The Hi-Fi Hierarchy

[watchnerd]

At least according to Michael Lavorgna at Audiostream:

The Hi-Fi Hierarchy List (in order of importance):

1. Room/setup
2. Speakers
3. Amplification
4. Sources
5. Plumbing (everything that's involved with getting music from storage and the Internet to the hi-fi including hardware and software)
6. Cables
7. Everything else (like file formats, USB tweaks, etc.)

No disagreement on the first 2, although he left out the recording quality itself.

From 3 downwards, I can't say I necessarily agree with the rankings.

 

[Thomas savage]

Well it's a fair list of all the things we as end users have a element of control over, really though that just represents the tip of a iceberg and can be rendered meaningless ( and often is) by the original master being messed about with by some mastering engineer who thinks somehow what they had in the studio was no good.

The best thing about that list is number 7 , recognising the least important things.

 

[March Audio]

• Room/setup

• Speakers

• Amplification

• Sources

• Cables

 

[March Audio]

The room and speakers are far more important than the rest of the list. 5 and 7 are irrelevant

 

[Purité Audio]

Speakers such as the Beolabs,Dutch&Dutch, and Kii's are ameliorating the effect of the room, so loudspeakers, then correct any gross issues with the room actively/passively and that's it,
Keith

 

[Dimitrov]

1. Recording
2. Room
3. Speakers
4. Amplifier
5. Cables (without cable there is no sound)

My 2c.

 

[Jakob1863]

We should remember that individual preferences and differences have an impact on the "hierarchy" .
Ime a holistic approach works best suboptimal combinations lead to effects that are hard (if not impossible) to fix with other variables.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Lumping all sources together, and relatively unimportant, is only true of digital replay. For LPs and FM radio there is considerable differences between sources - though expensive is not necessarily better.

 

[watchnerd]

Lumping all sources together, and relatively unimportant, is only true of digital replay. For LPs and FM radio there is considerable differences between sources - though expensive is not necessarily better.

That's why in my personal hierarchy I have 'transducers', to cover speakers / headphones / carts.

 

[tomelex]

1. Room/setup
2. Speakers
3. Amplification
4. Mastering

 

[watchnerd]

1. Room/setup
2. Speakers
3. Amplification
4. Mastering

Interesting ... you put the recording last?

 

[Frank Dernie]

1. Room/setup
2. Speakers
3. Amplification
4. Mastering

If I included mastering it would be number 1 by a long margin, but we can't influence it.

 

[tomelex]

Interesting ... you put the recording last?

Yes, its how you look at it, I guess I do not consider the recording "hi Fi", I think in terms of gear when talking about Hi Fi. But we need the source, so when dealing with the source then good mastering/engineering has to be there for me to for example digitally record a song.
If I could only choose great recordings I love or great gear, then yeah, give me great recordings and average gear, not the other way round.

By the way, higher resolution you tube music mastered well is pretty damn fine sounding.

The best gear in the world playing (insert music you don't like here) is worthless to me, as I will not play it at all.