Onhyw61-interesting comments. I still think that a large percentage of purchases are done on reviews etc. and also good prices (2nd hand)on reputable equipment-I'm not totally convinced that "blind" buying of good seperates at say 3x cost of carefully auditioned and matched equipment will neccessary mean a bad result but yes it's easy to make mistakes and would guess this is quite common. I have a pretty "messy" system in terms of no. of boxes (7!) but it gives a great performance against simplier systems. Ben
What does what?
I read with interest on a previous post about how 3 different types of speakers sounded completely different. Undoubtly true but led me back thinking to what does what in your system. Quite complicated I would have thought especially with all those boxes,cables,power cords etc . I know this posting may make me sound like a dafty as we say here in Scotland but I'll continue. I would have thought the source component(CD player etc.) would have given the overall sound and that amplification/speakers would only reveal what is there. Only reality doesn't quite seem to back this up. A while back a friend brought round a Linn CD player to try in my system-it didn't sound too different from my DVD/anti-jitter/DAC set-up-we played around with all different combo's until we got completely confused-ok not a good idea. But to me the differences weren't anywhere near as dramatic as I would have thought. Also recently I bought new speakers-well impressed with soundstage and detail-I thought my system still lacked bass. I tried switching my pre-amp off the direct setting and edged up the bass and voila!Big improvement with no drawbacks-this didn't work when I tried it with my previous speakers. So does this mean that my system wasn't quite matched before? How much of a system is synergy? I would guess this type of confusion leads many of us to throw money in the wrong directions when upgrading. What does everybody think? How can you be sure what should be your next move? Instinct? Pricing of components? Ben