Not a single person has ever heard a difference in amps, AVRs, processors, DACs, CD players or cables in a third party double blind ABX test.
Money should only be spent on speakers and room acoustics.
As much as I’d like to agree with you, at least with my wallet speaking, I can’t, simply because what you’re saying is just not true.
Your claim that all amps, whether stand alone, integrated or packaged as receivers, are equal to one another doesn’t hold water. Some have much lower distortion than others at a given level. Some are rated at X # of watts but go much higher without reaching clipping levels than others do, while others fall short. Some are rated higher than what they truly produce with all channels driven. Some have different designs, which accentuate certain aspects of the music, such as bass, midrange or treble, and some fall short in certain areas. There are many different types of amplification, such as tube, class A, class AB, class D, class H and so on.
Not all amplifiers sound the same. Without getting obnoxious in price, I think it would be fairly obvious to anyone that an early to mid 60’s Fisher tube amplifier, a mid 80’s Harman Kardon amplifier, and a present day Insignia receiver sound worlds apart.
Above a certain dollar amount, the differences are less noticeable, but they still exist in amplifiers, CD players and processors, as well as turntables, & the mat, cartridge & needle used with them. To think otherwise would be akin to saying that people should just buy the cheapest, bottom of the line components from Best Buy, and pair them with high end speakers & room correction to achieve the highest level of performance. That would be silly, and you know better.
I’ve conducted several blind listening sessions in my home, where the people judging the components were normally unable to know what they were beforehand (unless one of them brought one to include of part of the test), completely unable to see them during the process, and were only told what they were afterwards. I’ve done this with speakers, amplifiers (including integrated and receivers), CD players, DVD players, etc, all using the same speakers, wires, etc to have a constant in the test. I’ve been on the receiving end of such tests as well. While we didn’t always agree 100% on what sounded best to us, it was always clear that some units just sounded better to us, that there were differences, and we pretty much always agreed on certain aspects of the sound, which was written down during the experiments, and only shared afterwards, so no one had any influence on anyone else’s opinions. It wasn’t always night and day, but every now and then it was.
Now I’ll agree with you that cables have the least amount of influence on the sound of a system, if they have any at all, and that speakers and the room itself have the greatest impact on the sound of a system. But to say that a $150 Insignia stereo receiver from Best Buy with a $69 Insignia CD player will sound just as good, or the same as a $15,000 system from Krell or McIntosh is either an outright lie, or the assumption from someone who’s never actually been a part of such demos.
Sure, there’s plenty of hogwash in the audio community. Cable risers, outlet filters, magic fairy dust, collected by pixies, who groomed unicorns raised by angels on Atlantis, you name it, there are always these nonsense items created by people who are looking to take advantage of real or would-be audiophiles, who are looking to upgrade their system for a couple hundred bucks, and are gullible to the placebo effect. They’ll swear up and down that it made a difference, most likely so they wouldn’t have to admit that they threw $ away on a scam. I get it, it would hurt their ego to admit that they wasted $ on a scam. Nobody likes to look like a fool, right? And everyone else who bought into the scam agrees with them! They don’t want to feel stupid either, so they play along with the facade, which is nothing more than an audiophile’s interpretation of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’.
I’ll tell you what. Come over to my home, and listen to the same speakers (whichever you choose, I have plenty to choose from) with 5 different amps, in a room that is well designed for acoustics. We can then conduct another test where one amplifier is chosen, while several pre-amps are used. Then we listen to these same speakers through 5 different CD players/transports on either one or all of these amps, because I believe that synergy does exist. We will also include a few different people chosen at random by both of us from various audio forums to join in. I’ll provide lunch and dinner, as well as accommodations for all. If everyone comes to the same conclusion as you, that amps, CD players, etc don’t matter at all, and have no contribution to the overall sound and performance, then I’ll happily pay for your travel expenses, and you’ll have not only had a fun time (I’m a pretty good host lol, and tend to go all out), but you’ll have this test to cite as conclusive evidence that nothing except speakers and the room matter! If not, then you’ll owe me nothing at all, but you will be on the hook for your travel expenses and lodging. I would only ask that you admit that some amplifiers, preamps, CD players etc can indeed change the overall sound and performance of a system, no matter how slight you may have perceived it, and if everyone else was able to detect these differences, but you disagreed, that your hearing may be the reason why you think all amps are the same.
The ball is in your court. I’m thinking sometime in May would be good so that we have time to make travel arrangements for all, with the best possible airfare prices, and so that we can select a group of people willing to be a part of this experiment. If that’s too soon, or doesn’t work for you, then please name a time after May, and we can go from there.
Of course you could decline, perhaps because you don’t have time, because you just don’t care, or for other reasons. It would be fun though, right? I understand that it could be an expensive trip just to try to prove someone wrong, but if you’re right it wouldn’t cost you a dime. Just let me know