Quote:
Originally Posted by greggf /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I had Quad loudspeakers. There was one cd that they sounded great with - Satie piano solos. It sounded so good, it made my wife cry.
The other 99% of our music sounded average or painful.
This is the problem with studio or pro equipment, or even some high-high-end home stuff. It is not suitable for the home IMO. Unless you're a masochist.
I think you want the best that you can get without TOO much adulteration.
Also, there's a point to stop overthinking / intellectualizing / perseverating, and act.
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Well, I agree with your last point, if by "act" you mean something like "time to listen to the music and not the gear." But as a longtime QUAD ESL owner (63s and 988s) I'd say that they, along with a fair bit of other high end gear, are perfectly suitable for the home. In fact, the ESLs can be driven even by fairly modest gear (Quad's own) and provide superb results across a pretty wide range of musical styles and recordings.
I think that this is the "good enough" problem. For some, lossy on a DAP is good enough and the prospect of "better" isn't compelling enough to make them want, and want to pay for, better sound. Some people love Olive Garden and can't imagine paying more than 9.99 for an entree. Some will spend their lives dousing themselves in Axe. Some will drive beaters and not mind because it gets them from A to B. Some will frame that effing print by Renoir they bought at the college poster sale and never think about art again. Audiophilia is an elitist enterprise and elitist enterprises are not about value for money or "good enough."
Most who are here want better sound and are willing to pay for it. Whether or not a 69.00 DVD player can provide some version of audio playback doesn't concern them. They are willing to pay for the extra % and to feel that to do so is worthwhile. They feel that to feed that 69.00 DVD player that is built with all kinds of compromises to its DAC chipset, power supplies, transport and associated software and analogue stages into a very good HP setup is to missing whatever % of the musical information that 69.00 player failed to recover from the disc. And I agree with them.
Case in point: I recently sold a Rega Saturn because I just wasn't using it in my speaker rig and we're away for a year, etc. So I plugged in an Oppo 970 and you know what? It's lousy by comparison. It doesn't do dynamics. The words aren't as clear. I no longer can follow different instrumental lines or rhythms and music doesn't excite or interest me and I've basically stopped bothering to turn the system on anymore. The Oppo is worse in every way, not a little but a lot worse, and it's killed the music for me. The highly-regarded Apogee Duet? Same deal. It's a phenomenal unit but a Rega Saturn it isn't. Not even close. By every measure of musical reproduction that I value, the Oppo and (to a lesser degree) Duet are pale shadows of the Saturn and less musically engaging in every way. Believe me I hoped it wasn't going to be so.
I think 2000.00 is a lot to spend on a digital front end, and although I can imagine and have heard far pricier rigs, my personal calculus suggests that for me it wouldn't be worth it to go much further than that in my current rig. But for others with the time, money and equipment to go for still higher-end sources I think why not? If you can hear the differences and they're worth it to you, go for it. If you're content to spend less than 100.00 on a CDP and then play that through 5000.00 worth of amp and speakers I think you're going to end up with an unbalanced system -- but maybe not. Maybe the point of diminishing returns kicks in at 100.00 for a CDP with you.
Finally, the idea that all audiophile gear adds colour and all studio gear does not just isn't true (I run a film and media lab). It's difficult and expensive to design "colour" out of electronics and transducers; it takes good engineering and good materials all down the line (try driving your posh HPs through your basic Mackie etc. studio Mackie and see how transparent the sound is). There are great and neutral audiophile products and cheap and coloured studio ones, and vice versa. So yes, source matters. Heck yeah.
o
yes I was trying to keep it simple, of course the prime lens, larger CCD chip, superior casing, psu ...etc etc.... will all have an impact anyway you get the point.
