better gear, worse recordings

Here lies the trap of the upgrade / hi-fi bug.

One can climb the ladder of "better components" i.e. "greater detail, more accuracy" but does it make it more enjoyable to listen to i.e. "musically entertaining" ? I think that this is the tightrope that most of us here on A-gon are fighting.

How does one capture all of the detail without having it sound like a sterile, lifeless "hi-fi" system ??? Not an easy trick, as most of us have found out. Assembling a system based on "good" components will typically not yield the results that most of us are looking for. We've learned that the hard way. There is quite a bit of trial and error involved in making a truly "musically accurate" system. If you can do that, you've got the best of both worlds. Sean
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Well put Kelly. I keep trying to "push" things sometimes and swap multiple components at a time. This is basically a BIG no-no from my experience, but i still do it. I have been hurt ( sometimes drastically ) by doing this too. At one point, i was extremely happy with one of my systems ( it sounded GREAT in terms of both musicality and detail ). I decided to "make it better" and move this cable here, that one there, take that amp out and put this one in, etc... As such, i lost the "synergy" that i had and was never able to get back to that point. While i can remember what preamp, amp, etc... i was using, i don't know what cables i had where. After learning that lesson, i'm now keeping a log book to keep track of what goes where, etc... This way i can experiment and still find my way back while trying to go forward : ) Sean
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