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Coming out of the cave, the light hurts the eyes; but only for a bit.

Vacceo

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Hello all!

I´m a new member on these outstanding forums after lurking on them for a bit more than a year. I thought I might as well pull the trigger and at the very least, thank people like Amir or Erin (yeah, I know both of you because I see your videos...) for their massive work, educational content and also, consumer information provided to all of us.

I´m relatively new to the use of audio gear beyond the super basic pc speakers and mini jack cheap headphones for portable devices. I say relatively because I spent my childhood listening to tons and tons of music thanks to my dad on a classic stereo (turntable, amp, two big, boxy speakers, cassette deck and eventually, cd). I jumped at the big leagues around three years ago when I bought a bargain set of seven KEF IQ speakers (a pair of 3´s, another of 7´s, a 6C and a couple 8ds) along with a PSW 2500 subwoofer. To move all that heavy amount of wood and metal, I got a Denon AVR 2808.

The first months I though a new world had opened. My old bargain headphones could not compete with how much better everything sounded. Plugging a PC on the HDMI made everything a million times better: from the massive collection of CD´s (and my dad´s old vynils) I have accumulated over the years to PC gaming (turns out spatial audio is a thing in games!).

I also started listening to guys who supposedly know what they talk about and something was not right. Why did they always played music I loathed and called themselves "lovers of music". No dude, you don´t love music, you love expensive toys where you play a very limited amount of stuff. No beef againt Diana Krall or Karajan´s rendition of Wagner (Solti is far better, IMHO), but that´s not even close to what I typically listen: adjusting a subwoofer to the sound of Napalm Death anyone? Vynil reproduction to the sound of Blasphemy´s Fallen Angel of Doom? How am I even supposed to know what I should be looking for if all you listen to is a galaxy away from what I do?

And then you realize that the answers were always there, in that lovely discourse called science. Is that weird cranky noise you hear part of the components or that the recording quality of the chaos and mess... eeeer music I like the guilty part? Turns out it is both, but probably the second is the bigger culprit. So my next step was looking for someone with one of those absolutely transparent systems to allow me to listen to my cd´s. I discovered, thanks to graphs and instruments, that most of the music I love (Scandinavian Black Metal from the 90´s anyone?) is produced and recorded with very rudimentary means yet... I loved it even more! Yes, it´s low fi; yes, the sound is noisy as hell (wink wink); but once you have realized all the flowery language from the hardware fetishists is just a cover for not knowing what is really going on, you cannot get back to the cave. I´d rather get sunburnt!

Don´t get me wrong, I also have a fetish for some gear. My dad always talked about a mythical name in sound reproduction called McIntosh. He listened to one of those way back when he did his military service next to an American base. The man always wanted to get one of their amps, sadly he passed away before being able to do so. There are more awe stories like those, but perhaps for another day.

That was my second lesson: you can actually get it and even better for similar or lower prices. And that is my plan now that I am here: upgrade my current system and perhaps learn a thing or two along the way on how to keep that smile when Archgoat blasts throw my current or future gear.

I guess my next purchases at some point will point towards something Class D (less electricity and heat, same fun!) along the lines of hypex or purifi and eventually move up to Atmos reproduction switching to as flat as possible speakers (purifi too, perhaps, I really don´t know). And no, I´m not getting krypoton cables (regular thick copper is perfectly fine), algorithmic AI DAC´s or 10k furniture that keeps the internal equilibrium of electrons on transistors (Ikea is perfectly fine and also stacks books).

So once again, thank you all for allowing me to understand a bit more and escape from the shadows of the cave!
 

nikosidis

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Seams like you learned a lot already :)
You are on the right path to great fidelity :)
 

ThatM1key

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When I started this "Hi-fi" hobby, I wanted everything to be "Hi-fi". Anything below DSD & 24/96 was considered garbage and mind you I had gear that couldn't even reproduce CD's well. Eventually I got better and better gear and I learned that CD quality is enough. I still like a good mastering from CD but at the same time I still listen to Time Life CDs. Time Life didn't always make the best CDs but at least you know what you are getting versus online streaming services.

We all know streaming services have terrible QC but its really bad when you listen to it while you sleep. I had a 80s playlist going (Spotify) and around 3AM, I awoke rapidly to the loud song of "Talk Dirty To Me", I bet neighbors loved hearing that.
 
OP
Vacceo

Vacceo

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For me, the most eye (or ear) opening moment was experiencing a pair of Genelec monitors in a studio. I listened to a variety of sources (vynil, cd, streaming, mp3...) on a very controled, flat and responsive system.

My first reaction was a wow on how incredibly low the recording quality was on several vynil (Motörhead, Venom, Slayer...) and how much distortion the sources contained. I realized that is the kind of alterations people love on super expensive gear like Pass Labs amps. I guess I´m a masochist who loves super dirty and simple productions ("raw", it is called in the Extreme Metal environment). It was a nice contrast to better mastered and produced music like the stuff from Dan Swäno (Moontower, Edge of Sanity, Bloodbath...).

If I got something of value out of the experience was understanding empirically the crucial importance of the source (it does not have to be "perfect" for you to love it!) and that the best gear is the one that is basically transparent and does not add or detract anything from the source, regardless of its actual quality.

On that note, I am wondering several questions.

-Active speakers today can be incredible, like light years away from my old PC cheap speakers. What advantages do I get from an active speaker (from a Genelec to a DIY well-made Hypex Fusion) as opposed to an amp and cables running to speakers? My guess is that a system like that can be run on let´s say, 11.2 channels as in essence, it´d be not too different from increasing the amount of plugged speakers just as my current PSW 2500 subwoofer is working.

-I understand that in pure sound terms, changing my current AVR 2606 to a better, dedicated amp, the advantages will be a smaller use of electricity, less heat and the capacity to play my current speakers louder without distortion, but no sort of "magic" giving the current setup new and unrealized characteristics. Still, i´m not sure about how much better the eficiency will get, perhaps not a lot.

-If I wanted to slowly and steadily upgrade, what would you recommend? Going for a multichannel apollon amp and a choice of the processor with the features i´d use? Will I get better performance on a prepro than with a, let´s say AVM70 from Anthem or, let´s get posh, an MX100 from Mcintosh?

-Speakers are, from what I have read here, the main name of the game. If I had a fat account I´d be contacting Mr. Salk and request some insane unique creation to get not just a performing monster, but an actually beautiful one at the same time. Since that is not something I can do (yet, at least), is it a good idea to go for a decent series of speakers by let´s say KEF and make sure they´re all from the same line (as I got my current IQ speakers).
 
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Katji

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Napalm Death
hah. :) That's what I thought of when you mentioned what music you like - in the intro thread, iirc. It triggered two memories, that one being 1990, i think.
 

DVDdoug

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My dad always talked about a mythical name in sound reproduction called McIntosh. He listened to one of those way back when he did his military service next to an American base. The man always wanted to get one of their amps,
McIntosh made, and still makes good amps. Somebody gave me a mono-tube McIntosh amp in the 1970s, but since it was mono I eventually gave it away to someone else. I didn't look for a matching one (and of course there was no Internet) and I didn't particularly want tubes anyway.

In the early days of hi-fi (especially in the tube days) there weren't a lot of good amplifiers so McIntosh was probably worth it, and probably not as "over-priced" as it is now. But, when solid state electronics were introduced you could eliminate the output transformer (between the output-tubes and speakers) and it became cheaper and easier to make a good amplifier. Electronics just kept getting better and cheaper to the point where now it's economical to make a good class-D amplifier.... Very electrically-complex...

McIntosh is still a luxury brand, still made in small quantities in America* and they don't compete economically. Plus, a higher price makes anything more desirable to "audiophiles". ;) They would totally ruin their image if they started selling affordable stuff.

Something somewhat-similar happened with computers. In the 1990's there were "workstations" which were high-powered desktop computers using a special microprocessor. But Intel and AMD were doubling processing power every 18-months ("Moore's Law") and the high-end processors weren't advancing as fast. PCs caught-up and were cheaper and the workstation market died.



* I may have read something about some of their modules/PC boards/sub-assemblies being imported but I'm not sure.
 
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Vacceo

Vacceo

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Yep, their clases D are Hypex-based devices.
 
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