@mitch2this is a reasonable way to look at the source versus speakers question. In my main system, I shopped very carefully for the amp and speakers that met specific criteria I had for my room for both two and multiple channel uses (macro). I have not felt a strong desire to replace those and have focused instead on improving sources and tweaking cables (micro). Improving sources in this system have allowed me to get the most enjoyment out of my “macro” gear, and finally cure the upgrade bug.
In my office system I have more modest amplification and speakers, but did not get the full benefits of what they had to offer until I placed a proper DAC in the chain. In both cases, my systems were source limited, crap in, crap out.
One last comment, the performance envelope of budget speakers and DACs have improved significantly over the last decade. If you can live with more pedestrian looks, you can get pretty high audio enjoyment for modest outlays of cash these days. Achieving the last 10-20% of performance requires significantly greater investment, and probably should start with the listening room and power supply.
I look at speakers as the macro part of my system while the source/front end I consider to be micro. I found it much harder to find speakers that worked for me sonically, plus large heavy speakers are much harder to move around than front end equipment, when using the buy and try approach .
Once I found speakers that ticked my boxes sonically, and partnered appropriate amplifiers to drive them, the (heaviest to lift) macro portion of my sound was complete. Most here have at least adequate source components so it is not a matter of having great speakers and sucky source components. Once the source is mostly ok, upgrades to the source IME tend to be micro, or smaller incremental gains. In addition, digital source gear has experienced noticeable improvements almost annually over the past 5-10 years so my source has been the least stable part of my system, as I have upgraded DACs, servers, added a DDC, etc., and the more stable part of my system (amplifiers/speakers) seems to have kept up.
A great source OR speakers will STILL sound mediocre with a so so amplifier driving them!
I'll take a GREAT amp driving a decent source & speakers,allowing the FULL potential of those items to be realized!!!
The point is that with poor speakers your high end source may still sound poor and you won't hear the full benefit of your source. However with high end speakers which match your room you will hear the best your source can produce, good or not so good!
Everything matters but speakers shouldn't be the weakest link in your system.
That's the advantage of any great source component - it will work just fine in any room where there is enough space to put it in. You always have to deal with resonance control, though.
There is theory and there is practicality. Linn's theory is correct, but to maximize your investment, you'd want a well matched system. There's no point in arguing for a $1000 front end and $100K speakers or vice versa. So much is based on the room.
That's certainly true, generally speaking, but first it is not always easy to determine the weakest link, and then by changing any component your change the overall balance, so you might upgrade but not get better sound or improve some aspects of the sound and make others worse. This is a form of art, I would say.
In my case, I think I know that the weakest links are cartridge and speakers, though they are not weak links, so I have no need to upgrade, only a moderate wish.
@hilde45 and others. I appreciate your humor. Let's not be REAL serious about this. Most us us have a decent to awesome rig. For those in that category, it is upgrading the weakest piece.
I’ve evolved LOL. Came back into the hobby through the angle of folks repurposing vintage pro audio as inexpensive high current power. That lead to signal processing but I was driving sub par speakers.
Fast forward five years and I’m a speaker devotee luxuriating in the market trend toward big baffle mid fi heritage speakers and fast small subs :)
Both. Both have to be as high of quality, for the least $ possible. Thats my philosophy. I Sell gear, so I have hundreds of pieces. I regularly switch out components to upgrade and try different combinations. I have 3 racks:
1. a complete ADCOM rack in my basement shop - hooked to cornwalls and Bozaks 302’s. Due to size of speaks-i dont change this at all.
2. bedroom rack: Dynaco pas3x/ST70 combo & Yamaha MX830/CX1000 preamp; ads1230's & CalRad's 12" coaxials (amazing!); Onkyo C-7030; Tice conditioner; Akai digital tuner; Cambridge Black Magic 100 DAC; BT unit
3. downstairs BR/music room: Yanaha M80 & dbx BX-3(badass!!) amps; new to me: parasound pre 200; Onkyo C-7030; Yamaha T-1020 tuner, Akai TT w/Ortofon cart; Furman power conditioner; BT unit; Yamaha T-80 tuner; JBL L88 plus 12's w/brand new blue diagonal foam rubber covers that repacesd the orange quadrax & Monitor Audio Gold bookshelves.
Note: Onkyo C-7030 cd players with the Wolfson dacs are the best sounding and most dependable 'mortal man money' models there are. I collect them when i find them for $150 or less. I have 6 or 7 currently. If you haven't experienced one, you need to. They are the only cd unit i use.
What Ralph didn't add to that and I will - It's also got to be tube preamp! He thinks exactly the same, including about phono preamps, but simply decided not to say it.
If your preamp or source is lacking, it will not matter how good your amps and speakers are- they cannot make up for signal loss or coloration! The preamp has to be right!
I was just browsing through the amps and preamps forums, and came across this from @atmasphere
If your preamp or source is lacking, it will not matter how good your amps and speakers are- they cannot make up for signal loss or coloration! The preamp has to be right!
Wrong. Get the speakers you like most and put them in whatever room you've got. Next year you might move to a better place with better listening room and you wouldn't have to replace speakers.
Speakers first. Buy the best speaker you can afford to match the room. Buy source with the remaining budget. This will give you the best sound from whatever your source may be.
Then go on to upgrade the source and other components to match the speakers.
Once speakers and source matched upgrade the speakers and start again!
Speakers first, always. Only you have your ears, specific musical preferences in what sounds good and the environment they will live in.
Go with the objective of buying something you can live with for decades, source equipment will always be swapped as improvements or budget improve.
Had my first pair for 30+ years and cycled through 4 systems and they just kept sounding better.
As for GIGO, you can't drive great sound thru bad speakers but the opposite holds true. Great speakers will always sound good and make the most of the source.
.
@grislybutter (do you miss being called "Brown Bear"?), I suppose one could interpret that as 30k for the speakers (wow, I wish I could do that!) and then "the rest" would entail all of the electronics, speaker cables, interconnect cables, fuses, power cords, and all else assorted what-have-you one might deem necessary that is in front of the speakers. One might even include room treatments as part of "the rest," although in the context of this thread, I realize that was not part of the topic. But you know how these threads wander. (I am going to go on record as saying I have personally never tried any exotic fuses, but I am curious.)
so many here have completely ignored the question. It was NOT what is most important, it was what should come first.
Nothing is "most important" because it is a SYSTEM. It is the weakest link idea. The SYSTEM can be no better than the weakest link so again, nothing is the most important.
However, we can pick a logical place to start, and that is most definitely with the speakers. They must fit the room and they must be capable of doing what you want them to do i.e. what do you value most because unless you have mega bucks you can’t have everything. You want to play AC/DC at live levels or more interested in string quartets? etc..
Once you have speakers that will be able to do what you want, and that will work in your room, then you can start figuring out what kind of amplification you need to get them to perform, and then you can focus on getting a source that is at least as good as the rest.
So once and for all let’s just drop the ridiculous idea that one part of the system is more important than any other
Sometimes comparing different pressings is like comparing different turntables/tonearms of the same brand. Quite illuminating. And I mean comparing all first pressings from different countries.
I’ve done the totals on the MSRPs of what I am actually listening to and I am still under 30k. I’d love to go either way with 30k and 70k. Either way. (I don’t know what it would come to if I added up the stuff that is in a dormant state. There is actually enough dormant to create an extra system with stuff left over.) My electronics up front : speakers ratio is way heavy on the electronics end. At one time I was in the camp that felt good electronics could make average speakers shine and that poor electronics would bring good speakers down. Now I am not so sure about that. (And I realize that good, average and poor are all relative terms.)
speakers add the most distortion and coloration so you have to start with speakers you like the sound of that fit your room. All this crap about the guy from Naim declaring source first is just that,,,, crap from a guy who sold sources...
Put a $1000 all in one streamer/integrated amp with $100,000 speakers.
Then put a $100,000 front end with some $1000 speakers.
Clearly any speaker will have the greatest impact on overall sound quality and it’s also the source of greatest distortion. All other components deliver significantly less distortion. To get the best out of a high end speaker will require better electronics especially source components. The correct balance is impossible to determine precisely. Ultimately it’s a function of what you can afford and trial and error is your only guide.
Spend full budget on Shun mook discs and Shakti stones....no speakers and sources are needed. Just start singing, dancing and tossing shakti stones around --> quickest path to audio nirvana.
That will only work if you cover all your walls with funny looking panels.
fuses first, then cables...eventually the rest of the system will fall into place. room last.
Spend full budget on Shun mook discs and Shakti stones....no speakers and sources are needed. Just start singing, dancing and tossing shakti stones around --> quickest path to audio nirvana.
If I will have to start speaker first, so you know your room will be able to accommodate it. Once you have the speakers I will choose the right amp tubes or ss. Preamp , then source. Assuming cables are in the house.
@kingsleuy , I bought my very first system at the SAFB BX in ’79 and it was also a Magnavox! I did it on lay-away. (It would not have strapped onto the back of a mc though, I picked the rack system that had the biggest speakers of all of the rack systems they had. It must have been multiple boxes. I am not sure how I got it back to the barracks in my Mustang, but I did.)
Good source will sound better on mediocre speakers than mediocre source
I consider my CD player and TT mediocre and they sound great with good speakers and bad with OK speakers. So I guess it depends on the definition of mediocre. To translate this to numbers:
$200 CD player - $1000 speaker or
$800 CD player - $400 speaker?
(as speakers budget shouldn't be 1:1)
Note, I didn't forget one "0" from each number - that's what I meant 😊
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