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Component Impact

I've been an "audiophile" for 20 years and my experience has taught me that speakers have the most impact on sound. Well that was my experience until one week ago. Over the years I've changed speakers, amps, source, and cables...sometimes I could hear differences and sometimes I couldn't. I recently decided to upgrade my Densen B-250 preamp to the Densen B-250+. My ears still can't believe what I'm hearing...better separation,detail, soundstage. I'm totally shocked by the improvements. Has anyone else experienced significant improvements by changing/upgrading their preamp?
ricred1
rlwainwright
1,904 posts
 
Yes. And speakers should always make a noticeable difference....

-RW-
needfreestuff's avatar
needfreestuff
572 posts
 
I could not believe the difference when I changed my preamp, quality of sound improved by a large margin in every department, but I believe that speakers make the biggest difference.
rrog
1,958 posts
 
I agree speakers can make a big difference, but not always the biggest improvement. The speakers are reproducing what they are being fed.
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Try eliminating the preamp. That's even better, a lot better.

There are two ways you can do this:

1) use a good quality DAC volume and drive amps directly

2) use a transformer passive linestage (TVC) instead of an active preamp

The impact I have discovered from most important to least is:

1) source quality and digital jitter
2) speaker crossover quality - mod it or eliminate it
3) speaker quality
4) volume control technology
5) digital filtering
6) amplifier quality, particularly output impedance and speed

It just makes sense that source quality is first on the list. If the source is poor, there is nothing you can do later in the chain to fix that. Even $100K speakers will not do it.

Digital filtering in the DAC is very important, even though it is low on the list. The less of that the better.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
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