Sound Quality or Convenience?

"looks, a super remote, fancy face plate, big bass in a ss amp, cool looking speaker, 'really hip looking"

Bartokfan, well, maybe. But, and no offense meant at all, your post was a little hard to follow and your examples are a little more, dare I say shallow, than real conveniences, such as:

* remote vs no remote (super not an issue)
* smaller, more portable (for setup) speaker (vs cool looking, not really a 'convenience')
* more inputs for all your sources than one or two.

NOTE that what is a convenience issue to me may not be such to you and vice-versa. You may hate to bias an amp while I think such a labor of love, undertaken 3 times a year, is no problem. Just an example... one man's ceiling is another man's floor.

To me looks, while nice to have such as match my tastes, are not dealmakers and very rarely dealbreakers if other things are in place. I once owned a preamp that was so fugly even its mother didn't love it. I put up with it 'cause it sounded nice. When it started to demand that I regularly open it up to tweak the internal pots for balance is when I took it for a long drive in the woods and left it there.

Dear Readers: The poll is so far running heavily in favor of convenience, and the count is suspended unless a whole bunch of SQers chime in.

Convenience at the source - a HD-based system with a fantastic interface and, to my ear, as-good-as-or-better sound than from a CD player.

For the rest of the system, SQ, as the system requires dominating a whole room.

An interesting thread. I've had a few drinks tonight, but for me the convenience versus sound quality issue has been crystalized in the past year with my return to vinyl. Yes, to put it simply, vinyl is much more work. You have to put together a decent front end which may or may not include a separate phono stage and the extra ic's to go with it, high quality cleaning equipment (which need not cost a fortune but will definitely require a time committment) and a willingness to either shop the thrifts for good music on the cheap or seek out new, high quality vinyl. In the end, it has been the most satisfying thing I've done in my 25+ years as an audiophile. Could I get better sound and musical enjoyment out of digital? Possibly, but at what cost? 5's or 10's of thousands of dollars. I had a reasonable analog front end that was virtually idle for more than 10 years. I've resurrected it with an investment of about $800 Cnd. (for an appropriate phono stage and ic, high quality cleaning equipment and fluids) and can now buy music in the analog format for between 33 cents and $25 a record (and most of it is between 33 cents and $2.00 a record with the new records costing the $25 or so) that is much more enjoyable to listen to than CD's. I'll take quality over convenience any time at this stage in my life.

SQ over convenience any day. That's what brought us all to this hobby....the higher sound quality. I'm not ready to go back to convenience yet. I'm in too deep.

I miss the heck out of my 5-disc changer....the sound quality just doesn't measure up, so it had to go to mothballs. I bring it out a couple of times of year when I'm entertaining guests and don't want to fool around changing cd's.