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Re: fairly modest cost

Posted by Bold Eagle (A) on April 9, 2007 at 09:31:03

In Reply to: fairly modest cost posted by Russ57 on April 8, 2007 at 18:42:36:

I can't speak for anyone else, but for myself I could afford a lot more expensive system than I currently have. I could, but I won't; I just don't think it buys me anything, and I have other priorities.

Is $5000 a fairly modest system? For two channels I think it's fairly expensive and it's probably the upper limit of my tolerance for cost for stuff. If it includes both CD and phono and is wanted to play loudly in a large room, you sure can spend $5000 pretty quickly. Back when I had a house with a sound treated listening room and a bi-amped system, I had a lot more than that in 2007 dollars in it. I'd likely buy used to stretch my budget further, but not from ebay (no comfort level there at all) and at that level, not from thrifts either.

My present Advent based system has about $1500 in it and there is no phono, just CD and a good tuner. Everything but the CD player was bought used and at fair prices, but hardly thrift store bargains. The same sound quality can probably be obtained for less than half that by going to ebay and searching thrifts and house sales.

Getting back to the "better" stuff issue, I think a lot of the highly regarded high end items are grossly over-priced and perform and sound no better than much more humble gear. I understand the very limited distribution and small production volume issues, but I really haven't seen where it necessarily buys you better sound. What I do see is a lot of miss-direction and smoke and mirrors and lore of the "everybody knows" variety, backed up by glowing reviews in the "high end" press. Reviews that are very often not supported by John Atkinson's measurements.

For example: Many people over a long period of time have touted triode operation over tetrode. but in converting a given amp from tetrode to triode, the operating point changes and the source impedance of the amp increases by a factor of three. Basically going from a Damping Factor of 15 to 5. That's enough to significantly change the system frequency response. So is the "better" sound with triodes due to triode operation or is it due to the different interaction with the speakers due to the higher source impedance? Seems that nobody has run a controlled experiment on that. Same is true of low NFB, SETs, etc.

Again, for myself, I won't pay extra for that hype. A long time ago, I made the statement that I had never met an engineer, whose professional work I respected, who was a rabid audiophile. Now that's not to say that I believe that all amps sound the same or that measurements tell the whole story. They don't. But neither do I believe that just listening is sufficient.

This is longer than I expected, guess I just got up on my soapbox again. There are guys here who have quite expensive gear, and there are some who only spent $300. I have heard some amazingly good $300 systems, and I have also heard some incredibly bad $30,000 systems. Typically, the difference has been the skill in set up and matching of components. I suppose you could argue that $30,000 worth of gear set up and matched with the same skill would be immeasureably better. But 100 times better-probably not. 10 times better, again, I doubt it. Twice as good, yes, probably. It's a matter of very quickly diminishing returns and it also gets into the issue of the system very quickly becoming limited by the quality of the source material, and after that point is reached, making the system "better" is futile.

One more point and I'll quit. High sound levels in big rooms is expensive. You need big amps or even bi-amping and you need speakers that can handle that power and SPL level. Similarly, deep bass is expensive in large rooms. So my Advents with a 50 watt amp at moderate levels in a 12' x 15' room are one thing, and getting the same sound quality at 10 dB higher levels in a 5000 square foot room is something else entirely. (that's about 25 times the power and power handling I need in the den) So I don't think you can put a simple price tag on it.

Jerry

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