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What Matters and What is Nonsense

I’ve been an audiophile for approximately 50 years. In my college days, I used to hang around the factory of a very well regarded speaker manufacturer where I learned a lot from the owners. When I started with audio it was a technical hobby. You were expected to know something about electronics and acoustics. Listening was important, but understanding why something sounded good or not so good was just as important. No one in 1968 would have known what you were talking about if you said you had tweaked your system and it sounded so much better. But if you talked about constant power output with frequency, or pleasing second-order harmonic distortion versus jarring odd-order harmonics in amplification, you were part of the tribe.

Starting in the 1980s, a lot of pseudo scientific nonsense started appearing. Power cords were important. One meter interconnects made a big difference. Using a green magic marker on the edge of a CD was amazing. Putting isolation dampers under a CD transport lifted the veil on the music. Ugh. This stuff still make my eyes roll, even after all these years.

So I have decided to impart years and years of hard won knowledge to today’s hobbists who might be interested in reality. This is my list of the steps in the audio reproduction chain, and the relative importance of each step. My ranking of relative importance includes a big dose of cost/benefit ratio. At this point in the evolution of audio, I am assuming digital recording and reproduction.

Item / Importance to the sound on a scale of 1-10 / Cost benefit ratio

  • The room the recording was made in / 8 / Nothing you can do about it
  • The microphones and setup used in the recording / 8 / nothing you can do about it.
  • The equalization and mixing of the recording / 10 / Nothing you can do about it
  • The technology used for the recording (analog, digital, sample rate, etc.) / 5 / nothing you can do about it.
  • The format of the consumer recording (vinyl, CD, DSD, etc.) 44.1 - 16 really is good enough / 3 / moderate CB ratio
  • The playback device i.e. cartridge or DAC / 5 / can be a horribe CB ratio - do this almost last
  • The electronics - preamp and amp / 4 / the amount of money wasted on $5,000 preamps and amps is amazing.
  • Low leve interconnects / 2 / save your money, folks
  • Speaker cables / 3 / another place to save your money
  • Speakers / 10 / very very high cost to benefit ratio. Spend your money here.
  • Listening room / 9 / an excellent place to put your money. DSPs have revolutionized audio reproduction
In summary, buy the best speakers you can afford, and invest in something like Dirac Live or learn how to use REW and buy a MiniDSP HD to implement the filters. Almost everything else is a gross waste of money.
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almarg
8,673 posts
 
Craigl59 5-21-2018
What speakers have you settled on?
Hi Craig,

I have Daedalus Ulysses speakers, as you can see in my system description thread. I’ve owned them since 2010, and I have no plans to replace them in the foreseeable future.

As you’ve no doubt seen in the main Double Impact thread, member Waltersalas (Chris) replaced the Ulysses he had used for several years with a pair of DIs, and then recently purchased DI SEs. That certainly reinforces the many praises of the DI and DI SE, and the uncommon value they represent, that have been provided by owners such as yourself and by those having significant listening experience with them.

For me, though, aesthetics are a major factor when it comes to speaker selection, in part because my listening room is my living room as I mentioned earlier. And with the DIs and the Ulysses being nearly at opposite ends of the spectrum in that regard, IMO, the DIs would not be of interest to me.

For amplification, btw, I use a 70 watt per channel VAC Renaissance 70/70 MkIII, which uses four 300B power tubes per channel, operates in class A, and provides several selectable feedback settings including zero (which is the setting I use). I believe it retailed for upwards of $14K when it was manufactured around the turn of the century, but I purchased it used for far less than that. I suspect that its similar but less powerful brother, the Renaissance 30/30 (two 300Bs and 30 watts per channel), could be found used these days for not much more than $3K, and would be a great match for your DIs. Although even with only four 300Bs in that amp, the cost of re-tubing would be considerable were it to become necessary.

Best regards,
-- Al
prof
1,741 posts
 
hifiman5,

I respect your experience with your system!

I’m not looking to turn the thread into a "cable" thread beyond simply stating my experience and view. And since you asked...

Over the years I have had experience with fancy cable. Especially having done some reviewing long ago and knowing other reviewers, people in the industry, high end shop owners etc, I’ve had some experience with quite a number of fancy cables over the years.
And often enough I would get cast off cables from higher-rolling friends, or if I have to borrow a cable, I’ll end up with some far higher priced cables than I would buy.

So various cables have been in and out of my system, and I’ve heard tons of the highest end cables in reviewer’s systems.

Nothing ever convinced me to spend money on the high end cables. (In fact I did some blind tests on some Shunyata AC cables that cured me of ever wanting to spend money there...)

I’m not at all adamant that high end interconnect or speaker cables can’t sound different. In theory of course they could be made to sound different. (Though "different" and "more accurate" aren’t the same of course. I’m a bit more skeptical that super expensive cables are passing higher fidelity signals than a competently built cheap cable - which would seem capable of passing everything in the source signal just fine. None of the the many incredible old recordings (let alone many new) that are still reference quality today were using boutique cables and the cables used in recording, mixing, mastering etc seemed to perform just find. And I’m even more suspicious of AC cables. But, again, I’m no expert and I’m just making inferences from my own experience and the most trustworthy info I can find elsewhere).



glupson
1,794 posts
 
If anybody is keeping a tally, one more vote for mostly agreeing with the original post. I would add a few points to amplifier, though.

As far as cables go, I feel it is worth investing in them a little bit for cosmetic/visual effect. I have not yet, but would.
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rnabokov
9 posts
 
The only tweak I did was add a Monarchy Audio AC Regenerator to my system (tube preamp and tube phono stage) and it made a significant difference - more low level information. Nice.
tutetibiimperes
202 posts
 
@markalarsen 

I’d disagree about electronics being more important than speakers.  I’ve demoed B&W 804 D3s powered by an Integra receiver running through a Magnolia switchboard and they still sounded excellent, and a clear step up from the CM10 S2s even with what would be considered a big electronics mismatch.  

Can electronics sound different?  Sure, and tubes in particular can introduce euphonic distortion that many find pleasing.  I’ve heard some tube amps that sounded great, and I may play around with one in one of my systems at home, but they’re not necessarily more accurate (which may or may not matter to the individual listener). 

Still, tubes aside, once you’ve found an amp that’s capable of handling your speakers’ load (which will be more demanding for difficult to drive speakers like Revel Salon2s, certain electrostats, or a notorious amp killer like the Apogee Fullrange), you’ve found enough power to drive your speakers to the desired dynamic peaks in your room, and the specs on the amp are good enough to not introduce audible crosstalk or noise, the differences between electronics should be pretty slim, other than DSP features which can have a dramatic effect on the sound.  

The distortion introduced by speakers and room effects will be orders of magnitude greater than that introduced by electronics.  Spend the money on the speakers and the room, and enough on electronics to drive them without limitations.  
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