What is your upgrade philosophy?

I tend to agree with Perfectimage in that you should have a sense of what the final outcome is going to be and pick and choose as "deals" become available and your budget allows. That said, however, there is much to be said as to upgrading your souce components first and then working your way to the last link, i.e. the speakers. The old axiom "garbage-in, garbage-out" certainly applies in audio and what you hear coming from your speakers will reflect this.

Be ready to buy, but don't buy on impulse. I've followed this philosophy and those Wow! "deals" seem to come around the corner sooner than you would think. I've been researching amps for a year. I've bought two, and returned them both. I find that sometimes after getting the product home I sometimes get new ideas about the direction I want my system to go. Part of the fun is in looking for the equipment.

The logic of writing a list of gear you'd like and then saving the money to buy it wouldn't work for me. Chances are if your trying to put together a "dream system" time will run out on you before you save the cash. A dream system for most people would be rather expensive and by the time you got the money saved, the pieces you were looking at may be discontinued, or upgraded. I have been doing this stuff for 30 years and if I were to try to put together a dream system, say even 15 years ago, I find out what I wanted then isn't what I want now. My feeling is to get a general idea of the type of gear you want, perhaps to match the type of music you listen to. Find a dealer that will let you audition this stuff in your home, this is real essential. Chances are real good that what you hear at the dealers showroom and what you hear at home are going to be completely different. This is a great hobby for me and for many others. For me a great part of the enjoyment I have gotten from this is to audition gear in my home. Good luck and enjoy the music! ----->Ray

Hi Inscrutable; your question caused me a great deal of thought. Thankyou. After 10 years and about $50K spent, I've come to the conclusion that a really great sounding system can only be built by "trial and error", and taking into account your personal music quality/character preferences and biases (and of course your budget),eg I now know that I prefer music that is a bit warm and rich rather than cool, lean, or analytical.

I also believe that "neutrality" is an elusive, and maybe impossible goal. It may not even be a realistic or desireable objective. Subjectively, what I consider neutral you may consider colored. I suppose neutrality can be measured using instruments, but what the instruments show may not agree with what you hear.

I've done both of what you ask above-- sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. IMO, you have to be constantly searching for system synergy and satisfying your own listening preferences. I just paid over $11K for my "dream" speakers, and I'm finding them a bit cool and lean, and very revealing in "my room" and with the rest of my system. Yet prior to purchase, I thought they would fit perfectly with the rest of my system.

So, in a way I'm back to square one, and am trying to figure out how to get a little more warmth and richness in my system, while still keeping the strengths of the new speakers. What do I change to get what I want? I thought all my components would complement these speakers nicely-- but not so.

I think maybe a worthwhile general approach would be to pick out the most important component to you and carefully build your system around it a piece at a time. Knowing this now, I would start with speakers because of the major importance of speaker/room interaction. My system now sounds very, very good, but it has some weaknesses too. Good Luck and Cheers. Craig

Thanks to all for the responses so far.

Craig, i've done as you suggest might be the appropriate way. I found speakers I really liked and now am looking to optimize the surrounding/supporting gear. It's both fun and daunting. I find much appeal and logic in the approach of "buy a piece you LOVE, and then move on" even tho you may be able to achieve more aggregate sound improvement by spreading that same money over 2 or 3 pieces you merely "like". There has to be some relationship to time - if (because of budget) your time between pieces you "love" is 5 years, maybe trimming expectations and upgrading more modestly will still yield more musical satisfaction.

But then, if the trial-and-error experience is likely - then the key is making your mistakes faster (or less expensively at least) to eventually realize what you really like.

It's an interesting conundrum.