classicaudio: i've been in this hobby since the 70's, too. (actually, the late 60's, if the truth be told.) the 1st system i remember "blowing me away" was powered with a levinson (the man, not the company) amp, using a stax pre and b&w speaks. i lusted after this setup but couldn't afford it at that point. so, i continued to listen to my circa 1970 "stereo," that was much like your advent setup. eventually, around 1982, i earned enough to buy into what was then the highend. my 1st "highend" system set me back about $7,000. i've constantly traded up, trying and buying numerous speakers, electronics and frontends. now, some 2 decades on, i own a system that retails for well over $70,000. is my current 10 times better than the one i bought in '82? that may be impossible to answer. let me give you some analogies. in 1968, my wife & i (still married, BTW, after 34 years) bought our first new car. it was a 1968 vw beetle that cost us $1700. in february of this year, our older son bought his first new car. ironically but truthfully, it was a 1999 vw beetle (turbo). it set him back $17,000, before taxes and tags. is our son's beetle worth 10x more than our '68 model? i don't really know. it is, however, better built, faster & corners damn near as well as my '99 bmw 328is. most importantly, the new beetle is infinitely safer than the '68; it has airbags, great bumpers, a front engine & is otherwise much more robust. i certainly wouldn't have paid $17,000 for our son's car in 1968. who would have done so? my dad sold cadillacs in the last years of his too-short life. in 1963, the year he died, the most expensive car in the highend gm line cost around $6,000. it was the eldorado biarritz, as i recall. now, you can truck on down to your cadillac dealer and buy any number of models with msrp's of >$60,000. are these 10x better than that 2 1/2 ton beauty built in '63 with a stainless steel top and huge v8? i don't know how you'd answer this query but i can tell you there's no american-made car i'd spend that much to purchase. so, back to audio. tho i just celebrated my 57th year on earth, i still listen to as much new stuff as often as i can. and sometimes, tho infrequently, i still get blown away. it happened again this past weekend, when i listened to pair of the same speakers i own (avalon eidolons) being fed by the newest accuphase frontend and huge monoblocs, connected with the top-of-the-top wire from tarra. (FWIW, i have the last generation accuphase frontend, digital pre and a rowland 8ti amp, all connected with cardas neutral ref.). how much would it cost me to move up from my current stuff to the "next level" or beyond the next level (which would include a boulder optically connected pre)? somewhere between $20-40 thousand retail (counting trades or sales of present electronics). is it worth it? that's a complicated question that is at the heart of your thread. of course it's not worth it if i can't afford it; but that's something i need to recognize and not whine about , as some, including those on this thread seem unable to do. how much is too much? again, a complicated question with a multiplicity of "correct" answers. if the majority of your upgrade $$ is going towards magical devices that realign your household electrons by plugging a clock into an empty outlet socket, or clarify your room acoustics with devices that resemble checker-sized discs on long dowels, then you deserve what you get, no matter the cost and no matter how your budget is affected. if, on the other hand, you are moving up the ladder of clarity, imaging or grit-free power with ultra well-built electronics, then your money may be well spent. i've come to the realization in the last few years that the scale one must apply to perceived improvements in sound quality is equivalent to the scale used to measure the differences in sound levels. both, that is, are logarithmic rather than geometric. the loader/better you get, the greater the level of output/$$ it takes to perceive a difference. this may not be "fair" or "just" but it is what it is. at some point your ears start to bleed when they direct the sound levels required to perceive a difference between a jet engine on afterburn 100 yards from your head and the same engine moving ever closer to where you stand. the same is at least roughly true when it comes to highend audio, tho your billfold may secrete its essence instead of your ears. what makes all this tougher is what's already been pointed out: there are more purveyors out there than ever before. sure, there are still tailors out there who will sell the clothes made of invisible threads to those vain enough to wear them. trouble is, there are more emperors than ever before. good times for tailors. bad times for the kings, princes, dukes and other assorted royals with more money than brains. ah, but thanks be to god, we're just observers of this long parade.
Audio & the Emperor’s new clothes.
I have been into audio since the early 70s and once considered myself an "audiophile" - but no longer. At one time being an audiophile meant that you loved music and had a fascination for the gear that reproduced it. But it seems that to be an "audiophile" today means that you are a very specialized acquisitionist; one who pursues yuppie arrogance items of the audio kind and one who - in some cases - simply pursues the Emperor’s new clothes. I still enjoy my music and I do enjoy the equipment and I do have a good ear. I can easily hear the difference between cold equipment and equipment that's been warmed up. I hear differences between cables and - to a lesser extent - interconnects. I have no pretensions of being unique in this ability but I DO hear these kinds of things. I DO know what live music sounds like, having been to many concerts; jazz, rock, classical and opera. I have never heard any audio system, at any price, in any showroom - and I have been to some great ones - that reproduces the so-called "absolute sound" of live music. Listening to live music and listening to reproduced music are entirely different experiences, each having a very unique appeal. I enjoy reproduced music (via a good system) just as much as I enjoy live. But I refuse to be deluded into believing that they sound the same. I know what I hear and am confident enough in my hearing to know what I don't hear, as well, regardless of what the self-proclaimed gurus of high end audio tell me that I ought to hear. What I do NOT hear is that one amplifier or preamplifier "blows another away" in terms of sound quality. There was a time that I did hear significant difference in equipment but I do not hear them any more. And my ears are just fine, thank you. I do not abuse them. The change has come in the audio marketplace. In the early days of solid state, sound quality was regularly sacrificed on the altar of "specsmanship" via abuses of current limiting and negative feedback circuitry, among other things. Only a few manufacturers back then were employing beefy power supplies and direct coupling and other design concepts that are now well known and employed by a large majority of manufacturers. During the 70s, anyone with a decent ear could hear big differences between the average stuff and something really special like the Levinson or Bryston equipment. In the 70s there WERE some big differences in the sound of one component versus another. But even then the differences were not necessarily related to price. I still have my little Advent 300 Receiver. I bought it used when it was about a year old, as part of a package deal ($150.00 for an Advent 300 & Large Advents Speaker pair). Hooked it up and never even THOUGHT of listening to my Pioneer receiver again. Sold the Pioneer for double what the Advent stuff cost and got myself a NICE Thorens 'Table. That Advent based system, of course, is now semi-retired and provides intermitant motivation to lift heavy things in my medium sized exercise room. Does it match the sound quality of my main system? Of course not - my main system employs more recent and more sophisticated engineering than was available in the '70s and has cost me over 10 times what that Advent based system was worth. Sounding better than a sweet sounding little '70s system is what my main system "gets paid for". But does the main system sound 10 times better? You have got to be kidding! It is more articulate, more open, more dynamic and has a sense of presence that the 70s system does not. But either system is sufficiently enjoyable to draw me into the music. And that is what audio is about. Do differences in the sound of various electronics still exist? Of course they do. But I am thinking that the differences have more to do with personal taste than with sound quality. And I suspect that some of the high end amplification equipment is deliberately "voiced" to a particular taste, in the same way speakers are "voiced". But the bottom line - in my opinion - is that the huge differences in sound quality just aren't there anymore. The point of severely diminished returns in terms of sound quality is reached long before you are into the high end stuff. So why all the talk about exquisite differences in high end sound quality?
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- 24 posts total
- 24 posts total