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Originally Posted by Pibborando  Well, I don't really see why you brought it up anyway gotchaforce. I spent almost $700 on these speakers and am trying to get both pre-amp and amp for around $400 if I can (already got the Denon preamp for $180). That's a little over half the price of the speakers, which are $1300 retail anyway.
If someone wants to spend as much on their sound processing and amplification as they do on their speakers, or more, then fine. If you don't, fine. As long as you're happy with the sound that's coming from the cones to your ears, then it's all good.
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I know you spent the money already, i wasnt really trying to change your opinion or somehow reverse time, just trying to make sure people dont think its necessary. $400 out of $700 doesnt sound too bad, but i just assumed you were going to complete your denon collection which would have put it up to around $500.
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Originally Posted by Sherwood While I agree that speakers are the most important piece of equipment in the chain (after the room, of course) I think it's ignorant to assert that amplification has reached its pinnacle in a $200 onkyo integrated.
To test this, I propose a hypothetical situation:
Lets say you have two identical listening rooms. In one room, you have a high-dollar, well calibrated audio system. For the sake of argument, we'll use popular equipment that many on this forum could reasonably be familiar with: B&W Nautilus speakers, a quality meridian CDP, and McIntosh (pre)amplification. While this may not be a perfect match, for the sake of argument, let's assume this is an ideal setup.
In the second room, you have a mid-90's Aiwa boombox, the kind with clip binding posts for attached speakers so you can remove them from the main box and place them around the room. The boombox has a cdp and amplification built in. For the sake of argument, lets say both systems claim to produce 100 watts RMS into 8 ohms, which both the B&W's and aiwas are in this case.
Now, let's say you just trade the speakers between rooms 1 and 2. You are left with $50,000 of gear attached to $15 of speakers, and vice versa in the other room.
Now -- which room would sound better?
I imagine the aiwa and the B&Ws may have the edge, but I (doubt it would be by much. I think diminishing returns applies to both speakers and equipment. You can do far better for yourself by spreading your budget somewhat_ equally than by sinking 80% on speakers. Source is important, too.
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I dunno i bet the B&Ws would have sounded really great at super low volume nearfield listening
and again i never said that you should only spend 20% of what your speakers cost on an amp.
I myself once i get the money am going to probably buy $300-$400 amps for my RS6s!!!
In addition to diminishing returns theres the whole order of things in my mind. Speakers first, amp second, dac/source third, cables last. Once you have the good speakers, its pretty easy to upgrade the amp later, and then when you want to upgrade your speakers, you can just keep with the kickass amp.
with 1300$ speakers... and although i wasn't going to... this thread is convincing me to upgrade my amp. There were many things I was going to Upgrade first like my CDP first but i guess I can wait. I was going to buy the Sony CE595 because of rave reviews. I am currently using a PS1 or my zune as sources.
