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Is Your System Better Than the Music You Like?

I've recently come to the conclusion that the capabilities of my audio system exceeds the quality of my typical recordings. It's making me rethink any ideas I had involving future upgrades. Just wondering if anyone else has reached this point?

I have what most people would consider a very high quality system, but by no means is it a SOTA setup. The system is made up of components by JRDG, REL, Martin-Logan, MSB, Sony, TACT, RPM, Discovery, PS Audio and Benz. I have a decent room and while I won't say I'm obsessive about it, I've paid a reasonable amount of attention to setup issues. The overall sound quality is quite good. Still there's always room for upgrades. I could upgrade the DAC to a Plus, switch the subwoofer cables, add an Arcici stand, maybe go with an outboard tube phono preamp, etc. I could easily put another $10,000 into the system in worthwhile improvements without fundamentally changing the character or capabilities of the system.

Musically, I'm a basic old-school rocker. Anything from 50s New Orlean R&B, Motown, 60s psychedelia, 70s punk & funk to 80s rap. The 90s are less well represented, but there are smatterings. I'm a big Chicago style electric blues fans. I'm also a big classic jazz fan. I go for Ellington big-big-time, Billie Hoilday, Louis, 50s Blue Note and Miles. There's some classical as well as a couple of country artists (you can't go wrong with Dwight).

I have any number of audiophile quality pressings and recordings, but the majority of my music, particularly my favorite recordings, are down and dirty with no pretensions towards audiophilia. The 30s jazz that I so love is noisy, bandwidth limited and mono. The Chess blues recordings have a very nice aliveness to them, but they're mainly mono and without much deep bass. Most 60s to 70s rock is sonically undistinguished (obviously there are exceptions) and is more mid-fi than hi-fi. Rap is purposely lo-fi. Current recordings are extremely dynamically limited. My point is that you don't need a $150,000 system in a custom built room to properly reproduce these types of music. You still need a good system capable of low distortion, wide bandwidth, sharp imaging and all the other audiophile traits, but it doesn't have to be outrageously complex nor all that expensive.

I probably will continue to make relatively minor upgrades, but I can't imagine making any major changes. Maybe I'm no longer an audiophile and I've slipped down in the world of mid-fi, if so, I'd at least like to think that it's a quality mid-fi.
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Showing 1 response by kthomas

kthomas
911 posts
 
Absolutely - my system is better than a large portion of my CD collection. I share the opinion that a better system doesn't make "worse" recordings worse to listen to, but worse recordings don't inspire you to run out and spend a lot more on your system. And, there are many recordings that do benefit from the quality of my system, and when I'm listening to them, I'm thrilled that the system is as good as it is.

You don't mention how much your system costs (not that it's particularly important), but it's clearly less than $150K and situated in a custom built room - at some point in the upgrade process, you hit that knee in the curve where improvements are going to be more and more expensive. Since you can get a large majority of your CDs for between 8 and 13 dollars, you can get significant amounts of music for the same money as one of these expensive upgrades. Earlier on, it might have been 100 CDs for the same price as a very significant upgrade (relative to the quality of the system then). Now, it's probably 500 or a 1000 CDs. That makes a fairly compelling case for buying music and letting the system be.

Not caring for classical keeps the system cost down, as well. I like Rock, Blues, Jazz and several other genres, but I rarely listen to classical.

Finally, I'm guessing everybody who says they're at that point of the system being more than sufficient for most of their music collection has a system and a music collection that basically everybody they know believes is "over the top" - you're probably the most hard-core audiophile any of your friends know. And yet, there's something about getting to the point where the gear is sufficient and the showpiece CDs or LPs become uninteresting to listen to, that makes you question whether you're a "true" audiophile. Once again, it's easier (and cheaper!) to conclude that you don't much care. -Kirk

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