How does one get off the merry-go-round?

Drubin, this is where it gets tricky ...

Things that are part of the mix:

* Everything I have tried or fiddled with has already been mentioned by someone already, and usually many others have to some degree taken them up. The hints are there already in websites, in forums, in lists of tweaking tips.
* A lot it has to do with the mental approach. Mine is that the system, as is, is fully capable of achieving that quality of sound that I mentioned before -- the reason that it is not, is because there are weaknesses in the components and setup; there may be only a few or there may be myriads, but the technique is that you have to find each one, and knock it over, that is, eliminate the weakness.
To quote a very old cliche, a chain is only as strong as the weakest link, and that is very, very relevant in audio systems. If you have eliminated every single weakness but one; that is, there is still one problem area remaining, then the system will still not sound right, in fact at this point it may sound considerably worse than when you started the whole exercise! Why, because at each step up to this point you have improved, shall we call it, the "transparency" of the system, so that now this one last defect is brilliantly highlighted by the rest of the system working correctly!
* You're going to have to get your hand dirty, that is, dive inside the system components. Unless you are very lucky, weakness are there under the covers and you are going to have to sort them out, or get someone else to do it for you. A classic is speakers; people obsess about the cables to them and the connectors at each end; now look on the other side of the binding post inside the box, say, and you may find a miserable, loose, push on connector -- a tempered steel link of that chain mentioned above goes to one made out of elastic!
* I don't replace parts with expensive, "designer" ones, only good quality conventional ones where it makes good engineering sense, e.g. Panasonic FC caps. It's fine if you want to use fancy stuff, but I haven't found them to be necessary.
* What I focus on is getting the treble right, if that's right everything else falls into place. A good test, amongst many, is a typical, studio mixed rock recording where the drummer is giving the cymbals a good workout. I'm sure a lot of you will have a good laugh at this, but a perfect test CD is Status Quo's greatest hits. In my early days I took this around to dealers, etc, and every system made a complete dog's breakfast of it. When a sytem IS working decently the (ride?) cymbals being struck virtually constantly through some songs should shimmer out with perfect clarity, delicacy and sweetness, just like a real one, no matter how loud the system goes. Frequently, if things are not good, you can barely make out that the cymbals are being struck at all!

Anyway, that's enough for now; depending upon the feedback and reactions, I will add more if it makes sense to ...

Frank

Another interesting, VERY long term conversation. My own experiences match the OP, in that I did jump ship (mixing metaphors!) for about 15 years (phew!!).

But, I have learnt, and the big learning is, "everything matters". So trite, so obvious, but unfortunately, so true!

My own experience is, no matter what gear you have, if you persist in taking care of smaller, and smaller details of everything that is interfering with the quality of sound, then there is a barrier that you break through. On the other side, the sound is "magic", "real", convincing, all the adjectives. The BIG problem is that you have be fussy, fussy, fussy, over and over again -- that is, there are no magic bullets. It's hard work, very frustating, some gear (but not necessarily more expensive gear!) will make it easier then others.

So, my (OTT!!?) suggestion is that virtually every system out there, as they stand, can be made to sound "real". Believe it or not ... ;-)

Frank

Macrojack, thanks for your positive response. Sorry I didn't get back earlier, and I note that other people are obviously not REALLY interested in getting better sound; strange addiction, this hobby, where a lot of people believe they are condemned to be forever on the merry-go-round, and that there is nothing that can be done about it, eh?? Obviously I'm new here, but I've been fooling around with this "madness" for 40+ years, so at least a couple of lessons have been learnt along the way. Also, being curious, I looked at one or two of your other postings and it appears you're coming from a very similar direction as myself. As an example, mentioning the high efficiency Zu speaker -- straightaway you're going to make life easier for yourself using a speaker like that; an early (in years back) foray for me was a DIY effort using Goodmans Axiom 301's, driven by an absolutely miserable nothing of an amplifier!

Anyway, on with the show, so a few more thoughts:

* Pretty obviously, getting digital right is hard, the ferocious arguments STILL continue, but it certainly can be done. With vinyl, you can be sloppy and get away with it, the result will still be very pleasant and musical to listen to. Digital is a hard taskmaster, you might be 99.9% there and the sound will be excrutiatingly unpleasant and fatiguing to listen to, but persevere! If you can just get that last 0.1% to fall into place, then you have magic. Think of it like very high power binoculars, if the focus is not perfectly right the result will be a messy blur; then just one little extra small twist and everything snaps into beautiful view.
* Also with digital, just because you get it right for a while does not mean it will stay right during a listening session. A classic behaviour trait is that the sound may sound reasonable but not special at first, then build up to a peak of quality, and then go off, sound worse and worse the more you listen. What this means is that you still have weaknesses that haven't been sorted out.
* Even nothing DAC chips can sound good but you have to warm them up, condition them thoroughly first -- this is not news for many people. What I find works fast is a test track of maximum level high frequency sine wave, say 18kHz, set on repeat for an hour or so, sort of like belting the living daylights out of the chip! Obviously, don't have the amp on, or have it at very low level; the latter does a nice job of starting to warm up the tweeter and its crossover bits.
* To see where your power amp is at: put on some fairly driving rock where the drummer is having a good time on the cymbals fairly constantly through the song, at a very LOW level. If your system is half reasonable you should be able to hear the shimmer of those cymbals beautifully captured ( if you can't, go directly to Jail, do not pass Go, ...). Then slowly wind up the volume. At some point, for many/most systems, that good cymbal sound will disappear. If you can get to maximum volume with no change of the cymbal sound, congratulations!
Otherwise, you have another (set of) weakness(es). No, this is not the speaker, I repeat, not the speaker that's the problem! I have heard absolutely rubbishy bits of speaker having no trouble at all peforming excellently; no, typically it's the power amp's power supply starting to collapse, behave badly, spray plenty of nasty interference into the rest of the system, etc

Okay, there's a bit more to play with; so is any of this making sense to more than one person?

Season's cheers,
Frank

Drubin, thanks for your response! As regards getting the cymbals to shimmer, I'm talking here, in terms of what's possible, of early Rolling Stones, say. And yes, a system CAN do that.

If shimmer is not so good, double check first through the speakers at VERY, VERY low levels. I mean here at headphone levels, that is, you can stick your ear right next to the tweeter, as if it were actually one side of a set of headphones (this is actually another test I'll mention anon).

If you now get shimmer the problem is deeply buried in the power amp, try another amp as a way of crosschecking, perhaps.

If you still only got bad shimmer at that very low level, try decent headphones from CD player or preamp, with the power amp SWITCHED OFF, pulled out of the wall, right out of the way! If shimmer now exists, try plugging the power amp back in, switching it back on with the volume set to zero OR disconnecting the IC's, that is, nothing coming out of the speakers. Does the shimmer through the headphones go bad now?

Can you see where I am coming from? Keep going back to a simpler and simpler setup, and when that's working OK try adding bits of the system back in. The trick is to isolate where the problem comes in and start working upon that ...

Frank