I guess I’m at a similar place but by a totally different route. I inherited a very nice older system. I’ve made a few tiny tweaks. I love the way it sounds. Rarely do I feel like something is missing or that I need to spend a lot of money.
I suspect that is a combination of three things: 1) My untrained ears. 2) A nice system that was well matched from the beginning (by someone else) that probably sounds pretty good. 3) Fairly decent room set up.
The only thing that bothers me....and sometimes it really bothers me....is that recordings I know to be poor (over compressed DR, and other stuff) actually sound poor on my system. The bothersome part is that there are knowledgeable folks that say the problem is my system and not the recording and that if I’d get an EQ and make lots of other changes those bad recordings would sound great.
I don’t know enough to argue with that assessment. But I think it is probably safe to say that if I go mucking around with things and spending money to make bad recordings sound good then I run the risk of messing up how good recordings sound now. I’m not willing to take that chance or spend that money.
So I’m sticking with what I’ve got and enjoying the good stuff and suffering through the bad when the mood strikes me.
But yes, as someone pointed out there is now a big movement towards EQ and lots of derogatory things being said about those who don’t believe in its merits. Hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.
I suspect that is a combination of three things: 1) My untrained ears. 2) A nice system that was well matched from the beginning (by someone else) that probably sounds pretty good. 3) Fairly decent room set up.
The only thing that bothers me....and sometimes it really bothers me....is that recordings I know to be poor (over compressed DR, and other stuff) actually sound poor on my system. The bothersome part is that there are knowledgeable folks that say the problem is my system and not the recording and that if I’d get an EQ and make lots of other changes those bad recordings would sound great.
I don’t know enough to argue with that assessment. But I think it is probably safe to say that if I go mucking around with things and spending money to make bad recordings sound good then I run the risk of messing up how good recordings sound now. I’m not willing to take that chance or spend that money.
So I’m sticking with what I’ve got and enjoying the good stuff and suffering through the bad when the mood strikes me.
But yes, as someone pointed out there is now a big movement towards EQ and lots of derogatory things being said about those who don’t believe in its merits. Hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.

