorry-ass piece."

If I didn’t think I could take him in a fair fight, I’d act like nothing was wrong, but when his guard was down I’d head butt him in the bridge of his nose. Since I know he’d be angry and I also know I probably couldn’t take him once he shakes off the initial pain and surprise, I would not stick around. On my way out the door I’d stop and scream at him, "That will teach you to waste my time listening to your sub standard system!" If he had a gravel driveway, I’d be sure to spin my tires as hard as I could to throw rocks at his house.

Just my two cents.

Bring your friend to an audio show or maybe a tour of other peoples systems in your area.  Compare from there and discuss what you hear and think about each system. Then go back home and listen to each of your own systems to figure out how they suck, and now both of you will have to get rid of all of it and start over from scratch, LOL.