Rate these on order of importance:

Unsound - I was reading with rapt attention until you started with the measurements. Sorry, you lost me there. If measurements reliably did equate to the actual listening experience then reviewers would be without a job and the rags would be nothing more than diagrams and numbers.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: "Did someone just fart?"

I'll add this too: Hook up your Kenner Close-N'-Play turntable to you favorite flavor of amplification, lets say it's Lamm tube gear. Pair that marvelous combo off with a suitably decadent speaker choice that says to everyone, "....Don't fuck with me, God made these speakers and you can hear his/her message in every note played through them! Oh, and they cost me a whole butt-load of cash too.....enough to pay for two years at Harvard." Let's call this system "Unsound's Slightly Compromised Reference"

OK, now let's build another system using the same sensational Lamm amplification but this time we'll swap out the Kenner Close-N'-Play turntable front end with, perhaps Albert Porter's front-end rig but now play the whole thing through a pair of speakers with at least a similar efficiency as the first, but this set was purchased from the back of a van somewhere on the Lower East Side from some moke named Vinny for all of $93. Will call this system "Nrchy's Making the Better Argument"

So, if you had to live with one of these two systems for the rest of your life without changing either, Which one would you prefer to listen to music on? No tweaks either. You get to replace the needle on the Close-N'-Play when it wears out....I think you can get them at the Fabric Store. For those of you who'd take the Unsound Reference I have a great resource for some custom moulded earplugs!!!

Marco

5, 4, 1, 2, 3

These "arguments" where some turn to extreme examples of really bad pieces of gear are absurd. Of course you can find things so flawed that they ruin the whole chain of events. That is not the question!

People who really know what happens when you try to reproduce music know the two most limiting items are the recording microphone and the speaker.

No amount of pre speaker manipulation, and I have as flexible a "front end" with my Z Systems equalization as anyone, can make an inaccurate speaker accurate, or a bad recording sound right.

If your room is reflecting sound waves in a flawed manner, no amount of front end or amp switching can fix it, unless you are lucky enough to stumble on a piece which has a particular drop off of frequency to compensate for the particular anomaly in your situation, and that makes that piece right for only you and your room. (Not for advice on a forum.)

Charlie

Marco, I'll be the first one to say that we haven't found measurment techniques that can truly identify the complete listening experience, especialy speakers. As compelling as they are, I didn't mean for my "argument" to be soley based around those specs. The point was that unless you believe that all the other components all share the the same deviations, speakers/rooms demonstrate the greatest variablity in the audio chain. I think that holds true whether you want to measure it or not. As for your choice of systems, I think a better comparison would be "Close-N'- Play" through "Unsound's Reference" vs. "Albert Porter's front end-rig through the "Close-N'-Play's built in speaker. How about we make it real. While I would never actually recommend this, but, what the heck were playing here. Albert's front-end rig through your choice of new $200 speakers vs. my choice of $200 CD player through my choice of new speakers that cost the same as Albert's front-end rig. I'll take the latter. Thanks, but, you can keep the ear plugs.

Do we have match? If Rsbeck is just stuttering, Abe_av might be in agreement. 12 days and 62 posts later.