Why do people with good taste in music usually have crap stereo systems?

a vacation

many, many good nights out drinking with your friends

half of an engagement ring (nb this might just be me)

an entire wardrobe

etc.

I don't understand the reasoning, which is why I have a crap stereo system (it consists of my computer, Ramon's sister's ghetto blaster, and an ex's broken stereo).

I also see some of Ally's finer points, tho. I really could use a new engagement ring.

And by the way: $1000??? Are you (a) well-off or (b) fucking mad? My less-than-$300 arrangement suits me just fine and leaves the theoretical other $700 for actual music to play on it.

g

That extra $650 can probably buy you the Merzbox.

Nitsuh is on the money about why people with shit taste often have amazing systems.

g

g

I *do* admit to having a few nasty lingering audiophile habits. There's a record shop 5 minutes' walk from where I live which occasionally gets in good consignments of cheap 'cut-out' CDs from the US and Japan; most recently they seem to have scored almost every original Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman re-issue and a few from the first Impulse CD campaign - nothing over a fiver. Of course, I turn my nose up at these bargains 'cos they're not the SuperBitMapped 24/96 remasters from '97 onwards. What a tit.

Sean: $16k and you've got Linn/Naim gear? Couldn't you have got something *good* for that money? ;)

Wouldn't having a super sound listening room, w/ proper acoustics make a bigger difference in you ear? Or do you just listen through the best headphones that money can buy?

Wahey! My situation exactly. Thus the Raggettstacks, as Clarke put it.

I never turned the volume up past 1/4, and it was pretty loud at 1/10.

Marianna; actually, the "source" (CD player, turntable, etc.) is the most important aspect of your hifi, the speakers the least important. Basically it's "garbage in, garbage out". If this concept is new to you, you'll probaby not believe me, you'll need to hear it for yourself.

No, there's not much to choose between read accuracy between a $150 mass-market CD player and its high-end cousin (they may very well be sporting the same generic transport mech under the cover anyhow, and Reed-Solomon error correction provides for near-perfect reads regardless of the cost of the componentry), but how that data is translated into an analogue signal is where the money talks (to a *certain extent*). Good D/A convertors are pretty cheap now, but ultra-linear reconstruction filters aren't, they there's yr power supply regulation and design, yr clock circuitry, the analogue stage itself, yada, yada.

If I was starting from scratch, I don't think I'd spend more than $600 on a CD player.

Spoken like a true Linnie! Yep, this school of thought has certainly had its adherents over the years (it was certainly the Linn party line in the 70s and 80s), but I don't really agree.

Which component introduces the greatest degrees of distortion and colouration? Which involves the most costly manufacturing processes, and the greatest shipping overheads? It's got to be the speakers, which is why I think the law of diminishing returns takes effect much higher up the price ladder with speakers than with source components.

I know GIGO is an appealing idea, but I think it was at its most compelling when most folks' sources were turntables. Since the advent of CD, the quality gap between an affordable mid-fi source and a state-of-the-art one has shrunk somewhat.

FWIW, I've heard wonderful sounds from a cheap Pioneer running through Chord amps and Wilson Benesch speakers. Replace the Pioneer with a fancy Teac/Theta combo, and the WBs with a $400 pair of Charios and the magic promptly vanishes (along with what seems like half the signal). Total value of system remains the same though.

This is one of the oldest arguments in audio - shall we agree to disagree in advance?

But wait, Sean, we're talking about CDs, right? In which case we are talking about binary data, just like a hard drive. I know lower-end systems do the conversion and send out an analog signal, but it was always my understanding that most higher-end systems will output a digital signal for out-board conversion. Is that the argument, that an independent conversion (or really good conversion on-board high-end players) gives you better sound quality?

I totally don't get it why people w/ good taste in feet don't all have hi-end shoes. I mean, don't they realize that they would get so much more out of them? They don't know what walking is! Poor soles.

marianna: all music can benefit from better sound. It's basically just trying to get a system that can most acurately recreate what was recorded. Even with low fi music, you can hear more of the performance (maybe more thatn the artist actually intended in some cases). Also, there is lots of highly produced & well recorded stuff out there that is way better than rush, off the top of my head i am thinking spiritualized and the new sodastream record that really deserve to be heard on a good system. As for the jump from 1k to 16K, well the way this stuff works is, once you have got to a certain point, 10% improvement costs 100% more. Law of diminshing returns etc.

I said *read* accuracy - precisely the activity of getting the data off the disc. There's virtually no difference in *this regard* between cheap and expensive machines, it's the translation into an analogue signal where the pricier units come into their own. We agree on this - we just differ on how important the source ultimately is in the overall sound quality you'd get from a system for a certain amount of cash.

I will take it as a given that all music sounds better. But what music has it led you to enjoy more the most?

This isn't trying to prove any kind of Rush-ist point incidentally, I'm interested - as somebody who long-term WOULD like a decent system - in what kind of music has benefitted most?

It's *an* argument, one that I don't necessarily go along with. The vogue for two (or more) box CD players seems to have waned in recent years. I don't think Sean's Naim even sports a digital-out. The idea is that, if you do the conversion from digital to analogue in a box separate from all that noisy servo electronics, you'll get a cleaner signal. Counter-argument - route yr power rails so this isn't a problem in the first place, *plus* you have to extract the clock info from the incoming datastream in yr offboard DAC (i.e. unlike a one-box CD player it won't all be slaved to the same clock), which is tricky and can lead to higher levels of jitter.

Jitter? That's time-domain distortion, where all the samples are present and correct but aren't being converted at precisely the correct time. Is it important? That's yet *another* argument...

Well, I was typing a long answer, but to cut to the chase: all music benefits. Perhaps strangely enough, older albums that may have been thought of as "muddy" or the like usually benefit the most, though. A good stereo isn't meant to just play "audiophile" recordings; I don't even own any.

But! Lots and lots of good music, esp. much current electronic music, is more sound oriented. I just don't know how you expect to make out all the detail in a Pole or Pan Sonic or Boredoms or Mouse on Mars record, for example, with a $50 boombox. You have to hear that shit loud! Really fucking loud! A good hi-fi can make all the difference here.

All that said, I have a pretty cheap system myself. Probably $600 or so altogether. Components, obviously, not a boombox. It sounds pretty decent. I just don't have the money to make it sound great, unfortunately.

yeah, we should take the real geeky stuff off of here, but I will discuss with people who are genuinely interested in the subject, want to know more, etc. I figure there are a bunch of ways to approach high end but hopefully the goal is the same. If you want to email me directly i would be interested in comparing systems, etc. Refreshing to find a couple otehr stereo geeks that don;t have typical audiophile music taste.

g

I think you should continue your hi-fi geekarama in this forum. I am still interested.

i can't stand all this recording studio discrimination.

I increasingly have difficulty understanding that jump too, but that's probably just because I speak from a position of unrelenting brokitude these days, and, if I have audio dreams at all, they're of DOWNgrading the system (or, more precisely and efficiently, of not spending quite so much in the first place) and pocketing the money liberated. Nothing seems quite so satisfying to me in this realm as the idea of the well-balanced and handsome $1000 system; I went beyond that back in 96/97 simply because I could (and possibly because the minor gains that Grayson refers to above seemed Urgent and Key then). Seems almost indecent now.

I've also been disabused of quite a few audiophilic notions over the last few years (the rainbow of cabling exotica round the back of the stereo is a particular embarrassment of mine). I'm not giving up the Gyrodec though. When the debt collectors call I'm going to run the interconnect into my arm and pretend it's a dialysis machine.

I usually call this 'marijuana.'

chris.

Kris, your friend is a genius and that is the only acceptable reason to spend that kind of money on a stereo.

Listen, I make probably less than quite a lot of you but by no means an unrespectable amount, but I'm not about to spend money on a stereo when I can spend it on shoes or my wedding or drinking or cigarettes, you know? That's really basically why I'm so appalled by the idea of spending that kind of money on a stereo system, you could be doing so many other fun things instead...but to each their own I guess.

I do think the point is true though that Nitsuh said, why spend money on a huge ass stereo when you can spend money on more CDs?

That's what I'm saying. He's still waiting for his speakers to arrive, but he refuses to buy the Ludacris album until they do, even though he has some little Aiwa shelf-system already. He bought this little $200 AM radio just to listen to A's games. He's totally nuts.

True 'nuff. Ever run "Bootylicious" through Cool Edit? Er, I *know* someone who has, and it's basically one big block of colour. Or so he tells me. Whither the glorious dynamic range of CD when no-one's actually using any? That bass doesn't really hit you in the chest through computer speakers, mind.

What's this about dither, though? Generally considered a good thing, surely? Eliminates quantisation error, and allows perception of musical information below the LSB. Dither is our friend.

And it needs improvement, without a doubt, especially my CD player -- it's noticeably harsh- and thin-sounding. I'd love to pick up one of the lower-end Cambridge Audio or NAD players that run $300-400, but I have no money (almost literally) right now. My tape deck is a lower-end professional unit, and sounds gorgeous -- it's the best thing in my system.

I personally get a million times more enjoyment out of a good stereo system than the things Ally mentioned (though I've yet to have or plan a wedding of my own), but that's me -- I guess I love music more than I love intoxicants and shoes. (I can't say the same of every bandmate I've ever had...) On top of that, as a music professional of various stripes it's important that I be able to hear properly, lest I send out crappy product of whatever sort. Of course the super-audiophiles are nuts, but there's just so much you don't hear if you have a crap system. There's a world of difference in the bass frequencies alone -- a warm and rich bass is, to me, a big part of what makes me able to feel surrounded by music, what makes it feel rich and tangible. It's a feeling that can give me an interval of total contentment. Listening to music on a crap system, you just don't get it -- the physical experience is literally absent.

That being said, I love bootlegs, love lo-fi recordings, love the sound of old 78s, and like the kind of dark/veiled sound that most audiophiles despise -- for a lot of stuff I prefer the sound of my old 1960 Sony bookshelf speakers, which sound fantastic on things like Neu! and old classical music. But for warmth, richness, and feeling like you're able to get physically lost inside the music, you really have to spend at least a little money (or make the equivalent finds on the used market). I could buy a hundred CDs, but if they sound like ass because my stereo is crap, I'm not going to really enjoy them. I'd rather listen to ten and have them sound good to me.

Oh, too true. What Morrissey says at the beginning of "Viva Hate" is enough to give the most die-hard fan pause.

g

I once lived w/ a friend who had a MASSIVE vinyl collection and some serious disposable income. He bought a v. pricey custom-made turntable that had to be personally installed by the manufacturer so as ton ensure optimum listening doodad. Out of all the recs the salesman could've spun to testdrive this fucker, he picked out 'Tin Drum' by Japan because of its luvverly sonic whatsits. Personally, I wanted to hear my flatmate's copy of 'Dart Drug' by Derek Bailey and Jamie Muir played at cop-fucking volume, but was overruled, dammit.

Amen to that. Even more desirable than the ideal $1000 system, is the I-can't-believe-it-was-only-$100 system, with a silver fascia battleship-build late 70s Japanese solid-state amp sitting between a discarded Gerrard or Manticore TT that someone thought was broken and a bloody great pair of paint-splattered Kefs. Oh, and one of those heaving old Marantz tape decks adorned with spookily ahead-of-its- time font and needle UV meters (with any luck, one of them might even still work).

However: Nitsuh, maybe you could give me some advice on a decent stereo setup for $300(!)?

>>> during my 2 years of audiophilia

=

the pinefox's

>>> in my misguided excessively-melodic days

ie

=

?!?!?!?!?

http://gygax.pitas.com

I listened to it very hard on my reasonably good but not audiophile set up and didn't hear anything. Is this a wind up?

Someone said this up above...I have a simple response:

2 turntables + mixer = more fun than a barrel of monkeys

Also, to anyone who thinks that the stereo doesn't matter and that buying more music is a better investment, I challenge you to listen to Stereolab, Mad Professor, U2, the Orb (Little Fluffy Clouds is particularly impressive), or Bob Dylan on your $300 stereo system and then come over to my place. Over 7 years I've slowly built up my system and man, I would never go back. You start discovering the lows, mids, and highs in everything--especially when you have a mixed and you can drop whatever range you want.

I'd NEVER dj in public, but mixing Depeche Mode is wickedly amusing (Everything Counts and People are People--perfect).

morrissey never really said anything?

I can definitely sympathize with the reluctance to get anything that costs a lot. I have some pretty good headphones and spend way too much money on music. I've wandered into this local audiophile store a few times and thought about how great it'd be to have some nice speakers and such, but should I really get a couch, new car, etc etc.

That is, until I opened a present several days ago and found a nice gift certificate to said store. Muhaha.

When I brought it up, everyone in the car just starred at me.

Hmmm.. Ideal. I used to just have a shitty boombox in my room, my sister's boombox for CDs, and a friend of my mom's old tapedeck & mini speaker thing hooked up to a turntable. For graduation my grandfather&my mother got me a decent system; I really like it. But I would couldn't fathom ever spending that much of my own cash. Also, the speakers I use were things found in my dad's girlfriend's basement--and I still use an old turntable; the one, in fact, i listened to Sesame Street records on as a kid.

So.. expensive does sound better. Yeah, it rules.
But it's EXPENSIVE!!!! I mean.. $750-900 worth of CDs is a fucking lot of CDs. Imagine if you just bought used LPs and used CDs with that money? That's over one hundred new records! Ridiculous!

I went into a couple of specialist hi-fi stores to audition some stuff, fully expecting to find that my battered and abused, gig-ravaged old ears wouldn't be able to detect any appreciable difference in sound / sound quality between different makes of system or indeed between a £500 system and a £5,000 one.

Boy was I ever wrong about that!

To anyone who thinks the same as I used to, I'd say this: ring your local hi-fi store and arrange to spend a few hours auditioning some equipment (if they ask, just for the purposes of this exercise, tell them your budget's about 10 times the maximum amount that you'd currently envisage spending on a stereo!) then just turn up with half a dozen of your favourite CD's and / or records.

If you're really, absolutely convinced that you won't be able to hear any appreciable difference between the systems, then what have you got to lose? After all, what's the worst thing that can happen? You have to spend several gruelling hours sitting on a painfully comfortable sofa being forced to listen to some of your favourite music while some total and utter bastard regularly forces you to accept cups of tea and coffee.

Pretty tough, huh?

What’s more; if at the end of the session you're still convinced that there’s no real difference between the systems; then you get the added bonus of actually being able to sneer at all the hi-fi snobs from a position of knowledge in future.

Personally I wouldn't ever want to go back to the sort of systems I used to have now; and the way I justify the amount I spent on my hi-fi is that when you spend as much money on music as I do, you really want to get as much out of it as you possibly can.

Now if I could only think of some equally brilliant way of justifying the amount of money I spend on music....

Just in case anyone's actually remotely interested, I spent nearly all the proceeds from selling a 3-year-old 3-series BMW and bought: a Naim CD3.5 CD player; a Rega Planar 3 turntable with an Ortofon 540 cartridge; a Naim NAIT 3 amp.; Chord Chorus interconnects; a pair of Royd "The Abbot" speakers; Naim NACA 5 speaker cables and a Sound Organisation rack stand (the importance of the interconnects, cables and stands and the sonic differences they can can make will be covered in our next lesson!).

note the subwoofer, antiques from the '70s, a subcomponent of crossover Xxmulti-diameter speaker systems generally, the once somewhat showey speaker you did /do need to encompass that bassier sonic range -- thankfully they're now a commonplace add-on

i have hedonistically and stupidly blown speakers in ghetto blasters, car stereos and even modern televisions, and they all had silly little speakers -- it's that urge to go louder, especially with those heavy deep frequencies -- the same deep-frequency records play fine on my 20 year old kitset system with 15" speakers, and i think most records (oh, that's cds too, btw) sound better on it, simply because most have some deepish harmonics at least

as for the garbage in/out stuff, my concern over the years has been more to seek out a turntable that will not gauge it's way into a standard vinyl sortie -- once the vinyl has those crackles and distortion on it, you have a position of no return.

You can get good, reasonably affordable, turntables from (amongst others) Nad, Pro-ject and Rega which, if set up properly, not only won't destroy your vinyl but you'll probably find that they'll play some records that you'd previously thought were unplayable.

The answer for me is stuff like MoM, Plaid, etcetera. Since I was 16 and first listened to Orbital on a shitty ghettoblaster I've wanted to be able to climb inside all those blips and beeps and basslines and stuff, and now I almost can.

Must . . . resist . . . anti-audiophile . . . bile . . .

NO. FUCK IT.

For the record a piece of music has fuck all to do with "how the artist intended it be". If you want it to be how it was intended then get a pair of studio monitors. Simple as that. In the real world we use these things because they have a very flat, unfriendly eq to them. Megawank speakers with "creamy bass" and "punchy middle" does as much to bastardise a piece of music eq-wise as a short-wave radio. WHAT IN SHITTING HITLER'S NAME DO YOU THINK ACTUAL GOES ON IN STUDIOS? Through the audiophiles' eyes they must be Oz-esque towers of audio beauty, perfect in every way, not boxy little rooms where you have to jam a screwdriver in the desk at an angle *just so* to get the bastard to work. YOU ARE LOST IN A SEA OF LIES! Do you people think the average recording is some perfect representation of the artists vision? Misguided! Time constraints, how hungover the drummer is and whether the vocalist has dropped the decent vocal mic in the bog whilst freebasing have far more to do with what a piece of audio comes out like than anything else. Remember, once it's out of the artists head its already compromised. There is not a single recording in the world which is "how the artist intended". LIES, DAMN LIES! Misguided souls who project some sort of Godhead onto these people! Do you think if Pet Sounds was recorded today Wilson'd still do it 2 tracks music, 2 vocals on a tape machine? BOLLOCKS! BIG FRANKENSTEIN BOLLOCKS! He'd be locked up in a wood-panelled megastudio with fifty billion mics, hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of processing and Nigel Godrich at the desk sucking the living shit out of anything that made it interesting. Wake up! Prisoner, come out! You have nothing to fear but fear itself!

It's all about the listener. Familiarity with a set up is what you're after, really. If it does it for you it does it for you, I mean are you listening to Shellac to hear those perfectly captured cymbals? NO! You're listening to Controversial Steve wailing his bastard heart out about the evils of the world! FOR SHAME, MR. AUDIOPHILE! FOR SHAME! You are not only swallowing a lie, you are spitting it out so that it may catch root and grow in a world already fit to bursting with mistruths! Philistine! VIRUS!

I looked into some of these record players (Music Hall, Pro-ject, Sumiko, Rega) when my current record player bit the dust, and do you know what kept me from buying any of them? You have to remove the damn platter and fiddle with the belt to change the speed from 33 to 45. You've got to be kidding me. I'm giving them $300+ for a record player and they can't even include a speed change switch?

It's easy Stewart, you have to buy (and listen to) all that music to recoup your investment!

Since I don't think I really answered the question at hand, here we go:

1. They spend all their money on the music.
2. Poor students who have to buy what's cool
3. Can't bother the neighbors with loud music
4. Some people think loud means quality, and you can get loud on the cheap.
5. It's easy to save up enough money to buy a shit stereo, it's hard to save enough money for a good one
6. They have "good taste" in music spend too much time cultivating their tastes and not enough time earning money
7. They listen to music in public, not at home

I mean, what's the average age of someone with "good taste?" College age? I think this is a major factor, here.

There is actually a very good reason for that, which I forget exactly but I think it's something to do with any (affordable) switching mechanism intoducing all sorts of undesirable irregularities in speed.

If you want a good turntable with a speed change switch you're starting to loom at the bottom end Linn players which were a bit too pricy for me.

"Now if I could only think of some equally brilliant way of justifying the amount of money I spend on music...."

"It's easy Stewart, you have to buy (and listen to) all that music to recoup your investment!"

Now that's a wonderful argument Mike, because of course it can also be used to justify periodic upgrades ("I need to buy some even better equipment because of all this extra music I've bought....")!

i didnt know audiophiles were supposedly into rush. i always assumed that classical fans were the ones that spent the most money on their systems, and that seems like the genre that would most benefit from a good sytem, as the dynamics on a classical record are so wide in range. my shitty aiwa (non-component) system (with a sony discman as CD player, as original cd player broke) cant handle my fav classical records at all. either the volums is too low, and there is no detail to the quieter passages, or the volume is too loud (for the quieter passages to be heard), and distorts when the music changes. i know this is mostly the fault of the CD itself, but i couldt help feeling that if i could get more detail at quieter volumes, i wouldnt have to turn the stereo up as much. am i correct?

I have a pair of headphones that cost £120 and I love them too. Most of my listening is done on my £100ish CD walkman tho.

If you've got a rubbish setup, then buy a better one and all your old albums become like new ones!

Having said that though, I much prefer hearing "Doolittle" through my crappy walkman, than on a good system, where it can sound a little stodgy. Maybe a useful antidote to over-produced music?

Also, to go back to the Linn "source is better than speaker" argument, which I've never subscribed to (a bit fishy that a company that makes only "sources" was the company that originated this argument). Can you in all honesty say that a £2000 CD player played on £10 speakers, is going to sound better than a £10 Cd player on a £1000 Amp and £1000 speakers?

I think the point was made above that many classic records by, eg, the Beach Boys, Beatles, VU , Stooges and Rolling Stones were made with few concessions to audiophilia - so what would be gained from listening to them on audiophile equipment?

I dunno, maybe it's a result from having grown up listening to crappy-sounding albums on equally crappy-sounding boombox and being completely used to it, but it's never been much of an issue for me.

What bothers me: Why do people with fancypant stereos always have to turn the bass so thumpingly loud?

With classical and jazz, you are attempting to reproduce the soundstage (something that is usually completely lost in rock recordings).. as well as an accurate reproduction of the instruments sounds.

Dont get me wrong, even if a $40k system sounds better than a $1500 one, Im just going to have to accept that fact and realize that the law of diminishing returns saved me over 38K.

BUT to say that there arent important sonic differences between a circuit city set up and a higher end system is just ridiculous and usually said by people who havent heard higher end stereo equipment.

and i still think much pop music is mixed/ compressed and processed to sound good on middle of the range systems, but the sudden ubiquity of subwoofers, i think that proves something, and it's just one example of how one subcomponent of a component can enrich the pleasure of listening to sound

?????

I thought audiophiles adored steely dan & the blue nile!! (wtf do I know, the only audiophile I actually know only adores morton subotnick)

stereolab is a bad example though -- 'fidelity' has been a sales pitch since the '50s and a consumer reality for some since the '70s -- it's there, whether _your_ system let's you hear it or not

just like expensive cars, the owners might be wanting to send signals with their cars like they "appreciate good european engineering" or "make some small difference" by preferring efficient comparatively envionment-friendly Japanese cars to ugly innefficient american gas-industry frindly cars -- you might get more fun or death out of your car, just like stereos,
and while the "audiophile as tasteless philistine" argument, seemingly a relatively fair way to express jealousy or contempt for rich people who can afford this equipment, still doesn't seem to have been really touched on here with respect to taste (ie "good tasters have crap systems"), and maybe taste is too slippery a subject anyway

The most OTM thing on this whole thread. When I bought my first speakers, I brought a special bass drop to the store with me to see if they could handle it alllll the wayyyy dowwwwwwwn. You lo-fi kids can fuck off. Bass drops are IMPORTANT.

I'm not a rich person. Everything else I own falls at the budget to medium range end of the spectrum. My hi-fi is my pride and joy. As far as I'm concerned it's money well spent because of the amount of enjoyment it gives me. I use it everyday and as some people have already noted when you get a good system it's like listening to your old CDs for the first time again.

One of the things that attracted me to the speakers was the fantastically true reproduction of percussive sounds but that also means that I pick up bad percussion playing where I wouldn't have noticed it before. I don't get the arguement about music being made in studios to sound OK on the radio therefore you don't get anything more on a good system. Even in the mid range of frequencies you get more as voices have so much more texture and richness than on cheap systems as to other instruments.

The only drawback from my experience is that, as with most connoisseur things, you get spoilt and it's hard to listen to cheap systems again.

That's exactly what I thought before I tried it Julio, but I'm sure you would; why not book up a session with a hi-fi shop and give it a try?

Personally, I love music, and I'm not extremely picky about how I hear it, so long as I hear it. Though I can hear differences between a super-nice stereo, and say, my crappy little boombox/discman/computer speakers, I don't care that much. It sounds fine enough to me. If I had a huge ammount of disposable income, I'd buy some nicer equipment, but for now, I'd rather just buy books, records, see films, go out for food and drinks, travel, get clothes, etc etc etc.

But even if I had the cash, I'd rather accumulate a lot of records than have a better-than-average sound system. Also since I've lived with other people or in an apartment buildings for the entirety of my life, I've been listening to music either a) on low volume or b) on headphones for my entire life, so a really nice stereo would be wasted on me, since I could only appreciate it once in a while.

Stewart, I've had a always been scared of altering all that other-end-of-the-arm executive toy weighting systems stuff on turntables -- moving the weights do make a difference, but it's like there's a different best-setting for different sorts of records -- i guess that stuff is fun for some people, but i'm still fearful of counter-adjusting the backwards pull correspondingly correctly -- so i leave it most of the time (at a light setting).

A lot of people do have there weightings by default too heavy i've noticed (1-2 +). Well, records are a definite second-runner for many music lovers these days i suppose and sometimes it's not as if they've grown up with them. Some needle distortion/damage is undetectable through bad speaker set-ups i guess.

But speaker damage just turns large chunks of the speaker frequency range off, period, so i think that with the predominance of cds, many speaker set-ups would have been damaged years ago for some people via exposure to a cd with heavy drops etc., and that's worse damage than just to one record, that's whole chunks of frequencies for your entire collection wiped out once you've listened to one deep-dropping record.

So i reckon the right speakers do protect you from all of that.

a) it's so damn expensive, most people can't
afford it no matter what they like

b) since they've only used shit equipment, they
honestly don't know what they're missing

Very few music fans have used really good
headphones, which is a shame - when i got my
grados (which are entry level stereophile
phones) my favorite albums sounded so much better,
my eyes nearly welled up - i could literally
hear new sounds that were imperceptible on cheap
pnones. i imagine the same thing would hold true
if i could afford $3000 per pair martin logan
speakers.

for myself, not only can I not afford a good stereo,
but i am not stable - i'm not "building my own
castle" or what have you. doesn't a stereo go with
a nice TV and comfy leather chair? whatever.
i move from flat to flat, or squat at friends.
i listen to portable cd players. i'm not going to
invest in effin' speakers. which is why i'm glad
i have good headphones and wish more people did.

another thing, most prog albums have average to
shitty mixes. why? probably because they were too
busy practicing scales and modes to pay attention to
the recording quality, and also because their
labels never cared enough to invest money or
talent into the albums.

Mind you, even Walkmen can have audiophilic pretensions (Etymotic ear-canal 'phones, etc).

Correct: Garbage in, garbage out (It all begins with a quality source -- be it Paul Van Dyk or Rush or Frank Sinatra's Capitol monophonic years.) Understanding how things were captured will help you understand how the music should sound. Mono versus stereo etc. Every era of music has trends. Some for the better and some for the worse. Really get to know your music.

Correct: It is too bad most the last ten years of music is produced so poorly (really thin and sounds all over-produced and mashed together -- lack of clarity). Digital cut-and-paste ProTools blah blah blah. Creating audio masters (acetates and mothers) for pressing vinyl had such a level of perfection (pertaining to eveness of sonic quality and having full/clear headroom) to it that the mass CD market cannot comprehend. Almost anything goes now. Too bad.

Correct: Speakers are the most important part of the system.

Correct: Amplification is the most important part of the system.

Correct: Playback units are the most important part of the system.

Incorrect: MP3 playback. Computer playback. Subwoofer/satellite sytems. 5.1 systems. The "Best Buy" market is really good at pushing sound that really isn't anything but distortion. I don't understand the tremendous amount of gear that has +12db gain at 80Hz, nothing from 500Hz to 2.4kHz and a +6db gain at 18kHz (computer setups, 5.1 Sony "Best Buy" products, etc.).

Incorrect: Needing Monster Cable is a myth.

There is far more to your music than what most people hear. How you put a system together can change all that.

Step One: Research product. This can take more than an evening of web surfing. Find a trusty stereo repairman who has been around since the seventies and ask him "Why does that old Marantz receiver with those old blue lights sound so much better than what I hear in the stores?" Know your product lines, in general, for major companies for the last 30 years -- fringe, short lived companies are that way for a reason. They know a lot about what is made well, what can still be serviced and what performs flawlessly over the years (some key points there).

Step Two: Understand what makes a product "good". Refer to the key points in step one. A twenty pound power transformer (in a receiver) will generally outperfom and outlive anything that "Best Buy" has ever put on the shelf (I am getting pretty general, but hey, it is my opinion). 125 watts per channel on a Mcintosh 4100 receiver IS NOT the same as a "Crutchfield" Kenwood 125 watts per channel. You will have to hear this to believe this. It can really open your eyes to what power is all about.

Step Three: Start shopping -- wisely and slowly. Don't get mentally stuck on needing "this" or "that" piece of gear. You may close yourself off to better options.

Step Four: Don't buy anything that needs work. A reseller isn't fixing it for a reason. Ebay isn't a reliable source for electronics. It is better to see and hear and pay the extra $50 or $100 for a piece of gear. A lot of stereo resellers offer some kind of guarantee too.

Step Five: Turn it up!

So what did I finally wind up with? I cannot remember all models off hand, I listen, I don't worry about that stuff.

Receiver - Yamaha CR-2040 (absolutely killer receiver) - $300
Speakers - AR (early 90's, forgot model#, real wood, 3-way 12", mirrored) -- $220
CD - Mitsubishi professional rack mount unit (1990) - free
CD - Denon 450?? - $40
Turntable - Pioneer 420?? (late 70's semi-auto) - $20
Cartridge - Shure M92 - $40
Turntable - Denon dp25?? (late 80's) - free
Cartridge - Shure M92 - $40

$660 spent here -- and about another $120 in having everything fully tweaked out.

It is not the best, but it can impress. It is also very loud and very clear too. CD players have decent DA converters, actually noticably much, much better side by side than a Sony I removed and sold. Turntable are direct drive, fairly quiet --next step up is finding a mint Dual CS5000, wood base belt drive unit. Acoustic Research speakers were new wholsale, improperly marked down from $1200 retail (killer deals to be had, take advantage).

I have pieced this stuff together over the last six years or so. Buying NEW gear with equivalent performance and construction could cost up and over $3500 these days.

And have fun with it!

OTM.

However, the aim of a good hifi system should be as transparent as possible, and as long as you don't get too tied into the fetishisation as he puts it, the better the sound system I think the better you will appreciate music.

I have met my fair share of these bores in my time though, but then again who's to say that there is anything wrong with admiring the craft - and artistry - behind a hifi setup? Why is that of any less objective value than admiring the music over the hifi?

I don't quite see how one follows the other.

Bull Fucking Shit.

(pertaining to eveness of sonic quality and having full/clear headroom)

Does this actually even mean anything?

Computer playback.

What's wrong with a computer playing back 16/44 PCM audio files/FLAC lossless through a digital out soundcard into a reciever?

Incorrect: Needing Monster Cable is a myth.

Monster cable is no different to any other cable that is in spec, especially with digital cables.

Also, what rooms are you people listening to stuff in? Most of us don't have the dough to buy the system AND build an appropriate room to listen in. Most rooms in most houses are theoretically terrible places to listen to music, so why waste the $$ on an extravagant system?

Probably true with digital cables, HOWEVER, if you think of a hifi from an engineering/electrical perspective, the thinner the cable the more electrical resistance. When you then think about the amount of electricity your amp is pumping out to drive the magnet on your speaker, the more current disapearing via electrical resistance, the more distortion introduced to the sound.

BUT, these differences will be small, and cable I would argue makes BY FAR the smallest difference to sound (unless your using something really crappy like telephone wire)

EQs are almost always the worst thing you can introduce into a signal path IMHO.

Also, what rooms are you people listening to stuff in? Most of us don't have the dough to buy the system AND build an appropriate room to listen in. Most rooms in most houses are theoretically terrible places to listen to music, so why waste the $$ on an extravagant system?

This is a very good point, but from my viewpoint I think we're probably talking about the differences between a midi-system and a decent set of mid-priced separates in this debate, the sort of differences which are going to be very noticible whatever the room you have your set-up in. £200 vs £1000 CD/AMP/SPEAKER combo.

'the better the sound system I think the better you will appreciate music.'

I don't quite see how one follows the other.

Sorry, that was very clumsily worded. What I mean by this, is that listening to some music on a better stereo will allow you to hear greater nuances in the sound, rather than some kind of "The bigger your stereo, the better the music fan, the bigger your dick is, kind-of argument."

My mid-range Sony receiver/amp has 4 or 5 bands of EQ (parametric, not graphic), and I use it to acceptably tune my $300 speakers within the crappy room.

I also play a lot of tunes off of my laptop on Monsoon powered speakers that I've mounted to the wall in another room, and I use Winamp's 10-band graphic eq to acceptably tune out some horrific low-mid resonance that is caused by the combination of speaker, placement, and room.

Neither of these eqs are particularly 'pro', but it's something that has helped me get decent performance out of run-of-the-mill equipment. Make no mistake - it doesn't sound as pristine as the really expensive stuff, but it's a lot better than out-of-the-box.

But we'll have to agree to disagree about the merits of calibration using the EQs contained within home amps! From my experience they are adequate for fucking up the sound (especially in a creative way) but are so limited in their selection of frequency bands that they are next to useless and any attempts of iron out one more inevitably brings in others. Much better to damp your room better and position yourself and your speakers in more suitable positions. Of course, in the real world...

Anyway, I'm turning into a bit of a bore (my fault for working for a year in an independent hi-fi separates shop) so I'll quit on this subject!

An example to be found at MusicTap - an SACD/DVD-A-phile site masquerading as music criticism.

I agree that for audiophiles - the ability to reproduce sound realistically is more important that the music (i.e. sound over music).
So you do get audiophiles who listen primarily to classical, jazz and perhaps prog...and shite at that... due to the great mastering of crappy music

However this doesnt automatically translate into "hey dont buy good equipment because you will no longer be listening to the music" - that is just carazee.

If anything, you are in a better position of listening to the MUSIC as intended by the artist.

It is sad that nowadays musicians/producers 'test' masters by seeing how they play on shitty ass boomboxes- being that is how it is going to be listened to.

Secondly, I feel that the comments arguing against at least decent audio equipment have never heard music on it.. there is a difference..

Baudrillard and anyone who says something along the lines of 'audiophiles have crappy taste in music b/c they only care about how good the sound reproduction is' is participating in a sweeping generalization. (although Baudrillard may have had something if he had talked about the fetishization of the recording studio, at least w/r/t pop/rock) When, after years of listening to music, I started to purchase better stereo components, my tastes didn't change (any more than they had for the rest of my life, and for the same reasons, too -- primarily, discovering new bands). I like Wire on headphones, on computer speakers, on a car stereo -- I like them even better when I can hear each part, even the ones mixed in low, and understand the vocals, etc. on my Vandersteens.

I was under the impression records have always been mixed/mastered using speakers that the approximate the average listener's system. And thus ads that many speaker companies put out for "studio monitors" as the ultimate in hi-fi ("what the pros use!") are laughable.

Also, fetishing the process of assembling an inexpensive hi-fi system is different than fetishing the hi-fi system.

The most popular studio monitors, Yamaha NS-10s, are godawful, the thinking being if it sounds good on NS-10s, it will sound good anywhere.

The most popular studio monitors, Yamaha NS-10s, are godawful, the thinking being if it sounds good on NS-10s, it will sound good anywhere.

Absolutely OTM - NS10s give me a headache, which is why I don't mix on them. That brings us to another quandary, being that a LOT of pro or semi-pro studio techies have crappy home sound systems - I have:

a) a Panasonic boombox
and
b) a Rio Volt MP3 CD player....

The last CD I worked on sounded great played loud on expensive speakers, but when played on a CD walkman sounded like shit. I didn't want to put out a CD that you couldn't listen to on a CD walkman.

I also have Event Powered Monitors, 20/20bas in my home studio and love them dearly. My speakers in my living room are hand-me-downs I got for free. My old housemate's father was into hi-fi n the 70s, must've been the bigger the better years, I have 2 giant round grilled wooden Ohm speakers sitting on top of giant Dahlquist subs. All in all, they look really fantastic. I don't have a crossover or anything, just send the same signal to both sets of speakers and it sounds really good, really good for free, and most importantly, it looks cool as fuck. My stereo is an old component thing, a Denon receiver I got for my Bar Mitzvah, I think, etc. And no hi-fi turntable or preamps, just 2 1200's and a rane mixer, but that's because if I had to choose between buying a DJ set-up or a hi-fi audiophile set-up, I had to go with the former.

I now have a Sony boombox and am quite happy.

That is EXACTLY my point. Plus Monster Cables are grossly overpriced. I buy ProCo directly from them--for much heavier and better wound cable stock than anything OTC.

About the "computer output"...As I started my commentary, it was intended for "low end" users wishing to "move up". The average computer listener thinks the internal headphone jack or a Sound Blaster card is fantastic. They have never heard of MOTU or Apogee.

COMMENT: (pertaining to eveness of sonic quality and having full/clear headroom) Does this actually even mean anything?

RESPONSE: Actually it means a lot. A lot of current "money saving" productions are cramming too much info through limited resolutions. (Tascam/Korg/budget ProTools workstations. Doesn't anyone notice the amount of raspy cymbals and pianos, etc.?). Example: Billy Joel's "Nylon Curtain".....the original CD release is quite a bit different than the currently remastered tracks appearing on the Columbia "Essential" collection. Quiet to loud passages have about a 4 to 8db range in output--the original CD has from 4 to 20db range between loud and soft passages. Why does this matter? When you crank it up, the original CD does not sound grossly overcompressed and flat. The instrumentation maintains their tonality as opposed to maintaining an extremely high output level, it becomes shrill. And...overly flattened productions only become more flat when bumped to an iPod, for example. A more lifeless compression.

Point being, overcompression seems like a current trend. There are a handful of obscure artists who recognize this and it has helped another trend of analog mixing. Even Phish tracks their drums and bass (some Trey guitar parts) analog because of the flatness of digital. Drums and bass are at opposite ends of the audio spectrum (with lots'o'tones in the middle) and demand some dynamic range and headroom to sound like real instruments.

My opinion? Tracking, mixing and mastering should be left to the professionals--the "do it yourself" recording community will never rise above the "homemade" sound. If you like that, that is okay too because it still means people are trying to do something new--which is always good for the music. And hey, that's what it is all about.

Alex in Manhattan's point is great (I am guessing "good music" means properly recorded): Good music sounds good on any stereo system. if you like crap music you need a good expensive stereo to make the shi**y music you listen to better than it actually is.

Yeah, every electronic musician ever to thread (except for the mastering part, usually). If your whole recording is digital, there's no reason you can't make it sound great through the whole process as long as you spend the time and have good ears.

I do remember when I bought them the conventional wisdom was that for the money, they were the best speakers you could buy but were considered just below the cut-off point of what would be considered actually usable/professional recommended studio monitors, below Genelecs or Tannoys or even the Mackies that had just come out.

I sent a buncha tracks to an American label last year and he said, 'Er, how come they're all so linear and non-dynamic and simple' and I said, 'er, the sound systems in Sydney clubs'.

All digital? What about the microphones? Not too many people can afford the Neuman digital mic--plus own the preamps and console to bring it to life. If everyone who records is an anal retentive engineer (with fully transparent recording "tools"), all things digital would be wonderful.

And to reinforce your point (the most subjective, yet most crucial)--the need for "good ears". That's why Geoff Emerick makes the big bucks!

http://www.researchmatters.harvard.edu/photos/649.jpg

(x-post, yep)

(unless you're talking about stereo equipment, which I still hardly know anything about)

YES this is an important point, especially nowadays. This article does a pretty good job of explaining why it's such a growing problem (despite being written by yet another Rush-loving audiophile)

this thread rules btw.

I don't think it was that simple a generalization, and not necessarily critical; just an observation.

Obviously getting a nice sound system doesn't turn you into a Dave Matthews Band fan zombie. I guess the point of the quote is that the art of sound reproduction is an artform unto itself, not necessarily invovled directly with the art of the music coming out of the speakers. So in terms of the thread's original question, there's no reason for a connection between taste and stereo systems to be there. If sound quality was a prerequisite to appreciation then why the nostalgia with record scratches and vinyl, etc...

OTOH, I remember my roommate getting "professional quality" studio monitors a few years ago and being utterly blown away by the sound quality. I had never heard the music I loved sound that good, and I was addicted to it. That said, I wasn't appreciating what "the artist intended" or anything, I was just loving how those awesome speakers sounded. What the artist intended is for you to go to their live show and pay the real bucks$$ and hear the music as it can't be reproduced- in full.

I find it hard to believe that someone who is not tone-deaf or otherwise impaired would not enjoy their favorite recordings more on a "better" system -- but not impossible. There are always exceptions, contrarianism, etc.

What the artist intended is for you to go to their live show and pay the real bucks$$ and hear the music as it can't be reproduced- in full.

What about artists who don't perform live? Also, this sorta implies that the intent of recording should be to reproduce a live experience, which *may* be true with most classical or jazz, but certainly not most rock. I can't remember who said that with rock music, the recording IS the original performance.

And in a larger sense, who knows or can know what the artist's intention is? Or care?

in New York i have an NAD amp, Technics SL-1210s, Stanton mixer.. going out to two $30 Kenwood speakers that were being used as floor displays at Circuit City

BUT, these differences will be small, and cable I would argue makes BY FAR the smallest difference to sound (unless your using something really crappy like telephone wire)

Which electrical engineering college did you go to?

God I wish Lynskey had the internet at the moment.

Ha ha, my mate loves his lo-fi and works for Linn (paperwork though, rather than anything technical). He spent £200 on a stylus and proceeded to play early Sebadoh 7"s with it. His set up wasn't Linn, but it did sound really good - crisp and clear. But then he's got a decent sized, high ceiling Glasgow flat, which adds a lot of ambience.

Ha ha, my mate loves his lo-fi and works for Linn (paperwork though, rather than anything technical). He spent £200 on a stylus and proceeded to play early Sebadoh 7"s with it. His set up wasn't Linn, but it did sound really good - crisp and clear. But then he's got a decent sized, high ceiling Glasgow flat, which adds a lot of ambience.

Myself, I've now got hundreds of CDs and vinyl and really should upgrade from crappy to decent. If I had money I'd get myself down to Richer Sounds but I don't. :(

My cabling is thick-ish, interconnects decent, TEAC cassette deck still fine, record player dubious but recently acquired & free. Nabbed myself some of these http://www.hifistore.co.uk/product.php?qsProd=AELITEONE for a third of the price, and will sort out the CD deck tomorrow (suggestions welcome).

However. The amp is this - http://www.steveshifi.co.uk/used-hifi-amplifiers-5.html (Sony STR-VX2L ) and I'll probably be sticking with it for a while, but is it a safe combination? I don't really understand wattage & Hz specifications stuff *at all* but I've blown speakers/amps before, so if anyone can see a danger here... let me know!