Which is the most important part of a stereo system?

rbyington711,

I get where you’re coming from but personally I think the camera and recording studio analogy works a bit better. Wouldn’t you agree that it’s the microphones and lenses that do the vital capturing work?

Maybe a loudspeaker is more like the monitor you might use to later view the captured image.

Couldn't a poor loudspeaker be likened to a poorly calibrated monitor, introducing far more serious distortions than anything else in the chain?

Come to think of it, even a good loudspeaker will do that, just far less obviously.

Unfortunately recorded audio, existing in a circle of confusion without any established standards or reference points, does not yet have the equivalent of an international colour chart as used in photography (or film/TV).

So loudspeaker playback can only be an approximated guess at what was put down on tape, unlike a well calibrated monitor which can accurately reproduce what was captured on film.

Going further, maybe the captured image should be likened to the finished recording. Once it’s finished, very little can be done to improve it. For sure scratches and dropouts can be repaired the same way Photoshop etc can repair damaged prints but nothing can improve the captured resolution.

You know when you mentioned a $2000 lens I recalled a glossy black and white photograph taken of my sister at school back in the mid 1970s.

We still have this photo and to this day it remains amazingly sharp. None of the many many photographs since have come as close to that one for sheer image precision. It’s almost uncannily detailed and sharp.

Unless I ask her, and unless she remembers, I’m going to assume that it must have been an excellent camera placed on a tripod!

Or maybe the photographer just got lucky. Could happen!?

I can’t help you with the Marantz issue except to say that my experiences with Marantz (1 amp and 2 CD players) has shown them to be unusually reliable products. The only fault was with the CD remote control which needed cleaning and reassembly after many many years.

http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/10/audios-circle-of-confusion.html?m=1

Your subconscious largely composed of memories also happens to be the most unreliable part of the sonic equation.

Yet it is the one most targetted by advertising and marketing. You will see these attempts everywhere.

There are even some here on AG who seem do little other than constantly attempt to slyly divert some of the available revenue stream towards their own direction.

Nothing can beat real time listening and comparison. Everyone knows this and anybody who has done so will also know that loudspeakers make the greatest sonic difference.

No two sound alike or even close.

Not even when tested under controlled blind listening conditions.

Which other component can you say the same for?

geoffkait,

If you're actually interested in self education I suggest you start with the work of Sigmund Freud and then move on to that of his nephew Edward Bernays.

I don't approve of psychological shenanigans, but you as a 'businessman' might owe it to yourself.

@shangyien said "The weakest part of your system is the most important."

My thoughts exactly.

With the arrival of digital sources many have now come to accept that transducers (loudspeakers, cartridges, arms, turntables and microphones) are where you will find the bottlenecks in modern audio playback systems. (Room acoustics and source mastering are also important but perhaps separate issues here.)

In much the same way that traditional rotating hard drives are now accepted as generally the major bottleneck (ahead of both RAM and processor speed) in PCs.

Differences in all digital playback sound (or even in amplifiers) are barely measurable let alone readily identifiable in listening tests.

On the other hand the sonic differences between loudspeakers and turntables (arms/cartridges) are difficult to deny.

So having said that, your idea of upgrading your Pro-Ject to something like a Technics 1210 makes great sense.

Upgrading your B&W speakers on the other hand is going to be more of a challenge as far as I can see. Especially if you want across the board improvements including both dynamics and bandwidth.

It can be done and if successful, it will be worthwhile in simply that everything played back through them will sound better.

Maybe that could be a project for a future day? Certainly plenty, almost infinite number of candidates out there including various Harbeths, PMCs, Tannoys, JBLs, ATCs, Wilson’s, Zu’s, larger B&W’s etc

All with very little consensus as to what’s best.

@audioman58 , yes I think everyone would agree that mastering matters.

It's virtually impossible to make poorly mastered records sound good - no matter what the size of your endless  audio money pit may be. 

We also happen to be fortunate to be living in a time when the gap between budget and high-end amplification and digital sources/converters/cables is almost indistinguishable too. 

What are we left with then?

Loudspeakers and vinyl playback. 

No one would argue that budget and high-end speakers and decks can be confused in any listening tests.

Even today's constantly improved entry level Rega/Pro-Ject decks (or any sub $500 loudspeaker you can think of for that matter) still leave considerable room for future upgrading. 

This hobby is far from dead, and we haven't even begun talking about Tube amps.

https://youtu.be/vCk12xzivp8

@mahgister, I enjoyed reading your post but it doesn’t seem to be entirely logical. I agree that a good sound reproduction does not have to cost the earth but your ideas about importance seem just a little ’left field’.

You seem to be implying that the gap between different systems is smaller than the gap between different rooms.

I might not have great memories of my time with my Linn LP12 but I can’t believe that it would have ever sounded worse than my Rega Planar 1 - whatever the room or treatment. They were just on different levels altogether.

I suppose we all also have different ideas as to what makes a good room. Some might prefer a relatively dead room and others like me preferring a little bit more life in the room.

Anyway, thanks for sharing.

The single most influential component for playback sound quality is universally accepted as the loudspeakers. It’s been this way for decades, perhaps even from the days of the birth of audio.

No two pairs sound the quite the same, sometimes nothing like it.

That in no way is to deny that individual mood at the time of listening is not absolutely crucial to the received perception.

We all know just how good the human imagination can be. In the right mood (and company) I can easily imagine that my Sony television set sounds better than most of the systems I have heard.

Same thing can happen with the playback system in a club or a party, but only if I’m having a really good time.

Later on it sometimes becomes a puzzle as to how I could have believed such obvious nonsense.

The mind and all it’s tricks seem to be geared towards promoting survival and seeking pleasure, and not always towards discerning any form of truth.