Lefty said:
I really perked up on one quote from the Linkwitz site:
"The loudspeaker is by far the weakest link in the reproduction chain. Unless you have really poorly designed associated equipment you cannot get significant improvement in accuracy by going to very expensive equipment. Marketing departments like to tell you otherwise. Hearing a change is not an indication of greater accuracy. Some products are designed to make an audible change so the customer will notice it. Other products rely on the power of suggestion which works the better, the higher the price tag. "
I've been trying to express that opinion for years here, but get little agreement or belief :scratch2:
Lefty
I tend to agree with him on that point. I feel that speakers, recordings, and listening room are most important.
I've even read some opinions that state that the recordings are the most important, but I figure you often can't do much about them, so I don't know if it's worth worrying about them. Is a not so great recording of a fantastic musical performance better or worse than a perfect recording of an average performance?
I normally recommend that people try to get really good speakers and not worry so much about the other parts of their system. I feel you can easily get a, let's say, 50 percent improvement in speakers by carefully shopping - without spending obscene amounts of money.
With electronics, I think you're looking at smaller improvements. Maybe 10 percent or something. It's pretty easy to get decent electronics and harder to improve up them.
Peter Aczel of The Audio Critic feels the same way Linkwitz does. He basically says that most electronics are good enough and that you should spend you money on speakers. He goes further and says that, using a double-blind testing method, you can't tell the difference between most electronics. (Although, as Linkwitz mentions, I'm sure there is gear that does things slightly wrong just so it stands out.)
I've seen amplifiers that have more gain than normal. That's going to tend to get you to listen at higher levels when you're first auditioning them. Higher levels often sound "better."
Many moving coil cartridges have rising response in the treble, and that's going to stand out.
Some speakers bump up the mid-bass to give that "impact" or maybe to cover the fact they have no low bass.
Polk speakers were known to have a bumped-up treble so that they stood out in the showroom against other brands of speakers.
I was reading some of what Richard Hardesty (The Audio Perfectionist) has on his web site for free, and he claims that some phono preamps play with the RIAA curve so that they sound different than other preamps. (I'm not sold on some of what he claims, but I suspect he's right on this one.)
There were some speakers called the Waveform Research Mach 17s. They were partly designed by Paul Barton (PSB) and conformed to the results of the research done by Floyd Toole and others at the Canadian NRC. (Note that Linkwitz follows these same precepts and the result is speakers like his Orions.)
I had heard of them a number of years ago and the mags like Stereophile and TAS didn't seem to think much of them. Yet, they were demonstrably superior in many ways. (Flat frequency response, good dispersion and power response, low distortion, and huge output levels.)
I just recently read a bunch of back issues of The Audio Critic because he put them up for free download. Aczel also says just about the exact same thing about the Mach 17s.
As for electronics, I do prefer a certain brand, partly because I know they're built like tanks and will last many years. I feel they sound better too, but I recognize that may be hard to prove.
Part of what makes this hobby interesting is that different people come up with different ways of doing things and have different likes and dislikes. But that's also what makes this hobby frustrating.
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