- Speaker/ Room: 80% of what you hear, 55% of the cost. Room and speaker cannot be separated below the Schroeder frequency. Room treatment is not that expensive (relative to the rest of the system) and has a significant affect on the sound quality. The overwhelming % of distortion in your system will come from the speaker/ room.
- Electronics: 19% of what you hear but 40% of the cost. Electronics are expensive but above a certain build quality, very little difference in SQ.
- Everything Else: 1% of what you hear, 5% of the cost.
Relative component value to overall SQ.
There is a lot of discussion about various things in the hi-fi audio component chain and how they affect SQ and as a beginner it would be interesting to see how folks rate the relative value of these items.
This is not necessarily meant to be a hierarchy. What I would like to see is a percentage value for each item in the chain. Total must be 100%.
I realize this is an artificial construct but I think for newbies building a system it would help them know where to start and where to put initial emphasis.
For simplicity I am leaving out the signal source. Let’s assume that the CDP, DAC, streamer, server or TT are delivering an optimal signal of an optimal recording to the system.
I included room optimization since that is also likely critical.
The components are as follows; assign a percentage to each. Total must be 100 :
Speakers
Speaker cables
Amp
Amp power cord
Interconnect cables
Pre-Amp
Pre-amp power cord
Interconnect cables (to source)
Room optimization
This is not necessarily meant to be a hierarchy. What I would like to see is a percentage value for each item in the chain. Total must be 100%.
I realize this is an artificial construct but I think for newbies building a system it would help them know where to start and where to put initial emphasis.
For simplicity I am leaving out the signal source. Let’s assume that the CDP, DAC, streamer, server or TT are delivering an optimal signal of an optimal recording to the system.
I included room optimization since that is also likely critical.
The components are as follows; assign a percentage to each. Total must be 100 :
Speakers
Speaker cables
Amp
Amp power cord
Interconnect cables
Pre-Amp
Pre-amp power cord
Interconnect cables (to source)
Room optimization