Amp more important than speakers?

As I recall, a great man once said: “Ask not what your speakers can do for you, but what you can do for your speakers!”

that was very inspiring, don't you think?

If the notion that all we needed were great speakers, was true… we’d all have $15K - $30K speakers being run by iPods and this past time would cease to exist.

The next sound you hear should not be the speakers. Not if they are great speakers, that is.

We don’t call these audio arrangements ‘SYSTEMS’ for no good reason.

Everything matters! Everything. Fit the speakers to the room, the amp to the preamp and the speakers, and youself, and you should be good to go.

I happen have an Onkyo amp… non digital, old school discrete. 140wpc or so they say. TX SR 805. An old school sony receiver too, and have a couple amps still around here, though more in recent history stopped by for a time.

Several pr of speakers still hang their hats here ranging from a few hundred to well into the thousands.

Guess what?

The best speakers IMO I own sound best with the best gear I own. Hands down, No questions. End of story. SO DO THE CHEAPEST SQUEAKERS I OWN SOUND BEST WITH MY BEST GEAR. Finis.

The diffs from my least expensive speakers, with my most modest kit, and the best speakers in house is minimal. Noticeable, but at best a marginal diff in Sound Q.

Quantifying it is tuff… from memory only I can say perhaps a third better sounding? Give or take a wee bit. At best.

That’s going from my $400 two way cantons, to my Silverline Sonata IIIs that retailed for well over 6K more money!.

Is there more bandwidth being revealed by the Sonata IIIs than the two way Cantons? Sure. But the SQ relies on the signal path. The bandwidth displayed is the territory of the speakers.

Reproducing more of the bandwidth is another tale completely.

Actually I could very easily deal with having lesser quality speakers than I can with having lesser quality signal transmission line.

Very easily I could live with my standby former Flagship Phase Tech tower and my better electronics than I would want to live with merely my Sonata IIIs and my Onkyo Receiver.

No doubt though, speakers are the big deal. Large man symbols out on display. One can’t but notice them! Get something cool! Fancy. Sharp looking. Big. Expensive speakers make great sounds!

Maybe. Maybe not.

They sure as Heck make a big splash on several levels though. I do admit that.

However, I feel very strongly about the philosophy of building a system from front to back, rather than back to front. Source first vs. speakers first.

Naturally you can go about it either way… and you will too. Regardless what is pointed out here by other peoples exp in their various system builds.

Speakers will make the biggest alteration to your system than any other piece normally.

Tha’ts the added advantage to building from front to back, by the time your ready to drop in some fancy and costly speakers, they’ll be entering into a rig that is already hot to go and balanced electrically & electronically speaking.

…and you will definitely know how honest the speakers are as you will have been auditioning various constructs all along the way. You’ll also become quite familiar with just where those invisible borders of diminishing returns dwell.

In that philosophy too, you might well find out you don’t have to hock your middle child for more speakerage.

I went to audition a pr of VSA VR4 Gen III. $6.5K $7.0K speakers. Took my amp along. A Krell KAV 250. Dedicated room… treated room… yada yada. Nice front end by Shan Lin, and Electrocompaniet preamp. All Audience wiring and Chang conditioning. Spent almost two hours listening to this and that. Felt quite unimpressed throughout the whole of that session… so I decided to leave and no longer consider those VSA Gen III speakers as candidates.

Saying good bye to the dealer and adding I’ll need to look elsewhere for other units, he bade me check out one more room first. I did.

In that room was an all Thor power train with the top tier Shan lin SACD CD player. Audience wires as before and Chang cond as in the other room. Now the outfit was 30 wpc vs 250 wpc and tubes vs. SS. The speakers again were VSA. VR4 JRs. Virtually half the cost of those just heard.

Listening to the exact same CD (s) as I had been previewing in the room next door, the first few notes I heard after receiving the remote control simply put, blew me away. Never in my life had I heard such incredible sound. Glorious. Astonishingly natural and organic. Decent bass too, though some improvement there was needed. Otherwise, 85 - 90% of the sound I was seeking lay right there in front of me!

So I bought those speakers.

Big mistake.

See, I was buying a sound.. a lie actually. Not speakers. It wasn’t the speakers that were manufacturing that sound.

They merely allowed it.

I shudder to think as I reflect on all of that How great could have that Thor outfit sounded with still better speakers?

For the next two years or so I tried to emulate, duplicate, recapture as much as possible of that Thor tube sound using those JR speakers. To no avail.

Similar products though not the exact same were brought in to reproduce the system I had heard. No dice. Nada.

Only that front end could make that sound. Not the spakers. In fact, those speakers needed that sort of front end to sound that good. With lesser gear, they sounded well, let’s say just not so good and leave it at that.

I dare say this is as pertinent as it would be with SS power trains too. Krell has a decidedly different sound than does Levinson, and McIntosh SS has a different sound than does Sony, etc.

I sifted my way thru a heap of cables, inordinate numbers of speaker placements to the point my floor was becoming Swiss Cheese… Lorraine, I think… or perhaps jarlsberg. Differing amps, preamps, even a couple different sources on the same economic levels as what was originally previewed that distant day, flew in, nested and then migrated off into the wilds. Zip. Sorry. I ultimately came close but no dice.

Later on, by acquiring a Thor line stage pre amp and added it into that mix with a BAT vk500 w/BAT pk, and felt then that was the best I could afford to do with that pr of speakers, and that was enough too. I had had it by then.

With respect to all the VSA owners, I was done trying to get great sound out of those JRs. They aren’t for me at all. Check please. I’m finished. Next!

It is indeed what is up[ front that counts. If the quality of the signal is not inherently true prior to it’s explosion from the speakers, it sure as Hell won’t regain or become infused with more Truth & love juice as it emerges from the transducers.

It matters not how good the speakers are…. Within reason. They will only exude what they receive… they won’t recan it or revitalize it. Purify it more, add to it or requalify it again… well, not if they are pretty good speakers.

Ain’t great speakers supposed to be neutral & transparent?

I’m pretty sure that’s why they call it a system. It takes EVERyTHING in it to generate an engaging audio event.

In my case the speakers I heard producing the sound that intoxicated me so magically that day were only a tad more than half the price of the ones I went there to hear!

But the front end of both rigs were quite different. Pricewise and topology too. the Thor outfit ran into $20K all by itself. The Electrocompainet and Krell added up to about $6 - $7K. total, give or take a few denaro.

The speakers too, to be fair here were different sorts… one wearing a negligee as a modest covering, the second, adorned by veneers and woods.

Irrespective of the two setups, night and day diffs were instantly noticeable. Blatantly. They continue to be too…. if the front end is up to the task.

Such remains my own experience.

I feel too some of the biggest considerations are matching of each item along the signal pathway. Though some call it synergy. Impedance matching all thru the system is mandatory for a great sounding arrangement. It is as important as with the upstream component as it is in the relationship between the amp and the speakers.

The amp has to satisfy two task masters. The source or preamp feeding the signal to it, and the speakers it must control and feed thereafter.

Miss on the upstream imp mataching, and the downstream output is going to be way less than good… or just good at it’s best.

Despite where you begin until you have the system on a par throughout itself, balanced electrically with respect to impedance, from it’s source (s) to it’s loud speakers, you’ll not be receiving it’s best effort… and I’ll say no matter how much $$$ youlaid out for those fancy squeakers ya got.

If you want good to great sound quickly, then go the front to back route. If you can deal with decent sound until your power train, and source are up to speed, then going off for a pr of high end squeakers is the likely way for you… that is of course unless your significant other is in the remodeling mood frequently…. If so, then speakers are normally the first things to be examined as something to change.

Lastly, if you have the duckets to drop as considerably on the power train as you are or can on speakers, all bets are off… and then it’s merely matching things up as to their needs and your preffs.

Like the old cigarette commercial said, “it’s what’s up front that counts!”

Hearing speakers which are capable of sounding great very much depends on what is making them sound great… and never will it be the other way around!

Fusion10

going speakers first, might lock a person into a particular camp and I see that as a sort of drawback.

if you grab a pr of panels because of how they image perhaps, then decide you want to try out an 8 watt 300b amp, it's speaker selling time!

Around here one can and will hear a lot of pros and cons for this or that approach to building a system.

some often contend speakers make the biggest impact on the sound of a stereo, versus some other item being replaced in that system.

IMHO, the jury is still out on that idea.

Exchange out your SS amp for a single triode amp... tell me that did not have a significant effect on the sound.

Replace your aV reciever you are using as a preamp with a $10K line stage tube preamp and then tell me it was a Ho hum exchange.

El toro mietae!

of course, if a system is not highly resolving, it matters very little what alterations are made, as they likely won't be detected.

You are as welcome to your opinion as are we all. Waht I posted is more or less what my exp has shown or proven outright to me. Repeatedly.

I think my first few sentences in my last post said
EVERYTHING MATTERS… ok.. There it is again.

A certain setup is exactly that … a certain, particular, unique setup. As much as you might try to duplicate a given configuration, it’s about impossible to do so, though you may come close, it won’t be a clone.

I also found out better front ends provide better results… even with more modest speakers. Period. Believe that or not, I don’t care. Big beautiful expensive speakers first devotees are simply in a pissing contest… showing off to some degree IMO. Especially IF they feel that investment alone or even predominately is going to give them a killer outfit without commensurate funds being injected upstream.

Ego… plays a fairly large part in this past time too… do remember that.

Speakers are what everyone sees… and many think… are the stereo itself! They are if nothing else, the icons of our hobby. They are the art. The majesty. The idols. The Venus de Milo’s of our arrangements. They are the signature of a system.

…but they aren’t predominately where the real majic is born. They just convey it to us. Hopefully with as little signature of their own as is possible.

Trust me, If I could afford a pr of Alexandrias, andrea IIis, Evidence, Stratovari, etc… I’d have ‘em!

‘Course, if I could afford the likes of them, my front end would be as well appointed.

I can’t.

I’m guessing who ever posted this thread is on the fence about which way to go, and has a fineite amount of bucks on hand to devote to the hobby and is wondering which way to jump.

I’ve been very very happy with the results of going from source to speakers in constructing a variety of stereo or AV rigs. Naturally, none are or were ever finished as quickly as they were begun. All received ongoing attention, updates, and upgrades as was my ability to do so. In that context, no system I’ve had or own now has ever been finished… all remain in a state of flux. Awaiting an injection of some new this or that… or some replacement.

Speakers are no different. Not in my world anyhow.

Although in different rooms, I’ve heard the same set of speakers fueled by differing front ends… naturally each sounded differently. Which one sounded best? That’s a subjective call I think.

And that is likely our bottom line… this rhetoric at best is purely subjective. There is no preappointed judge. No jury. No coromated king of sound that says “a stereo must sound like….”. Nope. None, but us.

It’s our call. Our money, and our mania. I’ve simply found a way that works for me that does not require me to invest a second mortgage or hock my first born for a pr of speakers.

In the final analysis, so long as each area of the system is addressed appropriately, or as best one can, the results should be just fine. If not, something was overlooked somewhere, or there is some mismatch in the outfit.

All roads lead to Culver city. How we get there is up to us… I’ve gotten there on my thumb, by car, plane, and bus. Now, I might just try by horseback, as this thread is once again, beating one to death as have so many before it.

It really doesn’t matter which end gets the most attention first, so long as all of them get attended to with the same level of devotion, or as one is able.

It’s all been said … here and on other pages. And doubtless, will be said yet again… this hobby harbours worlds within worlds.

Reasonableness when selecting what ever item is the underlying understanding going into this mess. I seldom mention it. Not too many folks actually do. Some degree of common sense is prerequisite.

Well, that and a bucket of bucks.

Speakers should fit the room or vice versa.

Amps should fit the speakers, or vice versa.

Ever notice there seems to be a lot of vice in this versa.

You can light the wick on either end of this candle… some light both ends.

Which ever way one flips the coin so long as active relationships between those components that can physically interact with each other are given their due, eg., room & speakers, I doubt anyone is going into the ditch on amp selection unless they’re ignoring the speakers needs.

If however, some skimping is a ‘must’ along the way, speakers (within reason) is where I’d skin it back. Albeit, skimp is such a harsh word. Truth be told, I am sparing with my purchases all along the way, if I can. I simply hate paying the prices some folks want for this stuff… but eventually, I break down and do it…. If I feel it absolutely must happen. Following much trepidation, hesitation, research, wondering, worrying, and praying.

Praying predominately the carrier du jour handles with care whatever it is I buy… or sell.

That’s the biggest black hole to this hobby…. Shipping. It’s like riding a motor cycle… it ain’t a matter of ‘if’…. It’s a matter of ‘when’ it’s gonna get laid down, especially with those folks.

… it’s easier IMHO to ship in & out amps than it is full size floorstanding speakers every couple 3 months. So there’s that.

Gee.. I wish I were a ‘Can’ lover first and foremost. Ear buds and HP amps? Both Should fit right in the mail box.

It’s tuff to change your game plan when it’s worked well for ya over time.