Hi @smurfstain - it’s been awhile since the last post, but if you’re still following this thread, I wanted to tell you I had a similar experience to yours when I first started out about five years ago. I didn’t really know what I wanted, what was truth or just talk, what actually made a difference to sound quality, or even what sound quality meant. I just knew I wanted facts and truth.
You know, whenever audiophiles say to use your ears to decide for yourself, they’re actually saying something a lot more profound - it’s not always just colloquialism at play.
You see, getting into hifi audio is much like getting an education, albeit one in listening, and hearing. In a similar way photographers learn how to ‘see’ better, an audiophile learns how to hear, and listen better, for nuance, inflection, and above all, timing. And as with a typical education, one cannot just head straight to college, or university - one would not understand a thing that’s going on in there, not having first been through grade school, middle school, and the rest of it. A ‘good’ education builds a solid foundation for all that is to come.
So, I just started with the purchase of a well-regarded and somewhat affordable cd transport, a DAC, a solid state amplifier (all three from the same manufacturer, ps audio), and speakers that I’d understood could be placed flush against the walls. As with you, I really only wanted to hear the music i had in my extensive cd collection the way it was meant to be heard, through a sound system of ‘quality’. And it was good enough, Basic ‘lamp wire’ cables and all - my most invested cable was the i2s from ps audio to connect transport to DAC - I was shocked that it cost two hundred and twenty five US dollars. But I loved what I was hearing from my system - I was right there, every single evening, listening to my cds in a way I’d never heard them before - that was how good it all sounded : )
However, just a day or two into my journey/education, I began to feel that something didn’t sound right, glorious as it was. There was something in there that did not sound realistic, that the performers sounded distant, like a thin cloth separated me from the music. In between my nightly music sessions, I read about nearfield listening, and realised I was sitting in the incorrect location for the specific configuration of my room. A secondary, vital issue involved the design of my speakers - the Larsen speakers I had bought had been claimed to do away with early reflections for the perfect balance between fitting well into a lounge space, and delivering high quality sound, to the disadvantage of indirect tweeter dispersion. Like many who first started in our hobby, I didn’t want a dedicated listening room with speakers pulled well out away from walls, and I really did not want acoustic panels and room treatments, having read that such is possible with very specifically configured spaces, and under specific listening position locations. Definitely not perfect, but I wasn’t looking for perfection, now, was I?
Sitting nearfield sorted out the realism….for the next week.
I realised shortly after, that I wasn’t hearing the crispness of piano key strikes the way they sound in real life. This particular lack of realism would set me on the ultimate quest which would last the next four years. In the meantime, I got slightly better crispness if I held my head closer to each speaker, Larsens being as undirectional as they are designed to be. And I knew I had to get a more directional speaker for the listening space I was in, and something that would violate my need to have speakers placed flush against the wall. Damn.
And that’s how my education began, as I’m sure many others also have. I moved to the greater cost/realism benefits of a tube amplifier for the depth of sound I wasn’t hearing, and the realistic timbre of voice and instruments my poor solid state amplifier was not delivering. It’s been four years now, many many speaker demos in that listening space and that of my second system and five times as many demos for DAC;, six speakers I’ve bought and three I kept; all kinds of cabling have come in and gone back out; and I’m back to a solid state amplifier, coupled with a solid state preamp that sound more realistic than the many tube amps from CJ, airtight, Aries Cerat, and audio research I’ve demoed for days at any time, in my systems in their specific listening spaces, and with my own ears. The two things that havent changed are my nearfield listening position, and listening spaces with no early reflections - these resolve the most fundamental problems with room acoustics
And that’s the thing, you see, as with an education (demos aside), one can’t return any of it. You cannot just decide you didn’t need kindergarten, really; or primary school with all that basic shit, or even secondary school after that, to just head straight to college. None of the school fees you paid for can be reimbursed, none of your time refunded, not one school bag or school book may be returned.
Everything was simply part of the education. And sure, your parents might have wanted you to go all the way, but at no time did I think I wanted to finish kindergarten for my primary education, or that for secondary school. I could have dropped out at any time, in fact, leading a life no different from the many others who did so, and are perfectly happy with theirs.
The kicker is, our audio journey is unlike that of education in only one most critical way - we don’t need a parent or someone else to decide for us where to stop. What we do have is our own pure desire to hear and listen more, the limits of ability to develop technical skill in building our listening environments and/or modifying equipment or making our own, and the limits of a bank account - to hell with anyone else who has decided to do it a different way.
So, audio forums, reviews, technical knowledge, measurements, can tell you a lot - together, they create the basis for where you might want to take your next step, or not bother anymore, but nothing alone can tell you where to go or the correct decision to make - and that is what is meant by listening with your own ears, and finding your own decisions. It can be affordable, but do know that getting to a college education, expensive as it may be, is far easier than self-learning to the same degree and level. For most, self-learning takes far greater skill and ability than most of us could ever dream of having - kudos to those blessed few.
In friendship, kevin.