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What made the biggest, most noticeable improvement

My musical fidelity v-dac ii broke and is being repaired under warranty but while it is away it made me think that out of all the improvements I have made to my rig since this craziness started 9 months ago, my dac made the biggest, most noticeable improvement. Every other upgrade made slight improvents here and there but my dac (with upgraded power supply, of course) gave me far better imaging, tighter more defined bass, and more micro detail. I figure the dac in my denon dvd2900 is good and that the dac in the classe ssp 25 pre-amp is good (both sound the same to me) but the musical fidelity v-dac ii with upgraded power supply just blows them away, and I figure it's out classed by many other dacs. Anyhow, besides speaker placement and speakers, what made the biggest improvement in sound quality to your rig including acoustic panels, diffusors and bass traps?
128x128b_limo
patal
21 posts
 
Hi B,thanks for yoyur response,I already have aDAC and I am in a quandry whether to spend thousands on upgrading the crossovers.To be honest I am listening to the system and saying to myself how much better can this get in relation to cost.The delights of having HI Fi as a hobby ?
ozzy's avatar
ozzy
3,650 posts
 
The BSG Qol
aaronknock
44 posts
 
In what began as a very modest hi-fi, I've upgraded or auditioned much more expensive amps, sources, speakers cables, interconnects, power cords, power conditioners, stands, and speakers. Obtaining a great DAC made the biggest difference.
douglas_schroeder
1,824 posts
 
The biggest, most noticeable improvement? Well, lessee...

First it was the speakers
Then it was the amp
Then it was the cables
Then it was the room
Then it was the treatments
Then it was the cdp
Then it was the DAC
Then it was the preamp
Then it was the amp again
Then it was the speakers again
Then it was the DAC again...

Get the point? The point being that any component or adjustmet to the listening event carries the capacity to be perceptually the most impressive improvement encountered up to that time. I'm not saying they all do all the time; one must select well to get such a gain in a component.

IOW, it is a fruitless endeavor to seek a magical component which supposedly will confer the best gain or improvement. I have heard representatives from all of the above with the capacity to stunn in terms of improvement of a rig's sound.
aaronknock
44 posts
 
Douglas Schroeder wrote:
Any component or adjustmet to the listening event carries the capacity to be perceptually the most impressive improvement encountered up to that time.
All else being equal, that can't be true. Finding a better positioning of my speakers, for example, never had the capacity to make a more impressive improvement than my DAC—ever. It's more clearly true that some components or adjustments always have the capacity (realized or not) to impress more than other components or adjustments. By the same token, the following quote from Douglas is false, too:

It is a fruitless endeavor to seek a magical component which supposedly will confer the best gain or improvement.
Since there are components that can always offer more impressive benefits than others, it makes perfect sense to search and hope for one component that will make the most difference. Furthermore, If Douglas says is true, then it would be pointless to divvy up one's budget, percentage-wise, for the various parts that make up the system. If, as Douglas says, any component has the capacity to be most impressive, then it could never matter whether you spend more money on cables than speakers, or amps than source. And yet we find nothing strange about advocating general spending guidelines for a system.

Cheers,

Aaron
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