@bigjoe I know what you mean. I find myself spending more time out riding and doing other things, with less time to spend setting in front of my home audio. Even though my Harley has a decent audio system, it's about impossible to enjoy over the engine and road noise, without a good head set......Jim
So what's the best system out there? Everything is relative and subjective....
The truth is - no particular speaker and kit of assorted components and accessories, regardless of cost, works best for everyone, in every environment, with every genre of music and preference of listening, so the debate of what's the best of anything becomes a bit moot.
A mammoth sized pr. or assembly of $100K or $200K speakers and racks of mega $$$ power, capable of reproducing a life-sized performance of a philharmonic orchestra in a audio room the size of a small concert hall, except for bragging rights, would be pretty useless to someone who primarily enjoys light jazz and small venue acoustic music and has only to fill a 12'x12'x8' audio room. Like wise, a small pair of two way book shelf speakers wouldn't quite do the trick for the person who had a large space to load and couldn't settle for anything other than a life sized concert performance. Then there's everything in-between
.
Since we all have our own story of where we are, where we've been and where we hope to be in the next few years, in our audio journeys, it would be interesting to share some stories of what works to rock, sooth, or move our individual audio fervors,
Just a bit about me and my audio journey: Even though I played guitar and vocals in a small time local rock band in late 60s through early 70s and had a decent audio system in my auto (8 track) my first real interest in home audio wasn't until the late 70s. My first home system was a pair of BIC Ventura speakers, a H.H. Scott receiver and a Pioneer T.T. From there, in amplification, moved up to a H.K. integrated and then PSE Studio IV Power Amp with a Audible Illusions Modulus II Pre Amp (still have and will never get rid of the the AI Pre Amp) a couple of Brystons, a Krell and my old stand by, never fail me ADCOM. Over the years I've had and enjoyed Vandersteen, 2c and 2ci, Quad ESL63s, early model Magnapans, B&W, 802 Matrix Sig, Gershman, Focals, PSB, Stratus Gold I, ADS. speakers, my favorite being the Quads, They served me very well for 20 years, and were still making beautiful music when I had to sell because of a down size in living space do to work opportunities. I was in the process of getting a set of Apogee, Duetta II Sigs. (still at the top of my favorites list) before the down size.
I am now about three years, somewhat comfortably, retired, with no desire to go back to work for any large or small corp. nor do I have any desire to launch another business venture. I'm quite comfortable back in a larger home with, once more, a moderately large (14'Wx28'Dx10'H, open to one side to an additional 10'Wx14'D dinning area) audio room. Since I have no plan to further up size my living space, or the size of my audio room, I'm building my system around that.
My personal preference of speakers (while not everyone else's cup of tea) is, has been for many years and will continue to be electrostats, ribbons and now some interest in open baffle. I now am much enjoying a set of Maggie 1.7s driven by a Rogue Cronus Mag.II, augmented with a powered sub below 60hz.l and spinning discs with my faithful stand-by Denon CDP while deciding to send my CA Audio CDP back in for repairs or just upgrade to another player (with hundreds of CDs and Vinyls, I have no interest in getting much into streaming) Occasionally I listen to one of my favorite vinyls.
I most enjoy good vocals, light pop, jazz, folk and Celtic with real acoustic instruments - horns, strings and percussions - listened to at moderate, non ear shattering, head splitting levels, but loud enough to appreciate the fullness, texture, timber and stage of the performance. Since listening to concert level 90db - 110db is not high on my wagon wheel of performance needs, I can concentrate my efforts on a system that is detailed yet full and musical at volumes somewhere south of 80db. So far am quite pleased with the results.
Near future upgrades - a better new or used CD player and replace phono cartridge. More distant upgrades - a move up to the larger 3.7i Maggie or medium sized Sound Lab 545, but that would create a need for more power, so would have to think on that a bit - not sure the trade on that would be worth the cost. As is, after putting a good deal of attention to set up, room treatments and a few tweaks (even with the old Denon CDP) I'm pretty happy with the the sound I have.
How do some of the rest of you plan and build your systems, are you getting where you want to be and most of all, are you taking time to enjoy the music?.....Jim
A mammoth sized pr. or assembly of $100K or $200K speakers and racks of mega $$$ power, capable of reproducing a life-sized performance of a philharmonic orchestra in a audio room the size of a small concert hall, except for bragging rights, would be pretty useless to someone who primarily enjoys light jazz and small venue acoustic music and has only to fill a 12'x12'x8' audio room. Like wise, a small pair of two way book shelf speakers wouldn't quite do the trick for the person who had a large space to load and couldn't settle for anything other than a life sized concert performance. Then there's everything in-between
.
Since we all have our own story of where we are, where we've been and where we hope to be in the next few years, in our audio journeys, it would be interesting to share some stories of what works to rock, sooth, or move our individual audio fervors,
Just a bit about me and my audio journey: Even though I played guitar and vocals in a small time local rock band in late 60s through early 70s and had a decent audio system in my auto (8 track) my first real interest in home audio wasn't until the late 70s. My first home system was a pair of BIC Ventura speakers, a H.H. Scott receiver and a Pioneer T.T. From there, in amplification, moved up to a H.K. integrated and then PSE Studio IV Power Amp with a Audible Illusions Modulus II Pre Amp (still have and will never get rid of the the AI Pre Amp) a couple of Brystons, a Krell and my old stand by, never fail me ADCOM. Over the years I've had and enjoyed Vandersteen, 2c and 2ci, Quad ESL63s, early model Magnapans, B&W, 802 Matrix Sig, Gershman, Focals, PSB, Stratus Gold I, ADS. speakers, my favorite being the Quads, They served me very well for 20 years, and were still making beautiful music when I had to sell because of a down size in living space do to work opportunities. I was in the process of getting a set of Apogee, Duetta II Sigs. (still at the top of my favorites list) before the down size.
I am now about three years, somewhat comfortably, retired, with no desire to go back to work for any large or small corp. nor do I have any desire to launch another business venture. I'm quite comfortable back in a larger home with, once more, a moderately large (14'Wx28'Dx10'H, open to one side to an additional 10'Wx14'D dinning area) audio room. Since I have no plan to further up size my living space, or the size of my audio room, I'm building my system around that.
My personal preference of speakers (while not everyone else's cup of tea) is, has been for many years and will continue to be electrostats, ribbons and now some interest in open baffle. I now am much enjoying a set of Maggie 1.7s driven by a Rogue Cronus Mag.II, augmented with a powered sub below 60hz.l and spinning discs with my faithful stand-by Denon CDP while deciding to send my CA Audio CDP back in for repairs or just upgrade to another player (with hundreds of CDs and Vinyls, I have no interest in getting much into streaming) Occasionally I listen to one of my favorite vinyls.
I most enjoy good vocals, light pop, jazz, folk and Celtic with real acoustic instruments - horns, strings and percussions - listened to at moderate, non ear shattering, head splitting levels, but loud enough to appreciate the fullness, texture, timber and stage of the performance. Since listening to concert level 90db - 110db is not high on my wagon wheel of performance needs, I can concentrate my efforts on a system that is detailed yet full and musical at volumes somewhere south of 80db. So far am quite pleased with the results.
Near future upgrades - a better new or used CD player and replace phono cartridge. More distant upgrades - a move up to the larger 3.7i Maggie or medium sized Sound Lab 545, but that would create a need for more power, so would have to think on that a bit - not sure the trade on that would be worth the cost. As is, after putting a good deal of attention to set up, room treatments and a few tweaks (even with the old Denon CDP) I'm pretty happy with the the sound I have.
How do some of the rest of you plan and build your systems, are you getting where you want to be and most of all, are you taking time to enjoy the music?.....Jim
8 responses Add your response
A small but nice sounding intergrated tube amp like the Australian brand " Melody " connected to a good sounding set of cans " over the ear,not ear buds " , your choice of digital sources to stream from & im being honest . I have more fun listening to music on my $3,500 car stereo or my phone & klipsch earbuds than i do from my $100,000 system, obviously any of my 3 rigs blow the doors off my phone and klipsch earbuds for sound quality but with the phone i simply dont give a rats a$$ about getting the best sound i can,its very refreshing and alot of fun,especially when riding 1 of my motorcycles by myself before sunrise,cruise control on with a nice cup of coffee , no traffic on the road yet to run down bikers and just enjoy the s#!t out of the music . |
There is no absolute best in audio just like in video, cars, watches or wine because "Everything is relative and subjective", but you already knew that. The best of anything has to be universally agreed on, and as we can see from reading comments in this forum, universal agreement never happens, but you already knew that... :) |
Thank you all for the comments and thoughts, so far. @erik_squires I always appreciate your posts and your share of experience and knowledge. I've built cables, cords and x/overs, but no speakers. After clearing out some other projects, it's my hope to build an efficient, open, baffle speaker project - I'm sure I'll be asking for advice. A very good list and I love your last statement+++ @millercarbon. Building a nice system can always be a project, but the pay off worth the effort and especially rewarding when helping someone else get and appreciate good sound - especially when you're on a budget. I agree, it's good that with a little patience and do-diligance we can come across some Wonderfull products that perform beyond their cost. Thank you for your comments and info...I always enjoy your posts. @linhdieu12 Thanks for your comments and welcome to the forum. There are a lot of good people with a lot of helpful information here. Jim |
In my opinion, a good quality sound system depends a lot and the speaker system. can i suggest you some famous speaker brands such as: JBL, BMB, Bose ... And I intend to set up a karaoke sound system, looking forward to the help and advice of everyone. This is the website I am referring to audio equipment: âm thanh hội trường |
How do some of the rest of you plan and build your systems, are you getting where you want to be and most of all, are you taking time to enjoy the music?.....JimTwo ways- for myself, and for others. For others I take whatever they want to spend and budget it out in equal parts to speakers, amp, source, and wire. Wire means all wire- power cords, interconnects, speaker cable, fuses. I've done this for people with budgets $1200 to $2500 and it works great. So surprisingly well the cheapest one I ever did when it was set up in my listening room to burn in was so captivating I wound up listening to it every night and still miss it. For myself its a whole different story. Everything I have ever looked into it just seems if you look long enough then after a while you find something that is very, very close to the most universally acclaimed cost no object crazy out of your budget performance but at a price you can actually with a little effort afford. So for example the Herron VTPH 2A phono stage is Michael Fremer certified as good as anything in Class A but for $3k when everything else is multiples of that. A lot of tube integrateds will get you very near SOTA at similarly favorable price/performance ratios. You can with a little ingenuity build all or at least some of a turntable, or speakers. The trick in all cases is to carefully study and learn as much as possible, then patiently compare, actually listen and hear and decide for yourself. That's the way I do it. Looking back over the years, whenever I have departed from that approach for whatever reason it has always resulted in some kind of mistake, defined by me as a component that doesn't last very long. Everything I have now, it was selected that way and its been with me, most of it, over a decade. The few newer than that (Herron, Koetsu) I can already tell will be with me forever. But do I take time to enjoy the music? Buddy, that's what its all about. |
Hey, So for me, I found peace and joy doing the following:
Making my own speakers wasn't about saving money so much as making it sound exactly like what I was looking for. It was also a great learning experience, but given time invested, tools and parts, I think few would find it a bargain as a "mere" purchase. I made my own pure silver, shielded interconnects. Huge cost savings, but also, with making my own speakers, I stopped trying to spend money to adjust tone. I made perfectly good sounding IC's, and if I want to adjust the tone at a very fine level, I adjust the speaker. The whole IC/electronics / Speaker matching is an endless game of rock/paper/scissors I'm not playing. It brings me no joy to go down that route. Since building my speakers and ICs I bought a Luxman integrated with excellent sounding tone controls. That's all I need. As I have said before, I want to buy a $30 bottle of wine that tastes like the best, not a $3,000 bottle of wine that tastes the same to my mouth. I am not here to show off how much I spent. To summarize, know yourself and be frugal, not cheap. |