For high end audio you need luck

[Theta]

Luck is comes with the room you set up in. If you move a lot, sometime the room is well adapted without having to do anything.
Sometimes an amp or a diamond cartridge just pairs up perfectly with your speakers without having done any research.
Have you ever bought some gear on a whim or just because it was cheap without expectations and discovered you just bought a awesome piece of equipment?

 

[DSJR]

For high end audio, you need MONEY!!! - and a nice big room to show it off in!!! Ultimate quality of sound doesn't seem to matter so much in too many of these cases as the owners live in a kind of denial a lot of the time

For high fidelity sound, you need to make sure the room is set up as 'right' as possible (most of us have to live in these rooms too) and you'll find the best speakers, which don't have to cost a fortune, will have a far easier job in it and that's long before dsp and other forms of eq are applied...

The amp-speaker interface was a done deal fifty years ago, but the 'subjective side' came in from the late 70's and severely clouded the issue, followed by speakers with ridiculously low impedance curves thus needing a behemoth-at-2-ohms powerhouse to drive them.

As for pickup cartridges in a vinyl system, most are so bad or in error in terms of frequency response, separation L-R and distortion it beggars belief that they can be called 'high fidelity' products, but there you go, it's still a popular area for a fraternity in this hobby.

 

[MacCali]

Indeed, I started my home audio journey during the pandemic. I needed an amp after purchasing my first integrated the NAD 326BEE. I was searching for something good and affordable, as the pandemic had me on furlough.

I ended up buying a vintage amp for kicks and ended up finding one of my favorite products. The bad news is that only that generation of amps brings me sonic pleasure. The new ones unfortunately don’t bring the same magic even though they are not bad and maintain the same designer. Wish I knew why.

 

[MacCali]

Luck is comes with the room you set up in. If you move a lot, sometime the room is well adapted without having to do anything.
Sometimes an amp or a diamond cartridge just pairs up perfectly with your speakers without having done any research.
Have you ever bought some gear on a whim or just because it was cheap without expectations and discovered you just bought a awesome piece of equipment?

I’ve recently been pointing out that some people think their equipment is bad, but don’t fully comprehend how the room is actually down playing potential. There are a few exceptions indeed, and I find them at audio shows in those grotesque rooms not really suited for audio.

At my job I make really good money in comparison to a lot of people. Calculating how much some of these high end products cost and my ability to own them is crazy. I’m talking about your 6 figure products. You need to win the lotto or hit it big on investment. There’s absolutely no other way, besides robbing a bank or stealing the actual equipment

 

[DVDdoug]

Yes, the room is important and often "luck" is involved. But you usually have SOME choice where you live (if you are an adult). And if you have the money you can buy a house with a "good room" or modify/treat the room or even build a room. (I don't the money to build a room and I haven't bothered treating my living room.)

A lot of home studios (for recording) are modified, although it's rare to find soundproofing that matches a pro studio.... THAT's expensive!

Sometimes an amp

Most amplifiers are very good and often better than human hearing as long as you have enough power. And sometimes they can have audible noise, depending on how close you are to the speakers, how sensitive the speakers are, and the ambient acoustic noise level in the room.

or a diamond cartridge

It's 2024 and I don't consider vinyl records "high fidelity". No matter how good your turntable, cartridge, and preamp are, there is ALWAYS surface noise during quiet passages and between tracks, and sometimes annoying (to me) "snap", "crackle", and "pop". And SOMETIMES there are frequency response variations or tracking distortion, or other distortions (usually the fault of the record itself).

On the other hand, a cheap CD player or anything digital, is usually better than human hearing. (Low-bitrate MP3s can sound bad.)

just pairs up perfectly with your speakers without having done any research.

Speakers interact with the ROOM but better speakers are almost always better, no matter what acoustic problems your room has.

 

[MKR]

How could luck have anything to do with what is at its core a science based endeavor? (at least it is here on ASR) … and contrary to popular belief of the snake oil crowd, you do NOT have to spend a fortune to have a well engineered and transparent system. Simply not true.

 

[Theta]

For high end audio, you need MONEY!!! - and a nice big room to show it off in!!! Ultimate quality of sound doesn't seem to matter so much in too many of these cases as the owners live in a kind of denial a lot of the time

For high fidelity sound, you need to make sure the room is set up as 'right' as possible (most of us have to live in these rooms too) and you'll find the best speakers, which don't have to cost a fortune, will have a far easier job in it and that's long before dsp and other forms of eq are applied...

The amp-speaker interface was a done deal fifty years ago, but the 'subjective side' came in from the late 70's and severely clouded the issue, followed by speakers with ridiculously low impedance curves thus needing a behemoth-at-2-ohms powerhouse to drive them.

As for pickup cartridges in a vinyl system, most are so bad or in error in terms of frequency response, separation L-R and distortion it beggars belief that they can be called 'high fidelity' products, but there you go, it's still a popular area for a fraternity in this hobby.

Yes, but HOW MUCH MONEY? I read an article in the new York Times a few years ago about an internet multi -millionnaire who got interested in audio after early retirement (early 40's), he put his trust in a NY dealer who sold him £700,000 worth of gear. He stated that now that he knows a bit about audio, that he could get the same result for about £5000. I share this observation.

 

[SSS]

Luck is comes with the room you set up in. If you move a lot, sometime the room is well adapted without having to do anything.
Sometimes an amp or a diamond cartridge just pairs up perfectly with your speakers without having done any research.
Have you ever bought some gear on a whim or just because it was cheap without expectations and discovered you just bought a awesome piece of equipment?

Luck is indeed always welcome. Whim or/and cheap? No. Personally I try to get a valid sound quality without investing a fortune. Thus I buy used equipment like I do with cars. The most recent devices do not always fit my needs. And why buy gear with least distortions when the difference to not so far improved ones is not perceivable to my ear/brain system?

 

[DSJR]

I'm so glad that digital is a done deal and that I can buy according to visuals and facilities needed as long as I stick to known good non rip-off makes. I have enough vintage amps, all with suspected sinad in the 70's or 80's really, but while I have them and while they work, I'm sated there. I play with my old vinyl decks knowing that they'll almost all have to go when we eventually move and before I depart this mortal coil but I'm in no illusions that it's a severely flawed system that works despite itself really.

I agree that speakers and the room they're in can be the tricky one and for my own journey, I need to work out the pros and cons of wide directivity vs. narrow and maybe discuss how each method works in any given room acoustic (I'm currently using what ASR members would describe as 'dated' or even 'flawed' directivity models, although I suspect the overall response took this into account for the best compromise available to the designers at the time.

I'd suggest that it's possible now to get a superb small digital source system for a grand or so using well chosen active speakers and a sensible dac with phone or whatever disc spinning source maybe. The better speaker makers seem to make all their models 'sound' basically the same, the scale of reproduction getting bigger the further up the range you go and I suspect this is where the serious money needs to go these days. No need at all to spend hundreds of thousands as most of it is casework and dealer-maker profit to fill their pension pots before this industry caves in with few left to spend that much... I've said before that I can think of two definite speaker makers making basically tweaked versions of their 90's models yet with price increases WAY above inflation alone (got to be 30% or so higher at least)

 

[Snarfie]

Luck is comes with the room you set up in. If you move a lot, sometime the room is well adapted without having to do anything.
Sometimes an amp or a diamond cartridge just pairs up perfectly with your speakers without having done any research.
Have you ever bought some gear on a whim or just because it was cheap without expectations and discovered you just bought a awesome piece of equipment?

Story of my life. Moved late 80ties to a near 90 years old house 2 under 1 roof with character lot of staind glas. Long living room around 4 x 9,5 meters partly lowerd wooden ceiling. Sitting in a bay window with a thick curtain an thicker carpet covering the whole room. Gear 2 x 50 watt class A power amps modified philips CD630 reference cd player with A1541 dac. This was living in a near acoustic perfect environment. I was lucky. Than i moved to my current house hard walls wooden floor L shaped living room. Reverb time close to 1,4 seconds or so. Placed my gear an it sounded as a disaster. Because of WAF no room treathment possible. This was late 90ties so no DSP as we know it today.
Put the gear for 12 years in the attic an eventually sold it.
Around 2017 i was thinking digital remixing an quality audio again creating a mancave in the attic. Bought modest audio gear NAD C370 Vandersteen model 1 an IMF Compact II monitors speakers Topping D10 DAC using a fast Lenovo pentium i5 laptop that could handle effortless a DAW, Room Correction Software an a bit of room treathment for less than 700,- euro (ex laptop). For remixing i bought additionally a Allan & Heath Xone 4D an Ableton DAW. The sound comes close to the former house, gear. Without the room correction it sounds as a disaster. Regarding the living room i stumbeld 2 weeks ago in a thrift store on a 10,- euro Bose Sound Wave Music System III. To my surprise there is now a reasonable sound in the living room again playing mostly DAB radio. Luck again.

 

[Deleted member 21219]

Luck is comes with the room you set up in. If you move a lot, sometime the room is well adapted without having to do anything.
Sometimes an amp or a diamond cartridge just pairs up perfectly with your speakers without having done any research.
Have you ever bought some gear on a whim or just because it was cheap without expectations and discovered you just bought a awesome piece of equipment?

In order to understand whether the luck that you just had is good luck or bad luck, you would need to understand how to evaluate what is good and what is bad. If you had that knowledge and understanding, then the choice you made wouldn't be luck, and you wouldn't be buying things on a whim.

Haven't you ever heard someone say, "Oh, I had that "XXXX" a few years ago, but I sold it. I didn't realize at the time how good it really was."? That's what luck is like ... if you can appreciate it, it isn't really luck.

Jim

 

[Tangband]

Luck is comes with the room you set up in. If you move a lot, sometime the room is well adapted without having to do anything.
Sometimes an amp or a diamond cartridge just pairs up perfectly with your speakers without having done any research.
Have you ever bought some gear on a whim or just because it was cheap without expectations and discovered you just bought a awesome piece of equipment?

When I bought my first Aiyima a04 ( tpa3251 ) I didnt have great expectations. But this amplifier made me sell my three class A/B power amps from Crown. This summer I compared with some other class A/B amplifiers and they didnt sound nearly as good as my Aiyima. Not even for 1000 euro. In august, I finaly found a slightly better sounding amplifier in the form of Hypex class D , ncore.

Another shockingly good loudspeaker was the chn110 - in a 31 liter cabinett it sounded better than both my Genelec 8340 SAM and my brothers Genelec 8030C , highly regarded here on ASR. This was ofcourse totally unexpected and forced me to revalue my knowledge.

Regarding listening rooms…. There are big differences and sometimes a good speaker dont gel with a certain room, it depends on the room size, the material in the walls, the bass tuning frequency of the speakers…. And the placement.

 

[DanielT]

Are there objective criteria as to what determines good sound? And how do these criteria relate to each other?

Speakers with good FR but with high distortion vs ditto bad FR low distortion. And yes they exist ( electrostatic speakers).

DAC is now completely uninteresting. They are transparent.

Amps, as long as they are not driven into clipping, i.e. as long as they have enough power and are well designed is
nothing to discuss in this context. Well designed, which means straight FR (no load dependence like cheap class d amps can have) and inaudible noise and distortion..

 

[Tangband]

Haven't you ever heard someone say, "Oh, I had that "XXXX" a few years ago, but I sold it. I didn't realize at the time how good it really was."? That's what luck is like ... if you can appreciate it, it isn't really luck.

Jim

I had the original Rega dac at 2012 . I really liked the sound , but sold it and bought a Naim streamer and a nait5. Ufortunately, I almost stopped to listen to music. This summer, after selling my Genelec 8340SAM I bought a second hand Rega dac R . Now its fun listening to music again.

 

[MacCali]

How could luck have anything to do with what is at its core a science based endeavor? (at least it is here on ASR) … and contrary to popular belief of the snake oil crowd, you do NOT have to spend a fortune to have a well engineered and transparent system. Simply not true.

I don’t know I may have misinterpreted what op is stating. Hopefully he meant owning crazy expensive audio. Hence my second comment.

Without a doubt my system is really damn good and honestly I only got Amir to thank for that.

I have taken the objective stand on 70% of the decision making, in addition to my subjective take on what I get from the results in my own rooms.

 

[Curvature]

If you move a lot, sometime the room is well adapted without having to do anything.

I'll second this.

 

[Anton D]

Luck is comes with the room you set up in. If you move a lot, sometime the room is well adapted without having to do anything.
Sometimes an amp or a diamond cartridge just pairs up perfectly with your speakers without having done any research.
Have you ever bought some gear on a whim or just because it was cheap without expectations and discovered you just bought a awesome piece of equipment?

Uh, oh.

You said a trigger word.

Anyway....I always enjoyed moving, and would shop with my gear in mind. Then, trying to get things to sound their best in a new place was pretty fun, too!

Usually, there is a happy spot in most places!