Rate these on order of importance:

Marco, I'll be the first one to say that we haven't found measurment techniques that can truly identify the complete listening experience, especialy speakers. As compelling as they are, I didn't mean for my "argument" to be soley based around those specs. The point was that unless you believe that all the other components all share the the same deviations, speakers/rooms demonstrate the greatest variablity in the audio chain. I think that holds true whether you want to measure it or not. As for your choice of systems, I think a better comparison would be "Close-N'- Play" through "Unsound's Reference" vs. "Albert Porter's front end-rig through the "Close-N'-Play's built in speaker. How about we make it real. While I would never actually recommend this, but, what the heck were playing here. Albert's front-end rig through your choice of new $200 speakers vs. my choice of $200 CD player through my choice of new speakers that cost the same as Albert's front-end rig. I'll take the latter. Thanks, but, you can keep the ear plugs.

Do we have match? If Rsbeck is just stuttering, Abe_av might be in agreement. 12 days and 62 posts later.

Unsound, don't have to wait for that long I say I agree with you right now :-))))

The two major signal conversions in the audio play back systems are: medium to electrical (CD/LP --> analog signal) and electrical to mechanical (speakers). It is the latter that is most difficult to be made right and most relevant to the receipants--our ears.

Abe

Unsound - well, at least I think we'd both agree that neither one of us would like to (or be LIKELY to) listen to either option, so Albert can breath easy again instead of worrying about donating his front-end to our experiment. Although the proposition seems ridiculous I have seen some folks posting here with systems that I'd imagine were way out of balance on one end or the other (or somewhere in between). I imagine some of that may come from reading threads like this one, and other misinformation, or misinterpreted information professed by salespeople or other externally motivated or strongly opinionated individuals (you know, like you and me). I still maintain that synergy should be the #1 priority in building a system. I'd certainly rather just use my earplugs when riding long distance on my motorcycle and keep my hearing in tact for future sessions with my (well-balanced) systems.

Marco

Marco, agreed!