61–70 of 95 posts
This justifies my setup: $2000 speakers (noticeable upgrade from previous $500 speakers), $100 receiver amp from eBay, noname cables and accessories.
My advice to anyone looking to get started is to just buy the most expensive speakers you can afford (used market is good for this), pickup an older amp for peanuts on eBay that can power said speakers, and some bargain bin cables from RadioShack.
I use an Emotiva UMC-200 (HC preprocessor, fine for stereo too),a Crown XLS 1500 amplifier (intended for professional use) and Quad 22L loudspeakers.. The most noticeable upgrade was the automated room correction included in the preprocessor. It more or less removes the room acoustics from the equation, as well as the speakers coloration. IMHO correct speakers, powerful amplifiers (professional audio power amplifier…
Great list. How did you come to choose these components?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much cheaper in absolute terms as well. You can get very good headphones in the $100-200 range (even some under $100), while speaker systems in that range tend to be mediocre.
Ah, but if you are 10 people listening, that's suddenly $10 000 (actually more, as you'd probably need a little more expensive amp to drive 10 good headphones. Nowhere near 10x though).
So, interestingly, the 100 x N formula for cost of audio equipment for N people to listen to, seems to hold. I am curious about N=1000 and above, certainly stadium systems cost over $100K and for 10K listeners I guess $1M is pretty small. Maybe there should be a scaling factor in there, or it might be better modeled by a power-law relationship?
It always buffles me that people who test HiFi audio don't test studio audio equipment, and vice versa. These two categories of hardware try to achieve practically the same result, but just because they target different people (although in a very similar demographic), they are reviewed by different journalists for different magazines and seldom compared to each other. Why?
Studio equipment goes for accuracy. You want what comes out to be as close to what goes in as possible.
Home equipment goes for results that sound good. A decent segment of this market superficially thinks that this is achieved through accuracy, but very few truly believe it. Note how the tests are always about the subjective listening experience. Some have given up on the idea entirely, as can be seen in the "tubs are better!" segment, where distortion (i.e. inaccuracy) is considered desirable as long as it's done right.
You see this at work in all sorts of areas. For example, compare the trucks purchased as personal cars by people who say "I need to haul stuff!" and the trucks purchased as work cars by people who actually use them for a living. They ostensibly have the same needs but they usually buy pretty different things because they aren't actually trying to accomplish the same stuff.
I use an Emotiva UMC-200 (HC preprocessor, fine for stereo too),a Crown XLS 1500 amplifier (intended for professional use) and Quad 22L loudspeakers.. The most noticeable upgrade was the automated room correction included in the preprocessor. It more or less removes the room acoustics from the equation, as well as the speakers coloration. IMHO correct speakers, powerful amplifiers (professional audio power amplifier…
Edit: Can't leave out the RasPi running volumio.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about testing these systems with headphones then?
Headphones are great for minimizing issues of room acoustics, but they are not eliminated. Many people swear by various headphone amps and DACs, but the magnitude of difference these components could possibly impart are still pitiful compared to the improvements made possible by controlling the noise floor of the room you're listening in. This is why in any situation with ambient noise (e.g. planes, trains and open p…
If you perform an objective analysis of sound reproduction, it quickly becomes apparent that once you reach a certain price/performance threshold in speakers, the most critical element -- the element that has the greatest influence on the overall sound quality -- is room acoustics. But it's so much easier to sell expensive cardboard boxes containing obscure brand electronics; there is so much more markup in homeopath…
As it so happens, I inherited a car with an $8k USD system in 1987 dollars, which included ADS speakers and amps, Nakamichi head unit and so on nonsense excuses as to why we couldn't go on vacation that year. So fuck audiophilia and their anti-intellectual, placebo unicorns. Thanks HN for letting me resolve that adolescence issue, you've been a great sport.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm amazed at the quality of older speakers when it comes to value for money. I'm using a pair of Chadwick executive 12 cabinets in my living room and they're simply the best sounding speakers I've owned and they cost next to nothing. The only expense so far is cleaning and light refurb to remove rot.
Good speakers up to 20 years old are often still good. It even seems like old capacitors in the crossovers doesn't really have much of an impact. Amplifiers have gotten more convenient, being lighter, cheaper, with better remote control and standby features, while the sound is still good. That has had the effect of making active speakers increasingly attractive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Headphones are great for minimizing issues of room acoustics, but they are not eliminated. Many people swear by various headphone amps and DACs, but the magnitude of difference these components could possibly impart are still pitiful compared to the improvements made possible by controlling the noise floor of the room you're listening in. This is why in any situation with ambient noise (e.g. planes, trains and open p…
Active noise-cancelling is counterproductive to a neutral, balanced sound, which is what audiophiles are seeking. The noise produced to cancel out background sounds will also cancel out the music. It is better to just try to use isolating headphones (Beyerdynamic, V-Moda, higer-end Audio-Technica, Mad Dogs, etc).
Sounds good! I assume you have tests to this effect?