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Speakers Don’t Matter As Much As We Think They Do?

When discussing how best to invest money into your system, it’s very common to hear people say, “Spend as much as you can afford on speakers, and then worry about the other gear because speakers have the largest effect on the sound.”

Now it’s never a bad idea to have good speakers and while I somewhat followed that advice early on, as my system has evolved it seems that I am not currently following that advice, and yet I am getting absolutely fantastic sound. For example as a percentage of my total system cost, my speakers cost 15%. If you include the subwoofers, that price is about 35%.

Early on I was worried I would outgrow my speakers and I’d hit their limit which would restrict sonic improvement potential as I upgraded other gear but that hasn’t been the case. With each component upgrade, things keep sounding better and better. The upper limit to speakers’ potential seems to be a lot higher than previously thought as I continue to improve upon the signal I send them and continue to improve system synergy. If you send a really high quality signal to a pair of speakers and get synergy right, they will reward you in spades and punch well above their apparent weight class.

One thing that may be working in my favor is that I’ve had these speakers since the early days of building my system so literally everything down to the last cable has been tuned to work in synergy with these speakers. Had I upgraded my speakers mid way through, I would have undone a lot of the work that went into the system in terms of synergy.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with their speakers? Does anyone have any extreme percentages in terms of speaker cost to system cost like 5% or 95% and what has been your experience?

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hilde45's avatar
hilde45
4,974 posts
 
I’m in the process of getting new speakers, but to just affirm OP's core argument, I’ll tell you this. I have some old Pinnacle PN5+ bookshelves — very small mid-fi speakers from the 1980s. Simply by buying acoustic foam for underneath them, repositioning them, and feeding them much better quality source material from a new CD player, they sound *many* times better. I still want to upgrade, but they barely sound like the little pieces of old gear I was ready to give to Good Will. They sound great.
hickamore
670 posts
 
Finally catching up with the audio world a decade ago, I started with electronics because my old stuff was totally analog. 
First came a digital preamp which the old dual mono power amp couldn't translate despite a high-end DAC. Got a contemporary power amp (Parasound Halo A21) and only then did the old Henry Kloss workhorses go flat.
So time for speakers. A closeout on nice big Wharfedales changed my sonic world. Best sound since my Maggie days around 1980.
And yet. Bass rolloff around  60Hz. No real soundstage depth. Just awaiting an excuse. So new speakers. And now? Preamp can't keep up.
Bottom line: Speakers make the biggest difference and the rule of thumb is that speakers should cost 2x the cost of amp and preamp combined. OP's experience seems atypical to me.
duglas's avatar
duglas
6 posts
 
Everything is nonsense other than good speakers and decent adequate solid state amplification. Speakers are the first limiting factor and then amplification. I am immensely impressed with stacked eminent technology LFT-8b speakers (a pair per channel) run through a pair of dynaco stereo 400 series ii 205 w/ch amplifiers fed from an inexpensive B&K PT3-II Preamp. I believe in the ability to control bass & treble which has to be important for everyone. I have run speakers through a single 100 watt per channel rotel integrated amp and done pretty well up to a certain SPL. Most of the time I am listening through a bluetooth DAC via iphone or macbook. In my opinion the "audiophile" world is full of a lot of hype, nonsense, snake oil such as special speaker wire, exotic interconnects, tube amps, high cost sources, low power amps, separate DACs, separate power supplies, vinyl verses digital and on and on. I hear fine quality at significant SPL with my setup and I have heard plenty of systems. And at the same time I have enjoyed Bose computer speakers in their own range of capability.
mtrot
804 posts
 
Eh, I think most people here have really good front ends, and have approached the point of diminishing returns with them.  Speakers clearly make the biggest differences to the final sound, but if you have a front end that is not yet up to snuff, all speakers will exhibit their characteristic sound, but none of them will sound all that great.
fourspeed
12 posts
 
You clowns are not who this advice was aimed at. Average Joe with, let’s say, five grand TOTAL to spend, yes, spend a lot on speakers. They have the greatest impact in that range. 
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