johnnysize
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- Joined
- Sep 12, 2003
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Im really starting to wonder if high price sources are worth it. The average non audiophile consumer assumes that a cd player is a cd player and will sound the same regardless of price. I'm beginning to think they might be right. I have had most of my audiophile experience in high end home systems. Probably the most frustrating experience Ive had are with my sources. To start off I had about a $4500 system without a source. In the beggining I had a $80 sony dvp-ns325 dvd player as a source and I immediately wanted to upgrade. so next I added a $900 creek model, I couldn't have been more dissapointed. Well at first I thought wow this seems like a nice improvement, and then I A-B'd it with the sony. I could not tell which was which if I had my eyes closed. This made me frustrated so I got rid of the creek and decided to hook up a high quality dac, so I got the Northstar m192 which retails for around $1500, and I hooked it up to the sony. Once again I was happy at first until I a-b'd it with the sony by itself, I could hear virtually no difference. So I thought things would be much better with a good transport, so I bought a Conrad Johnson transport which retails for another $1500. I have to say that transports are more important than dacs, but everyone seems to focus on dacs. While i could notice an improvement over the sony it seemed like such a small difference. So my $80 sony was almost identical to the $3000 sophisticated transport dac combo, this was about the most frustrating experience i have ever had. Also to note I had very expensive high quality interconnects everywhere possible. Although the sony always had the 5 cent interconnects that came with it, and I still noticed little difference. Im starting to wonder if amps don't matter that much either, because of all this talk about t-amps and k1000's. So Im getting the k1000 t-amp combo and Im trying to decide what sort of source to use, I still have my sony and I may just keep it that way after all my experiences. Sorry for the long post, please comment on your experiences with sources.