What makes the biggest difference in sound quality?
When making changes or adding things to your system, what makes the bigger difference in sound quality on preamp‘s and power amps? Interconnects, speaker cables, power cords, or fuses?
The single thing that made the most radical change to my system was installing (to audition from a dealer) a Mesa Baron (dual mono block in one chassis) in place of my Cary SLA 70 (which is a basic stereo amp using 4 6550s & a couple of 6SL7s and tube rectification).
The effect of the Baron in 1/3 triode and 2/3 ultralinear was intriguing; the music moved much closer and (for lack of an audiophile vocabulary) took on what I would describe as a musky, smoky quality. I listened to it pretty much nonstop for an entire weekend & was on the cusp of trading my Cary in for it. The last thing I did on the Sunday night of the audition was to put the little Cary back in the system. The sound stage got way smaller and further back, but what struck me was the truth of the cymbals shimmering against a black background on Cowboy Junkies (I believe "Sweet Jane") which I definitely did not get from The Baron. (I kept the Cary, which I still own.)
The next single biggest change (this one was definitely an improvement) was prior to the Mesa audition, I was using the Little Cary to drive a couple of NHT bookshelf speakers. I replaced them with a pair of B&W 805s (Matrix).
The third biggest change (& this was another definite improvement) was after the B&Ws and the Mesa Baron audition, and it was the replacement of a B&K AV digital preamp with a second hand Cary SLP 90 (which was finally upgraded about 7 or 8 months ago). At that time, it was in front of a couple of ARC VTM 120s.
System matching is the most important aspect of great sound. Having a system of equals works in harmony with everything else. Pairing a expensive pr of speakers with less than electronics results in frustrations and miss guided assumptions that some how the speakers are flawed. With this example your assuming the speakers are the fault because they sound less than perfect; when in fact their level of resolution exceeds what your other components have to offer. Balanced system is the key.
Good god, not yet another synergy and balance echo.
I think quality speakers make the biggest difference. I know folks will go on and on about amplification, source, etc., but speakers have to be quality or the sound falls apart.
System matching is the most important aspect of great sound. Having a system of equals works in harmony with everything else. Pairing a expensive pr of speakers with less than electronics results in frustrations and miss guided assumptions that some how the speakers are flawed. With this example your assuming the speakers are the fault because they sound less than perfect; when in fact their level of resolution exceeds what your other components have to offer. Balanced system is the key.
It would be easier if the question was a poll for say fuses. (Like, don’t like, don’t care)
Then a different thread for ICs… etc.
Or a poll with the 4 things in some matrix which is either 4^3, or K-choose-N or maybe is 24 ranked options? (I would need to take off the shoes to do the maths)
But I like multiple choice questions as they are easier to sort and analyse, than open ended essay questions.
My observation exactly. Two components and only a list of four other items are in question.
You asked Ted … Quantum Purple’s, and this is after a complete heirloom of AQ’s bought just last year. Order of purchase sequence followed by a two month pause between each for evaluation / progress, if any. Speaker Cables, IC’s and PC’s.
For others it may have been a completely different set of questioning but for me it was quite clear.
I have heard this from almost all hi-fi equipment dealers that speakers make the most of the difference, spend 75% on speakers etc.. Only one from Overture, DE said it is 50% speakers and 50% equipment that I agree.
75% Sound like a good number for a high end system.
However the leading question was aimed at preamps and amps (fuses, power cords, cables, etc.)
Most of the answers confirm with the premise of, “We hear what we want to hear.”
… what makes the bigger difference in sound quality on preamp‘s and power amps? Interconnects, speaker cables, power cords, or fuses?
Yes, Yes my little flower, yes, yes. You want a what? DIVORCE! I'll one up ya, NOW!!! I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee.
I'm takin' the Eastern way out. Makes since to me (I think that's the right since, sense, cents)?
I have heard this from almost all hi-fi equipment dealers that speakers make the most of the difference, spend 75% on speakers etc.. Only one from Overture, DE said it is 50% speakers and 50% equipment that I agree.
I used Plk, JBL, Infinity speakers so far with Denon, HK and Yamaha revivers. Then 2 years ago I got Focal Aria 926 that are high end to me.. and started playing with Marantz 6014 and Denon X4300H.. Everything should have been fine, I should have heard as I heard in the store.. right? Answer - Big NO..
This was all until I got Rotel and ADCOM amps, latter taking tt top notch to the quality and probably even better than what I head at the store!
So need dedicated amps for Full size big tall Floor Standing speakers and then changing speakers will give you that benefit
If using receivers, better stick to book shelf and satellites!
And am deliberately leaving sub woofers out of this discussion! 😊
If we are talking a system from scratch thats a different story.
But you can't answer this question accurately because it's based on your system and components currently
I went and bought an uber power cord for my gryphon 300 amp/pre. The audioquest dragon HC.
I'm not even sure I heard a difference i would have to A/B it for hours. The thing is gryphon amps are so well built in their reviews it's often said they sound good with even stock power cords. And I'm also plugging it into a uef 12 se with the Galileo pc so... in this scenario the PC was least important.
You can't view them as individual parts it has to be in the scope of the entire system
Thanks for the quote. Funny those who say your room it is last. Some here may have been to audio shows (CES, maybe) and the comments after the show are ALWAYS the same:
"High End Manufacturer X (pick your fav here) was in a hotel room and his/her stuff sounded AWFUL! In my room, it is awesome! I don't understand why these companies do this to themselves" (or something close).
Years ago, many "High End" companies stopped going to CES (when it was CES and not a computer show if anyone one here remembers those days in Chicago) because hotel rooms were SO BAD and the comments from potential customers were horrible.
You can review such stuff in The Absolute Sound or Stereophile older issues if you wish. J. Gordon Holt did a bunch of articles on this, as I remember, as did Harry Pearson, I believe. But hey, what do THEY know, right?
Anyway, as I posted earlier, the old cliche is, "you pays your money and you makes your choice." You do whatever you want and these days, you are free to make up your own facts about everything, evidently. As a dealer, I put our best stuff in rooms that we could not get to sound very good, and some average stuff in those same rooms sounded "better" to the buyer. I sold him or her what they LIKED. Did not matter if it was not very good. It was a business, not a church with me preaching the "truth" to customers.
Because i was thinking erroneously that he will be able to discuss audio matter, not only selling his devices... I like to learn...
Some other sellers are more honest and give very good information here, like atmasphere for example...
I am naive more than most ....I know... 😁😊
One of his thread has been erased where he articicially opposed for the need of his business objective measurements in engineering and subjective perception, forgetting completely the acoustic field where there is ONLY a continuous correlation PROCESS between this two aspects and not opposition and the obligation to chose one over the other...
He perceive my arguments as threats to his business then refer people with some inuendo to my virtual page photos... Pathetical move...
@mahgister why you even bother answering to this gentleman?
@mahgisterwhy you even bother answering to this gentleman?
Not worth your time. You are in a much higher league of understanding that he will never achieve.
Some people just don’t know beyond what they believe, which is where I excuse myself; beliefs is not how science works.
What one believes has no place in a technical discussion if the “facts” you believe have no correlation with actual science.
Your referencing old photos of some of my first devices is not an argument about acoustic...
No speakers at any cost will beat by his upgrading power acoustic control,
And no electronical toy " costly tweaks" or electronic equalizer.......
What i will describe here is INVISIBLE in these photos and are devices and bottles designed like Helmoltz resonators and diffusers which are not in these old images from many years ago...
Ted Denney is a seller not an audiophile...He does not want to use argument just to close the mouth of someone with another perspective...
Here are these 6 aspects of acoustic control parameters in a room i experimented with :
1 -Balance between absorbing surfaces,
2 -Reflecting one,
3 -Diffusive one....
This was "classical" passive material treatment of a room, now these 3 new other factors are related to my concept of the mechanical active control of a room ( what i called a mechanical equalizer):
4-control over reverberation time and timing of the wavefronts
5- control over the distribution of the pressure zones
6- fine layering and tuning of the laminar flow
These 3 last aspects could be controlled with Helmhotz mechanical method NOT by electronical equalization...
Then the piano will not sound the same from the same pair of speakers in a non controlled room and in a controlled one...Not even close...
Dont upgrade good speakers with costly one BEFORE studying and experimenting with acoustic...
My acoustic devices and experiments were all homemade and cost me nothing...Yes Ted Denney here you can laugh at my straws and cardboaord empty roll paper and plumbers discarded tubes etc... I will laugh with you but not for the same reason... Do you catch?
I can then claim that great hi-Fi experience is possible at low cost contrary to what is claimed or supposed almost everywhere by almost everyone...
People dont know acoustic and never seriously try experimenting with it in a dedicated small room.
Dont buy costly toy, if you can keep a dedicated room... All the rest cost nothing save basic acoustic knowledge...
I am not making an argument so much as exposing someone of questionable knowledge and execution where audio is concerned.
Then to answer your innuendo, my room is not the workshop of a seller who must sell finished shining product, it is an homemade laboratory...
And for the "questionnable knowledge" there is more information explicit and implicit in this single post of mine here about acoustic that in all your posts here in this thread...
Referencing to my virtual pages for another time will not change acoustic nor the content of my arguments... It will only reveal what elementary rethoric call "ad hominem " attack...
Like you said "Inference to conclusion will take place in the minds of those reading" your posts and mine.....
All people are not idiots fooled by appearance... Happily....
You sell costly devices, good or bad one, i sell creativity....
I am not making an argument so much as exposing someone of questionable knowledge and execution where audio is concerned. Inference to conclusion will take place in the minds of those reading.
My perspective is mostly acoustic , passive naterial treatment and active mechanical tuning of the room with a grid of Helmhotz resonators and diffusers, 50 one tuned,...
You cannot judge that with these old photos which describe my beginnings..
And what you suggested WITHOUT argument mimic only asubtle ad hominem attack using my virtual page...
You never answer to NONE of my argument where you oppose for commercial reason measurements and subjective experience... The two separately MEANS nothing...We must CORRELATE them in a set of acoustic listenings experiments to create a room...
Plugging a costly device in the wall will not do it in the same way.....
By the way what you see cost me 500 bucks and i know for sure that almost no upgrade beat acoustic after all my work in acoustic of small room AT NO COST...
People are not stupid they will see through your gesture and agenda which is to sell not educate ...
My photo are there to be seen but they do not describe my audio room...What bother me is your innuendo instead of argument...
Innuendo are not argument ...
When weighing the advice of others, it pays to understand their perspective. This is the best way to place audio advice in context.
He did just that with me instead of arguments in a meaningless opposition he created to impose his products...(objective versus subjective) My argument was centered around the evident fact that all audio science in electronic or acoustic is the search for a correlated sets of experiments ... THEN Our subjective taste must be educated by acoustic experiments for example... Is it not clear? Instead to mock me he say to people look at his system (mine) in my virtual page......
No honest person do that... I dont give a dam about mockery but i dislike people who hypocritally attack someone instead of answering SOUND arguments....
He proved himself to be guided by his seller agenda more than by truth...
«Our tastes are there to be educated by experience»-Anonymus audiophile
«There is no taste in acoustic science»-anonymus acoustician
You asked why I don’t have pictures of my systems… simply, I don’t like creeps that can’t discuss technical facts without making it personal like you did because you can’t defend the nonsense you claim, into my homes.
Ted, if your products are as good as your ability to decently discuss facts, probably nothing you sell 😂
You asked why I don’t have pictures of my systems… simply, I don’t like creeps that can’t discuss technical facts without making it personal like you did because you can’t defend the nonsense you claim, into my homes.
Those who matter, and love have access to any of my systems, or everything I have both in the USA and Spain any time they want.
I do not need to prove anything, much less to you, because I am not selling anything or trying to convince people to buy into bs to make a living.
I am accustomed to interact with reasonable people, that just like me, can discuss technology and math based on facts and if someone makes a better technical or mathematical argument we learn, without making it personal. Reasonable people usually are humble, like to learn, have the ability to differentiate between bs and facts, but the best quality reasonable people have is their intrinsic ability to separate a discussion and their fellows.
Apologies for my grammar a word choices, English is not my native language.
When I walked into the home my wife wanted, I walked into each room and clapped my hands together. The lounge room was about as inviting acoustically as the bathroom, just terrible.
I put what I had in the best sounding room, even had my wife’s blessing.
So I’ve been here on Agon, and read from many of you on where to go and perhaps change my assumptions and thinking. It’s certainly paid off, really has made an improvement over the last couple of years.
Filtering the quality of my AC power, cleaning up the sinusoidal waveform, was quite a revelation. I had already known about isolation of speakers, I invested in some experiments of my own, discovering a spring technology that I had not been aware of, along with spikes for my stands - marvelous.
The latest and not surprising was my admittedly novice journey into room treatment. Indeed just a couple of quadratic diffusers made quite a substantial difference.
Some of us (two thumbs pointed right at myself) have a limited budget, and as such, heed to advice from others in here. Now that some fundamentals are in order, the room itself appears to be my next best investment for a more beautiful presentation of my music.
I would guess, that identifying good value for money items that play well together, and finding the right synergy to get basics sorted out, like clean power, relatively good in room frequency response (loudspeakers must reproduce the entire audible spectrum of sound faithfully) and taming the room can trump the sound of a system where something is simply lacking in the basics (irrespective of cost).
90%++ of the time, knowledge not money will yield superior results, knowing where and on what to invest that money/time, now that’s the real art. Whether you are paying for someone else’s knowledge or not, I think my statement has merit.
You are right for the fact, wrong with the 90%........
Try the same source in two different room and you will know the importance of acoustic over almost anything else...
Like in a car tires are important but the motor import more...
What we hear come from the speakers/room for most of the S.Q. %...
Acoustic is the most important factor , engineereing is the SECOND factor...It is the opposite that what people think because we must buy an audio system first and chose one before treating and controlling the room for a specific system...Then we think that picking the system is all there is...
Why is acoustic the most important?
Because ANY relatively good design will play with a difference between them which will be way less than the difference between acoustically controlled room and a bad room ( almost all untreated and uncontrolled rooms)..
If i am wrong, then why am i satisfied with a 500 bucks system? It is not the best there is at all then am i deaf?
No it is not the best audio systewm at all, only a good one, but my room is so well controlled than a relatively good system at low price (vintage) sound extraordinarily good... So good upgrading is not appealing because of the ratio S.Q. /price scale diminishing return...
If i am deaf why my 7 headphones are in a drawer definitively?
Because acoustic is the sleeping princess and all pieces of gear are the 7 dwarves...
90%++ of the time, the source will improve the overall sound of an ok system, before anything else
To use the car analogy, replacing street tires on the Miata with racing slicks would help the Miata’s lap times. But if someone else has a GT3 and goes from similar street tires to racing slicks, his lap times will drop a lot farther because his performance envelope was previously far more restricted by his tires than the Miata drivers.
Having said, could anyone quantify which driver is having more fun?? :)
Seeing a couple of GT3s getting passed by a Suzuki Swift on the Nurburgring convinced me the Swift driver was not embarrassed.
Much in the same way that the preamp drives a high input impedance through an interconnect just fine. There is voltage slippage happening on the tracks of the music.
I would suggest the biggest difference is made where the biggest upgrade is made. I have some ‘decent’ xlrs, equivalent or better speaker cables, so for me, I’m sure upgrading my power cords would likely reveal a greater benefit than going a few steps up the IC ladder. Others may have already upgraded their power, so for them they’d benefit more from IC’s. I remember being truly shocked when I had my speakers dialed in for placement and then added the spikes. I did it because it was suggested, not because I expected anything, but then ‘damn!’. Since then I have upgraded cables, wires and components, and each step has shown a positive jump, indicating I’m not yet at the limit of what my speakers can offer. I’m not sure it’s quantifiable to say ‘X’ will provide the biggest improvement in a system because no two people hear the same, are in the same room, have the same tastes or system to begin with. To use the car analogy, replacing street tires on the Miata with racing slicks would help the Miata’s lap times. But if someone else has a GT3 and goes from similar street tires to racing slicks, his lap times will drop a lot farther because his performance envelope was previously far more restricted by his tires than the Miata drivers.
Having said, could anyone quantify which driver is having more fun?? :)
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