2. misc-audio
  3. 190490-145729

How cheap can you go and still be happy with the sound?

I would think many guys on this forum are spoilt by the gear they have and never listen anymore on cheap rigs.

I was listening recently on my younger daughter’s PC audio rig and got reminded again of how good it sounds. There is a fairly high level of clarity, detail, tonal balance and great bass in this rig.

 

- Yamaha HS8 powered monitors: $700 to $800

- Yamaha WXC-50 MusicCast streamer+dac+preamp: $450, often found on A4L for around $300

- Audioquest Powerquest PQ3 (was around $200 or so)

 

IMO, this would qualify as a high quality (sonically) charity price hifi rig for any younger or older person w.r.t small room nearfield or midfield listening.

 

What is the cheapest rig that has brought you happiness these days?

 

deep_333

Showing 3 responses by megabyte

megabyte
101 posts
 

I think probably you can get very good, if not top notch sound from a good pair of powered speakers, streaming from your favorite service.  

megabyte
101 posts
 

I think it’s impossible to get 100k, very high end system sound with 5k. But you can get maybe 75-85% of the way there. That last 15% will cost you exponentially more as you near 100%. 
 

I do think however, that  you can get 98% of 100k system sound Q  for around 25k. For example, a preowned Hegel 590/600, and preowned Perlisten S7T or Boressen X6 towers. IMO you’d need to spend a lot more to get significantly better sound. 

megabyte
101 posts
 

We agree. I’m just making the general point that while you can’t really get a true giant killer system for relatively little money like 5k, you can for a bit more and there’s not much need to spend 100k when you can get so close for 1/4 the cost.

 

I got a pair of mint/new but open box Perlisten r7t towers at 40% off list, and a brand new Hegel 390 at 35% off list. And for not a ton of $ (in high end audio terms) I feel like I have a true high end system approximately as sonically good as many systems that would cost 5x as much. 

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