How do you know when a stereo sounds good?

Come on Cindyment, you have 63 posts in one day, make it 64 & answer my question. 

Care to grow up and start acting like an adult?

Nah, I'm good.

This is one of those questions that is so dumb it pisses you off. 

Ted, look at it this way. If your system costs less than $100,000 you have a ways to go. I'm not joking. This is the only measure I can use to give you some idea on what I think it takes to build a system that I would be happy with. Your own happiness is up to you. It is more about values. How much are you willing to spend for better sound. None of us have systems that can not benefit from something somewhere. Technology always advances.

mijostyn

5,486 posts

12-01-2021 7:28am

Ted, look at it this way. If your system costs less than $100,000 you have a ways to go. I’m not joking. This is the only measure I can use to give you some idea on what I think it takes to build a system that I would be happy with. Your own happiness is up to you. It is more about values. How much are you willing to spend for better sound. None of us have systems that can not benefit from something somewhere. Technology always advances.

i hear systems all the time that cost a lot but fail to impress. In fact audiophiles with “shiny box syndrome“, seldom have great sounding systems unless they also pay attention to set up/synergy. I’ve heard systems with modest speakers and electronics outperform six-figure systems, and by a wide margin. This is because while the millionaire audiophile may have all the best shiny boxes, oftentimes they fail to pay attention to set up whereas the guy on a budget, may not have the money for the best gear, but he pays attention to set up and so, gets good sound. Ultimately tuning on anything other than your own subjective enjoyment, like spending a lot of money on shiny boxes and assuming that will give great sound, seldom yields great results. And I’m not saying measurements are not important, they are, especially when pairing electronics with speakers, or dealing with low frequencies in a state of the art listening room, but ultimately if you’re not tuning based on what sounds good to you, you’re not going to get a system that sounds good to you. This should make sense to most successful audiophiles.

Yours in music,

Ted Denney III

Lead Designer/CEO Synergistic Research Inc.