Backing Away from Stereophile Class A


After taking a break from chasing the audiophile dream for a few years, I jumped back into the game about a year ago and began to try whatever I could afford. This is what I've learned:

1.) My enjoyment of classical music on CD diminished as my system improved in accuracy, revealing the limitations of the digitally recorded source material. This seemed to be especially true when it came to speakers.

2.) Even fabulous speakers sound mediocre in a difficult room. In fact, room-matching may account for as much as half of the perceived quality of sound, at least in my experience. Bigger and more expensive speakers were not necessarily better.

3.) A good tube preamp sounds better than a good solid state preamp. At their best, tubes offer the illusion of neutrality while adding life to otherwise sterile-sounding digital recordings.

4.) The cheapest CD player made by Wadia sounds at least 90% as good as $6600 worth of separates.

5.) In any given system, a less expensive DAC may actually sound better than a Stereophile Class A-rated DAC of similar vintage.

6.) An expensive amplifier turns out to be a good investment after all.

If I were advising someone looking to spend about $5K on a good used CD-based system, I would recommend the following basic components to start with:

a Wadia 23 CD player
Audio Research LS-15 remote-controlled tube preamp
Mark Levinson No. 27 amplifier
Magnepan 2.7 QR planar speakers

Add decent balanced cabling between the Wadia and the preamp, and between the preamp and amp, and you have a very musical system that satisfies without being fatiguing.

With kind regards,
Ag insider logo xs@2xmark_hubbard
I can agree to #1 in my case so far. Most would feel the speakers are the weak link in all four of my systems, but everytime I try something better it sounds worse.

I think it is more a case of having a well balanced system, where each component goes well with the others. Speakers are a big change.

The system is many times built around the speakers, so if you change the speakers, you may have to start over.
Mark, great observations. I totally agree with #2, #3, and #4. I haven't been able to acheive #1. What is your analog set-up? And I have no experience with the DACs in #5. I'm still deciding #6. Does a $1200 amp beat a $500 Legacy or Rotel?
I agree with 1-4. I have no experience with DAC's and do not necessarily agree with 6; although I do support a quality amplifier not necessarily an expensive one. I have found that the pre-amp has the greatest impact on the quality of the music comming from my speakers with the amp contributing a substantially smaller portion. I have read and experienced (limited in home experimentation) that building a gret amplifier is relatively easy but building a great pre-amp is much more difficult.

Chuck
1) i agree with sugarbie build around the speaker
2) in my own experience good front end wont do a
lot of impact if the speaker are not capable.
3) thats why i bought andra i believe with the
odyssey stratos they will shine, because the andra
are capable to produce any equipment ranging
from 10k-20k gear but i chose performance for the money
the o.s. monos upgrade,may be iam wrong but i believe
the 80% sound you will hear from the system comes
from the speaker,this is only my humble opinion.
Sugarbire - you're talking about the B&W 302's in your "system"? Must be something better than that.