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Good Advice

As an old mid-fi'er seeking to upgrade both my old Onkyo receiver and Boston Acoustic speakers, it was great to find this advice in Epinions.

"Dancing on the Diminishing Returns Curve: Choosing Stereo Speakers
Dec 15 '05 (Updated Feb 18 '06)

The Bottom Line Don't go overboard and turn into a "tweak." Buy something inexpensive but good, dial it in, and enjoy the music.

It happened again the other day.

I was at someone's house and they were showing me their $20,000 stereo. Tube amplifiers. Elite CD player. $6,000 speakers. It sounded...great. And boring. Precise imaging. Tight bass. Unbelievable delicacy. And the whole was...less than the sum of the parts. I was unmoved by the music.

And so was the owner, I think.

He had the furrowed brow of someone with audiophilia nervosa, obsessed with achieving audio nirvana and spending his listening time noticing imperfections that could only be improved with a different amplifier, or different speakers, or maybe different interconnects or speaker wires.

He could never be satisfied with his system, and he could never slow down and enjoy the MUSIC.

At home, I have a modest but good system consisting of $1000 speakers, under $1000 worth of solid state amplification (and a $600 tube integrated amplifier which I sometimes use), a modest CD player, turntable, tuner and subwoofer. And the thing is DIALED! It sounds great to me.

Yeah, the imaging is a bit diffuse, inner detail is only good, and the mid-bass is a little round. But who cares? When I listen to music, I enjoy the music. And I'm not thinking about what component to get next, even when I'm sprawled on my bed reading Stereophile magazine.

What did I do right?

I gave up on finding sonic perfection and found components that work well together. And I made sure the cost of each component was on that part of the diminishing returns curve where things flatten out: where large increments in amount spent lead only to small increments in sound improvement.

The bottom line is this: You can have an excellent stereo system for a fraction of what the "tweaks" are paying, and you'll probably enjoy your music more than they do. The speakers are probably the most important component in a home audio system, so shop around and figure out what kind of sound YOU like.

Then have fun assembling an inexpensive system that's 80% or 90% as good as the best out there. After that, forget about the system and enjoy the MUSIC."

Truth is, whether you're spending a 1K or 100K the bottom line (or what should be the bottom line) is the MUSIC and your enjoyment of it. If you lose sight of that, then I would really wonder "what are you spending your money on and what are you trying to accomplish?".
cleaneduphippy
musicslug
403 posts
 
it sounds like your friend might have not observed rule #1 of audiophilism: just because a different component/tweak/IC/whatever makes your system sound different, that is not necessarily better. more detail, for example, is a lovely thing, but not if it comes at the cost of other factors.
tobias
1,534 posts
 
I guess it depends on how you see a "tweak". To me, Epinions is describing what I thought of as an "audiophile", until quite recently. A tweak is obsessed with gear and sees the forest not the trees (extension, air, et cetera and not the music), is that right? Can I put in a good word for the tweak?

To me, a tweak is something like a set of points, an isolation device, a change in speaker placement, an AC outlet, a rug on the floor in front of my listening chair... something which makes an audible difference to me but is not costly. I tweak a lot. The most important tweaks I think you can make are the ones that improve your room acoustics.

Do that thoroughly, and for sure you can get wonderful mileage out of modest gear. It might even be 80 to 90 % as good as the best out there when the best is not in a treated room.
jason117800
1 posts
 
Concerning the point of diminishing returns, I've run into this dilemma recently as I've shopped for replacement Speakers. My current Speakers are full-range, review by Stereophile and "A rated" and currently retail for $5.5K
I've had them for 2-yrs now and have been very happy with their performance but was curious to see if I could take it up a notch without breaking the Bank.

What I found after 2-weeks of extensive auditioning of what are arguably considered the best Speakers currently available regardless of price, is that a) the Speakers were too large for my above-average-sized living room b) noticably better sound started at twice the retail price of my current Speakers c) my current Speakers are sonically within single-digit-percentage-points of the best sounding Speakers that asthetically fit my space.

I won't even go into the electronics, noticable sonic improvment (to my ears, not the salesman's) came at 4>5 times what I spent back in 2004 on my Stereophile "A rated" system.

What this has proven to me is that regardless of all the hype from the media/blogs and retailers, Hi-Fi equipment reaches a sonic plateau much sooner than consumers are expected to believe and stays there for much longer. Top-shelf Hi-Fi gear is NOT sonically outdated every couple of years as most consumers are lead to believe.

BTW: Nothing and I mean Nothing made my current Gear sound low-fi. When I walked into the Dealers I would mention my existing gear has components that I heard and liked, then the Salesmen would automatically go into this pitch about how the difference between those components and what I was auditioning was night and day and could not be compared on any level. Then at the end of the audition, I would tell them what I own and the shades-of-gray differences in what I just heard and they would be speachless...busted!
gunbei
2,327 posts
 
I think what you did right was to assemble a system YOU like. Whether it was by happen stance or it was thoroughly planned out consider yourself lucky and blessed.

My current line of thinking is that the "it's all about the music" phrase is a crock of sheeot coming from us audiophiles. If it were truly just about the music we'd be happy with cheap mass market electronics and the term audio-nervosa would completely unknown to us.

The audio gods have blessed you, Sir CleanedUpHippy!
cleaneduphippy OP
323 posts
 
Lots of interesting points of view here and I certainly hope that some of y'all don't think I'm putting anyone down for the amount of money they put into a system. That's not the point. Believe me, if I had deep enough pockets I would have a system to die for. But once achieved I don't think I would obsessive with how to get that last little itsy bitsy teeny weeny bit of perfection out it. Why, you ask? Well, I learned a long time ago that quite a bit (if not most) of great music has been recorded under less than ideal conditions, but even so, the performance of the music more than makes up for whatever sonic imperfections that might have been captured in the recording of the music. I myself am a member of a community that actively collects and trades recording of live shows. And I sure all of y'all understand that the quality of these recording vary widely. Some are recorded very well, others well......., but even so, almost all of these recording has something in the performance of the music that make it worthwhile hearing. My question to members of the audiophile community would be, could you listen to a great performance of music and get into and be moved by the music, even if the performance itself was recorded under less than ideal conditions and your audio set-up was quite revealing of these imperfections? You know sometimes the quest for perfection leads you away from what you truly seeking, which hopefully is listening to musicians opening their heart and soul in performance of their music, be it in a recording studio or live on stage. Also, quite often during a performance it's the "mistakes" that give the music it's soul and character and often time move the music to a level of greatness. Anybody, that listens to jazz understand the concept that musically you got to take chances if you want to reach greatness, and quite often those chances are taken in a live environment and if a recording is being made it's probably not going to be the best quality in the world. Indeed, in most cases, it'll be just a "working demo" for the musicians involved.
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