When did you break the illusion of more expense is better? Did ASR help ;)

[Westsounds]

There no flys on it either

 

[Godataloss]

I’m intrigued, why the headphones exactly. What was it about them?

I think they were a decent pair of Koss. The sound was so far superior to anything I had ever heard I was gob smacked. I have pretty good gear these days and a nice pair of Dan Clarks. The Clarks are usually better and are a fraction of the price.

 

[Pareto Pragmatic]

Other than materials, fit and finish, etc. being at a higher level, I don't think I ever strongly thought money buys better every time. I was pretty much raised to spend money to do the job, and no more. My dad spent time as a tool and die maker, so he had very nice precision equipment, but screwdrivers and hammers and such? They worked, why look for "better" than the 40 year old hammer?

Here's what I have gotten from ASR, in the aggregate. Even better "quality" (accuracy) at some point will be an illusion... in my room. ASR gave me the tools and understanding to separate out the problems that come from my room in the conventional manner, and from my floor, which spits out a low level of sound at a 200ms delay. Which means phase issues will always be there. If I spent 10X on speakers I might, and I mean MIGHT, get a +/- 0.5dB narrower spread on my frequencies. While I might hear than in an A/B situation, I won't hear it normally. It would not be better in general listening after a day or two that's for sure. So why spend the coin?

Yes I could fix the floor, but in a 100 year old house that would likely mean plaster, plumbing, and electrical issues would crop up when the house is jacked up. And it would required taking out a floating wood floor, and patching the hardwood underneath which goes beyond my skills to do in terms of color matching new to old. And the house is not worth that kind of investment, which would certainly be around 1/4 the value of the house. I would get that money back from a kitchen remodel, but from invisible improvements? Zero ROI would be the expectation.

And I have learned to use my room to alter the sound. Clean and crisp, or warm and rich, just a bit of toe or eq alteration and I have that. Because I understand my room, which ASR certainly helped with in great detail.

So, the room is important, and that means at some point the room will dominate the error. Once I got that, deeply, the temptation to spend is tempered.

 

[Petevid]

I always suspected there was a law of diminishing returns I just didn't realise how steep that curve was or how soon it kicked in until ASR.

 

[Westsounds]

I was pretty much raised to spend money to do the job, and no more.

They worked, why look for "better" than the 40 year old hammer?

Nice post, all of it. And that’s a great philosophy to have on life in general, actually. And if more people lived to it, I’m sure there’d be a lot more satisfaction all around.

Your system / room sounds interesting as well, any photos to show? Be interested to see it.

 

[Pareto Pragmatic]

Your system / room sounds interesting as well, any photos to show? Be interested to see it.

I think photos would take us OT pretty quickly, but eventually I'll get around to doing a "my room" thread. What I can do now is point to two issues that led to my decisions for the reference system speakers.

First, more money generally will get you higher SPL levels with less distortion. The loudest I play would be around 96dB/1m, rarely and usually only for full orchestral music. So for me, smaller speakers are quite possible. Which is not something I would have thought without a lot of ASR reading. Big sound needs big speakers was my assumption based on previous experience. But by looking at 86/96dB distortion measurements....

Second, more money generally buys lower bass extension. But my floor kicks HARD at 30Hz, here's what it looks like if I play it once like a kick drum:

There is also a room mode at 30Hz on sweeps, but the floor definitely is adding extra to it.

So, my thought was if I can get speakers to cross over with that peak at 30Hz ..... which led to this system: Wiim pro optical/sony bluray coax into an SMSL D100 pro, balanced to a Buckeye 2 channel Purifi 1ET400a on medium gain, to Ascend Sierra LX speakers. System was around $3000 with stands and cables.

That gives me an F3 of ~30Hz or so when they are 5' into the room, and 45Hz when they are 10' out (and 10' is pretty close to 1/3 of the room length.) I literally can't have them closer to my wall than 5' (technically the ports at 4.5') and control the bass in my room. If I don't mind super bloated bass, I can load the floor way up and pretty much not have an F3 at all, including sub bass. It sounds horrible, but I can make it happen!

Not bad for 6" two way stand mounts. Particularly when I can listen to very clean signal, and then turn it up a few dB and have a very "big" sound. A room size passive radiator as a floor does some fun things.

 

[Westsounds]

I think photos would take us OT pretty quickly, but eventually I'll get around to doing a "my room" thread. What I can do now is point to two issues that led to my decisions for the reference system speakers.

Umm, not really, it’s just some photos to enjoy. And illustrated thread is not really randomness. A picture paints a thousand words. But if you don’t want to that’s fine, hope you do a thread and point me to it if you do, I might miss it otherwise, and now you’ve raised my interest.

 

[Dialectic]

The illusion totally broke for me in 2014 when I attended an audio show. Most of the systems sounded horrible.

Later in the year, I was on an international flight and happened to be seated next to the owner, and "chief designer", of a high-end audio company, who was flying back to his home in Germany from the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. We chatted, and it was quickly evident to me that he was a total ignoramus about audio.

 

[Miguelón]

It didn’t was about sound but about screens.

I was a victim of smartphone’s marketing, always renewing my iphone year by year, specially on the video and screen quality side…

Some years ago I begun to experience eye strain, even some dizziness which were attributed to presbyopia by my ophthalmologist.

Bought a pair of glasses, things got even worse, same problem but added to geometric aberration of the glasses.

I suspected the problem was not in my eyes when realizing that could perfectly read small printed letter, so stopped reading articles on the tablet or on the phone.

Few months ago someone told me about PWM technology (a method to dim brightness of LED cells without reducing DC voltage, but interposing short dark bursts with some predetermined frequency) and its effect on eye.

Curiously the screens that use more this method are the most expensive OLED panels, the problems begun just when moving from LCD technology (that behaves better under voltage changes) to the AMOLED and OLED panels.

So today I enjoy reading and watching videos on my old LCD second hand 100€ phone that hasn’t this technology.

One can buy a smartphone with this underrated panels by 200€.

Perhaps is not exactly on the side the OP expected type of experience but in this case most expensive even was worse than non-expensive tech