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High End System Building. How important is the matching, cabling and room? Thoughts ?

The last 20 years as an audiophile and now a dealer has taught me a very important lesson. Everything matters. The equipment can be great but no matter how much you spend the matching is very important. The cabling is also important. Some think cabling is all about making it sound better. I prefer my cabling to not get in the way. It’s like it can’t be a clogged faucet for your sound.  Materials and shielding are very important. In addition to that the room is very important. You may not have a perfect room but you build your system to work in the room you have. I don’t have all the answers but you can’t just spend money and have a great system. Combination of equipment, cabling and room has gotten me there. I’ve tried a lot of gear and cables and this is how I feel. What are your thoughts everyone? 

calvinj

Showing 2 responses by patrickcarey

patrickcarey
12 posts
 

@tony1954, @ghdprentice


Glad to read you have a similar experience.  Your methodologies are good.  Great sound is certainly a measure of personal taste, and ongoing tuning over time. 

Everything is a component. All the interconnects and hardware as well as room acoustics. 

I'll be digging into some UNobtrusive acoustic treatments in my future.  Might have to move to have a dedicated sound room :)

 

 

 

patrickcarey
12 posts
 

Although I didn't realize it at the time I was and have been a cable denier.  for the longest time I would cheap out and get Amazon basics cables and then get mad at my equipment because it didn't sound the way I wanted it to .

A couple of months ago I decided to try and upgraded Coaxial cable from Pangea, and I could hear some minor differences in the depth and imaging. So of course I decided to take another step up and I bought a really expensive cable for me - about 100 bucks which was the AQ carbon digital coax.  that was the beginning of a journey and a Sonic revelation.  Since then I've upgraded up the line and with each step I literally hear a little more detail wider soundstage in some cases better base response and more detailed richer bass response and most recently with an AQ coffee coax…well it's a pretty good cable.  OK it's really good astonishing the difference really from where I started I'm not sure it's gonna be worth it for everyone because it was pretty darn expensive but it was apparently the weakest link in my system.  since then I've been exploring speaker cables and power cables and frankly it all makes a difference.  the downside with this is that the interactions of the acoustics of your room will certainly flavor the music as well as the type of cable you use will also flavor the music just like with speakers and just like with amplifiers so it takes a little bit of experimentation to get something that's right for you.

best advice I can see on your audiophile journey is to try some stuff make sure there are returns or at the very least if you buy it used that you'll be able to flip it and sell it to someone else if it doesn't work for you so you're not risking a ton of money. 

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