A principle guiding the wise audiophile life

it is more fun to learn how to do (acoustics among other things) than just plug and play... There is not slow car or fast car in audio,  any system at any price need acoustical,mechanical and electrical optimization... The price has nothing to do here ... A good sound is an optimal perceived quality you have reach by your knowledge...

Kind of like it's more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car fast. 

Wise post. There is as much fun to optimize a low cost system as a high cost one...

We go with our budget...

This hobby attracts a lot of people with OCD tendencies — chasing perfection where it doesn’t exist. But sound is simple. It’s just waves. If you like what you hear, you win. There is no “better.” That concept doesn’t exist. There’s just sound and music — and music is life. It’s good for your brain and your soul.

Repeat after me: There is no better.

Chi-fi gear is excellent. DACs under $100 are excellent. Class D amps under $500 are excellent. Technology has made great sound more accessible than ever.

I own a $50,000 setup — and I’ll be the first to tell you, it’s mostly a farce. My $800 desktop setup sounds really good.

Trust your ears, not the forums. Not the reviews. Not the price tags.
What sounds good to you is what matters. Your ears don’t lie.

There is no better.

I like your post. Once this is said you forget something speaking mainly about the gear choices and prices...

There is better in this hobby than the gear subjective or objective measures and evaluation or price...There is the learning about acoustics concepts and the way we can perceive them as phenomenon...There is the learning experience about the electrical and mechanical working dimensions ...

There is better than low-fi,mid-fi,high-fi, defined by price...yes...There is system/room/Ears/brain optimized and experimented with and trained...

There is better than my pair of ears... It is when i train my ears with acoustics parameters i train myself to perceive by experiments (Not just by buying different pieces of gear, because buying is not training)

 there is better than any piece of gear , there is better than any system/room, once they are optimized, there is no relation between before and after...

You are right our ears dont lie but they cannot separate truth from illusion about our system/room without being educated they can be deceived easily if they are not trained by acoustics experiments...

We must trust our ears if we want to train them but it is our brain and mind  which guide us not our ears biases. If i tune a room or a piano i trust my ears but because i had learned how to train them to begin with...

50 years ago i trusted my ears thinking that my Tannoy dual gold were top of the world and i owned them 40 years but i never really heard them in their real optimal peak because i never learned how to put them in this state...They were the best speakers i ever owned by design but i never hear them ...

Trusting our ears before purchasing a piece of gear which will be heard by us in different conditions and in a different system in a show room is not enough and may be deceiving even if we buy a good product like my Tannoy which i thought was perfect as they are without any need of optimization......

Our ears will not lie to us as a  non trained child  who is unable to perceive some phenomena above his head dont lie but create his own reality. Nothing bad here.

But in audio it is way more interesting if we learn how to improve our system and then if i can optimize a system i  can make apparent the differences between a 50,000 system and a 800 bucks one (the price of my system is low cost near 1000 and sound more than just good but give me 50,000 and i will improve it way over his actual potential because i know how to do it )

I appreciate  and i like the fact though that you minimize the difference between a 1000 and 50,000 bucks system. Most people associate S.Q. not with optimization but with upgrading. It is the cardinal sin of audiophile circle... They buy and call it learning... What i call learning is experiments...

i concur... +1

Nice summary. I think you’ve pretty well nailed it in one elegant paragraph.

Interesting story!

Bare minimum audiophilia for survivalist in hard reality...

It remind me of my actual bliss under the blanket at 13 years old with the first small transistor radio... Music quiet my fears...

I like your last paragraph especially : 

Then I made a college friend who opened the door for me. This guy had a fairly advanced reel-to-reel sound system. He said "Here, smoke this," and then he told me to lie down and put some Koss headphones on me and fired up Cat Stevens' "Tea For the Tillerman" album.

"Ok," I said to myself after floating back down to Earth. "Now I see."

a very important observation:

If we divide audio for the sake of my argument in three categories(without specifying a price because it is not my goal to start a useless  arguing here):

----Low-fi or very low cost products,

----Mid-fi

---- High-fi or much costlier design

it is very hard to optimize a low cost system to sound relatively well or good...

it appears, compared to low fi , even unnecessary to optimise mid-fi gear compared to low cost one because it sound way more good sometimes without apparent  need of any optimization...

But, and this is my point, very high end gear need to be optimized as much as low cost gear, mechanically, electrically but especially acoustically to reach his peak working performance .... Ask Mike Lavigne who know a bit about optimization and High -fi gear...

Then some  people with mid-fi laugh at any effort to optimize the gear especially because they purchase mid-fi costlier gear plug and play and the sound can beat in quality even some low cost gear even after his optimization.... ( as an example a magnepan speakers in a living room can beat most low cost speakers even well optimized one...)

This explain why some audiophile can laugh if i spoke about Schumann generators or vibrations controls at low cost...

As i said every system. low-fi,mid-fi,high-fi, need to be optimized...it is just less evident with mid-fi when we upgrade from low-fi....

Ignorance always laugh ( at the expanse of others)...

The wise smile ...

If somebody has never been able to create at low cost a RELATIVELY good system/room , i am pretty sure he will not be able to optimize any costlier system too...

Why ?

 Because the three working dimensions to optimize are the same for any system at any cost...

 For sure there is at some level of price differences...

Using an acoustician to design a room dont compare to my mechanical tuning of a room...I did with what i have, the acoustician architect will create something new...

I hope no one will distort my message ....

Another fact:

 We live an era of luck for audiophile...

We can afford very low cost gear with a minimal satisfaction acoustic threshold. My actual system is very good for his peanuts price ...

All low cost chinese,  save one vintage  from japan, but  2 German vintage headphones...

I had 4 conditioners / purifier/ clean power reserve.  8 homemade  grounding box, 2 Schumann generators, many homemade  Helmholtz resonators in my acoustic corner/room and  one linear power supply serving three gear pieces.

Peanuts costs and very good for what it is ...

I am happy with it, even if better exist, i learned how to install any system at any cost, but i bought vwhat i could afford...i am proud to have been able to learn acoustics concepts...

Acoustics panels are good enough for a living room but acoustics ask for more knowledge than just buying them...Thats my point...

To be clear i will repeat this : 

There is no relation between a piece of gear or a system/room before and after his optimal mechanical,electrical and acoustical installation. None.

This does not means that my 150 bucks dac will rival a many thousand bucks dac, nor that my 1000 bucks system will make Mike Lavigne or ghdprentice envious...

Is it clear enough for those who claim to read my mind ?

I hope so.... 

 It does means however that any well optimized system can beat  relatively costlier one IF they are not well optimized...

It does means  that for sure any low cost system even well optimized cannot beat a well optimised costlier system most of the times. because there is a justification for a higher cost price corresponding to a best design most of the times...

This is pretty basic stuff. The OP wants to convince everybody that you can buy a $500 amp but put a $10 worth of isolation feet on it, it will perform like the $60,000 amp. You know this isn’t possible.

I presume you are a remote viewer of a palm reader ?

If you are you read my mind in a distorted way....

i always specified that basic optimization is only that : basic optimization principle which apply to any system at any price...

Only an idiot will think that price never reflect the design quality  of a piece of gear than a better potential performance...I am not this one idiot...

only an idiot will claim that price is all there is to know about the gear before plug and play ... I am not this one idiot...

Read others mind ... Thanks...

only an uninformed person  will also  claim :

For good stuff it takes money.

Now after accusing me of repeating common place facts you yourself impose on us your "axiom" which is the most erroneous one peddled in all audio thread...

Sorry but optimizing a system /room is very complex job with his 3 working dimensions and buying costly acoustics panels do not replace acoustics controls ( complex one as filters or mechanical one as mine) and knowledge...

Buying is not enough...

And yes a low cost system can be relatively good when the designed parts are good and when they reach their optimum even if no peanuts cost system can replace very costlier one.... Am i in the obligation to repeat this in each post because a twisted mind reader will put falseties in my mouth ? 

So, I guess I trust my ears in the end, but I don't trust them without some skeptical testing and re-listening.

I act the same...

 newton_john  Thanks for your interesting post...

I will just observe that any change in my system was always traceable to a cause...

I know only four causes,if i except our subjective variable hearing mood: gear design improvement by upgrade and a modification in the three working dimensions of any system/room.

  gkelly  It is normal if you begin with a good amount of money to try anything there is... Enjoy it...

I lived trough the same thing  with probably less money to invest though  a long time ago...

My best wishes to you ...