It is an excellent question and sometimes difficult to diagnose. After many years in this hobby, I believe strongly that the speaker/room interface is the most overlooked item in creating a system. IMO, in a normal domestic environment where speaker placement is limited, there is absolutely no way to tell how a speaker will work in your room without a home demo. I have had many very good speakers in my room including Totem Forest and Hawks, Harbeth Monitor 30 and SHL5s, Coincident Partial Eclipse, Opera Callas Monitors and now the Trenner & Friedl Pharoahs. Each one worked to a point, but when I put the Operas up it was like magic. The speaker worked perfectly in the room and those small speakers filled the room like a concert hall. So the problem is - how do you do that? IMO, either get a dealer to allow you to demo, or buy used, hope for the best and sell if they don't work out. But once you get the speaker/room thing together, everything sounds a lot better.
Weakest link - a different question?
Google shows a fair number of posts to this forum where people ask "Here's my system, what is my weakest link?" As an engineer, to me the more important question is, given system X in room with acoustics Y, how do I tell what the weakest link is?" I'd love to know what methodology people use to determine what component or room treatment makes the most sense to upgrade next given the sheer complexity of interactions between room, amp, source, speakers, power, and cable?
Can any of you distill out from your experience what process you used when deciding which component from your system to upgrade? I'd love to hear your stories of _how_ you made the decision for your system.
(For the sake of background, I have an entry level British system: Rega Planar 3, Rega DAC-R, Rega Elex-R, Spendor A4s, Chord interconnects, QED speaker wire, and a Panamax power conditioner purely - because we live in rural PA where the power is dirty - but I am not asking about my system, it is the methodology that interests me).
Thanks!
Can any of you distill out from your experience what process you used when deciding which component from your system to upgrade? I'd love to hear your stories of _how_ you made the decision for your system.
(For the sake of background, I have an entry level British system: Rega Planar 3, Rega DAC-R, Rega Elex-R, Spendor A4s, Chord interconnects, QED speaker wire, and a Panamax power conditioner purely - because we live in rural PA where the power is dirty - but I am not asking about my system, it is the methodology that interests me).
Thanks!