Most eye-opening upgrade and what you learned

Hi Judit and welcome to A'gon. Good thread. I've made maybe five pretty important audio discoveries, but maybe THE most important has been AUDIOGON. That said:
1. I discovered tubed pre-amps, and the fact that a high quality front-end really is essential to producing good excellent music, ie it's more important than expensive speakers.
2. I installed a complete dedicated AC system that of necessity required high quality power cords on components. This lowered noise floor dramatically. With dedicated AC, I also found I had to get rid of power conditioners.
3. The Levinson 360S DAC makes well recorded digital music sonically excellent.
4. I discovered Synergistic Research's Active Shield interconnects. In my case their use produced a profound improvement in especially soundstaging in my system, but also greater clarity. Syn. Res. is just now releasing active shielded speaker cables and power cords-- haven't tried them yet.
5. And finally, I recently acquired Vandersteen 5 speakers (replaced Vand. 3Asigs), and with their built in 400 wpc amps and subwoofers (to 22 HZ), discovered what a revealing speaker could do, and that HQ subs really are important. These speakers have incredible mid-range clarity and "center of the earth" bass. But make no mistake, revealing speakers also reveal flaws in recordings. Cheers. Craig

I agree with Kelly in that your "old" and "noisy" vinyl might astound you if given half a chance. That is, if you take the time to set up what most would refer to as even a "decent" phono system and clean the records properly. I had this revelation while listening to an FM broadcast on WFMT late one night. Even with the sonic degradation that takes place via transmitting the signal and FM's limited bandwidth, the stations "old" records sounded better than the identical CD's that i had been playing here in my house !!! Needless to say, i went out and invested in a new vinyl rig and have been enjoying it ( again ) ever since. In fact, i just bought a new $3000 tonearm yesterday !!!

Other than that, my biggest "shocks" came along by swapping components in the same system. Some products REALLY are head and shoulders above others, regardless of the specs and reviews. Some SS components truly are capable of GREAT amounts of "air", "space" and "sweetness" and producing "music" whereas others simply sound like "audio gear" reproducing "notes" and "sounds". Once you hear something like this, you will know EXACTLY what i mean. Some of you probably still remember the first system that you heard that "oozed" musicality and detail, all at the same time.

Another "doozy" was going from large multi-drivered box speakers to a single omnidirectional driver. Talk about "deep" and "spacious" without having the sound of a "box" to focus on. It forever changed my perspective on what "good" sound consisted of.

Call it "psychological" or whatever you want, "burning" interconnects on my Mobie helped to reveal a level of transparency, warmth and detail that i had not previously heard out of any of my systems. The fact that i could take $25 worth of high grade parts, assemble them and put them on my Mobie and have them end up smoking cables that had cost me hundreds of dollars was also an eye opener. Don't discredit DIY designs until you've heard some for yourself.

Last but not least, going from passive crossovers to active crossovers when multi-amping. Using identical speakers and electronics, the differences in speed, clarity, focus, detail, etc... were truly astounding once the system went "active". I found all of this out even though the original electronic crossover in question was a "piece of junk" and a "fossil". In plain English, it was a very old professional sound reinforcement unit that set me back $50 on the used market. Even though it was old and ugly, it still sounded MILES better than the fancy "audiophile grade" caps and coils that we had been using previously. Sean
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Hi Judith. It's good to see another academic who enjoys quality sound with their music. One of the most significant moments in my relatively short time in audio was listening to record playback sonically tower over SACD in a short A/B session. 'B' was the SACD portion, and I could not wait to get back to 'A'. The latest drama was a interconnect upgrade a few months ago. After selling my old cables my net cost for my new, used interconnects will be like $100. I did not expect such a dramatic, transforming improvement, and I was almost embarrassed that it was my cables that were pinning my sound down all that time. Good luck.
-Brian

Most ear opening for me was *finally* trying an upgrade AC cord - which for years & years I swore could not possibly change the sound of a system, WRONG! From there it was all downhill & I've become a diehard subjectivist tweaker. Now I have more $ in cables & line conditioning than some folks spend on an automobile.

that such an inexpensive tweak could significantly improve bass response and overall clarity. Understand, I'm talking about Hubbell hospital grade outlets (treated with Caig Pro Gold), not ones that are especially high-end.