$100K system build - % breakdown of spend

@carlsbad

Is that available on audiobook? :-)

As a third person reviewer, please let me know how it goes for you Sir.

I always view synergy as something more like a synergy of flaws…

(where ideally all pre amps would have a standard low output impedance and all amps a stanrd high input impedance, and just be “wires with gain”.
And the interconnects be electrically ideal with zero capacitance, inductance and resistance.)

And then those flaws are more like getting vinegar into the food, so we spice it up some sugar and pineapple to make a sweet and sour sauce… rather than a Carolina BBQ sauce… or some other appealing flavour.

Or we have lack of synergy where the flaws are all the same direction in vector space.

Ideally we choose equipment where the error vectors are close to being zero magnitude, and then we do not care which direction they point as they sum close to zero, because individually they are all close to zero.

The other synergy example might be having a bright SS amp with a bunch of high freq harmonics. So we use a tube amp with high low low order harmonics to hide the high frequency harmonics.
This is analogous to using an air freshener to hide the smell of farts.

In the context of starting with a $100k budget, one would hope that there would be no obvious “stinkers” in the resultant stack of gear that was acquired.

does the following ballpark seem reasonable? If you’d bump something up, what would you bump down?

I have an older modest system.

On the TT side I could easily spend a lot more than the 10k. But one can also spend less. I know could spend that on a cartridge and phonostage.

I would be starting with speakers, and leaving off all the interconnects and power conditioners... as well as bumping down the DAC and streamer.

The speakers will help inform the amplifier(s) you may want.

What you have now would be good to understand. Maybe you could do some of it in stages?

Or is it just some rhetorical concept of where to spend the money?

$50k to get the room 'right'.

$50k for the gear

I guess for a new house that works.
But a divorce can be costly, so sometimes the room just “has to do”.

Maybe that is why I like speakers with a narrower directivity?

for speakers check out the monitor audio platinum 200s or 300s Gen 2, for the dock check out the Wyred for sound 10th anniversary dac, one of the reviewers put it up against his VPI turntable with a $5,000 Japanese cartridge and he said the 10th anniversary dac sounded as analog, I now have the dac and I totally agree it’s the most analog dac that I’ve had in my system

…

How do they do the pops-n-clicks, and the poor channel separation. in the DAC? 😎
(And please don’t knee jerk a response, as I have a TT as well)

But really… how much should someone have to spend on a DAC to perform better than many turn tables?
(It seems like it should be an order of magnitude easier?)

I usually make the rookie mistake of under playing amps… But these throw away slogans like:

If you are interested in high end sound quality and choose good quality and synergistic components… you get what you pay for.

Maketh me wonder

1. How do we identify quality?
2. What is synergy?
   1. Is it flaws being synergistic, or what is it?
   2. The room and speaker have synergy.
   3. The tonearm, and cartridge need synergy.
   4. What else?

Thanks @ghdprentice  I have mostly been looking at the “Audio Perfectionist journal”.