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Maintaining a "Balanced" System Design?

After recently upgrading my phono stage, amp and preamp to all ARC, I have begun to explore speakers and have plans to listen to some Joseph Audio Perspectives in the coming week. 

However, in the process of talking with the dealer, it was suggested that I should upgrade my interconnects and speaker cabling. He has suggested all Stage III gear, which is almost as expensive as the JA speakers. 

My question is not to necessarily debate speakers or cables, but to instead hear some thoughts about not over-weighting one's system with a component that exceeds the rest of the gear. For instance, I realized that my current turntable/tonearm/cartridge combination deserved more than the $3k phono stage I had been using. So I moved up to an ARC and really noticed the difference. Of course that brought me to looking at amplification and I am sure everyone knows the story from here...

But, how do folks allocate or balance their systems?  I am pretty sure adding $15k of cables is more than makes sense, but maybe not?

Thanks to all who would like to share their philosophy and experiences. 

128x128thr1961

Showing 2 responses by ghdprentice

ghdprentice
6,471 posts
 

Congratulations on your ARC equipment. I have been a fan of ARC for forty years and only slowly over that time were able to buy, used at first and finally moving up over the last few years to all Reference level Audio Research gear. You can see my system under my ID.

 

While I agree that your gear requires the top notch interconnects, cables, and power cords to get the most out of them. I don’t think I would necessarily buy it all at once and the brand your dealer is recommending. You may want to take your time and find the brand that is perfect for your tastes. Transparent are a known synergistic brand with Audio Research and the one I use the most of.

$15K is perfectly reasonable given the equipment you are talking about. If you have good gear 10 - 20% the value of your system is a good rule of thumb. The most likely big gains are likely to be the speaker cables and power cord for your amp. I use Transparent Ultra speaker cables. ~$5K, but after a year of trying to figure out the correct power cord for my Audio Research Reference 160s I found The Audio Quest Hurricane (2 meters, I have a 1m and 2m on the Ref 160m monoblocks I am currently using the 2 m sounds better) . I also experimented with all my other components and found Transparent sounded best.

I have spent a lot of time with Cardas, WireWorld, DHLabs, Harmonics, Nirvana, and several other brands. With Audio Research gear you want really transparent (not warm or cool, low noise) wires to get the very best from them. Maybe Stage III interconnects are great… never heard of them. Dealers can’t carry a lot of brands, so they carry what they can… but always recommend that.

 

I could write a thesis on this subject and would be happy to have a more in depth discussion.

ghdprentice
6,471 posts
 

OP,

 

If you are considering a speaker option change then definitely do not move forwards with cables and interconnects until you have your final destination speakers.

Typically in an upgrade cycle one will choose speakers first… then work on the upstream components to support them. Once all the components are in place then work on wires. The good news is you have chosen world class components so now it is a matter of finding speakers that are emotionally appealing to you. Your upstream equipment will make the most of them.

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