How good is my source?

onhwy, you could say the same about most highend luxury items, how much better is a McLauren over a Ferrari, does Laguiole corkscrew open a bottle of wine that much better, Mont BLanc or Cross, the 70' or 75' Bordeauxs? I agree with you but to someone who spends a little more on any luxury item, those tiny differences are all that matter, anyway thanks for clarifying, I'm going to ask audiogon that this thread be deleted, about half of the posting actually deal with my original question the rest are great examples of why not to many people on our fourms anymore I don't want this to turn into something it shouldn't

cornfed, auditioning gear is helpful and probably essential for assembling your "ultimate rig", but unlike you I buy my equipment used, afterall this is a used equipment site, I assume you buy your equipment new, if not you must waste a lot of dealers time, my reasoning is this, my first system cost about $4000 buying new, closeout or dealer used product, it consisted of a $700 pair of paradigms, an Acurus L10, two acurus A80 amp, a cal alpha and kinergetics transport, cabling was audiostream and tributaries, these were components that local my dealers told me would work well together and it was a fine system, my current system I bought used, a Marsh 400 ($1350), a CAL CL 20 ($850), Anodyne passive ($200), AQ Diamond x3 ($260), Kimber Bifocal($450), a Richard Gray 400 ($400), two Tg audio cords HSRa and HSRi ($250) Blue Circle cord ($75) and a pair of Castle Severn 2s ($750), total about 4600 including major shipping charges. Before buying this system I figured that I could assemble a better system buying used without my dealers help than he could sell me for similar cash, which would you prefer? I prefer to buy used and take my chances on getting a piece of equipment I don't like, it can usually be resold at minimal loss and sometimes at a profit. Either way I do not intend to go waste a dealers time auditioning something I have no intentions of buying from their shop. To try and minimize making poor decisions I sometimes ask for the advice of others, I sometimes get very helpful responses like that of mrowland, what I usually get is someone like you who spends way to much time at the local audio store and takes it a little to seriously for my taste, spouting off some crap about the invalidity of reviews or the opinions of others, like yours. -mike k

onhwy I see your point as far as a systems synergy is going to represent a good deal of the differences between highend players in any given system, as I mentioned above I guess this is what is lost buying used