We're presently running three systems in our home,
All very nice. There’s a lot of reasons to be content there!
Thanks.
This is a good observation and one I can relate to. I have been on this quest for many years. My unpopular, controversial opinion that few will probably attempt is to upgrade as much as you can within your budget, and then instead of chasing the dragon stuck in an endless sell/ upgrade cycle money pit loop that will ultimately never end, satisfy, or scratch the itch of "what if", buy an EQ/ mastering processor such as a Behringer DEQ2496 with RTA and use it strictly in the analog domain if you wish to go beyond its digital limitation of 24-bit/96kHz. Features for this Dynamic Equalizer (DEQ) include balanced I/O's, S/PDIF with 113 dB dynamic range, RTA/SPL/61-band FFT Analyzer & Auto EQ w/ room correction, Compressor/ Expander, Limiter, Feedback Destroyer, Stereo Imager, Digital Delay, 64 user memories, and VPQ are some of the features you can look forward to.
My system is gone now, due to circumstances beyond my control but when I got to the point where I was never thinking....hmmm....that bass is not right....or it needs more mids, and I didn't like any of my friends system's sound better than mine.....I quit looking. And I certainly didn't have a high end system...virtually every thing was pre-owned, mid level stuff. (In 1970s/80s definition) So I didn't bring in anything else to try and I stayed perfectly happy with what I had.
I've had systems that I really liked, that never let me down when it came to enjoying my records, but that I could also acknowledge were not at the level of what I heard at the homes of a few friends or perhaps a system I might hear at one of my favorite hi-fi shops where I also shopped for used records. Returning to my own system, though, was not a letdown--well, at least not for long--because it was still what it was before, a system good enough to engage me with the music and let me enjoy and appreciate what I was hearing.
I used a some of my pension lump sum to buy a better system. New speakers, amp, DAc and streamer. It's become apparent that this is my end game system as I can't afford to change anything up anymore and also as it's all in warranty, tinkering is out. I felt a bit bereft at this s I've tinkered with hifi since being a kid. The way forward was to build a vintage system in my workshop and (being a retired electronics engineer) start amplifier repair. I now have the best of both worlds.
You are exactly right. I've been down lots of rabbit holes, but it's the only way any of us really learn. We don't know that we are headed into a dead end until we get there. It's how we find our own nirvana.
Yes....I found myself doing something similar with vinyl. I have noticed people here finding fault with CD sound....or any digital sound, actually. When they hear a CD, they seem to be listening for digital faults. You found yourself listening to your system, instead of the music.
Some early digital sounds like vinyl (or analog) without the surface noise and pops/ crackle of vinyl (best of both worlds) such as the earlier Philips/ Magnavox, Marantz players using the dual 14-bit TDA1540 DACs. No glare, sibilance, metallic nature or 'digititis' to speak of which plagued many of the earlier cd players giving digital a "bad name" for awhile. Some of these earlier cd players seemed voiced to sound "analog" -like a segue between vinyl and CD. They are hidden gems because of it. At the same time, these same cd players sound somewhat raw and unrefined (compared to newer, higher resolving players) and just can't deliver the same detail and definition of the better, newer cdps. They definitely sound more natural though -including anything TDA1541 based which was more refined sounding and way ahead of its time.
This is why it might be good to have several interests — to keep you from diving too deep into any one rabbit hole.
I certainly agree with you, even as someone who collects and regularly plays vinyl; digital/CDs is still the better medium. Some who are the most diehard "vinyl is better" are folks running pretty cheap systems where that stuff is pretty crackly and low-fi to my ears, so it's hard to get what sort of magic they hear in it. I've put together a system where both vinyl and CDs sound very good to me, with a Yamaha pf-800 table, Denon DL110 cart (moving coil) and a Schiit Mani II preamp for vinyl, and a Oppo BDP-93 disc player and a Chord Qutest DAC for CDs. Both of these sound great to me, pretty much end game, for what I want, but the digital side wins out for having the most detail and the fullest, most airy sense of space around the instruments. Then there's the fact that the digital side is also free of any of the noise that vinyl can have (though my Denon cart is amazingly quiet), sounds better louder because there's no feedback vibrating the turtable and is all-around more trouble free.
Yes! Near the end game, it becomes the room's acoustics and the quality of the source (mastering).
I do have to admit I have never heard vinyl on a very high end system. All my stuff is mostly mid level 1970s-90s. But I can't imagine any system removing the noise floor of vinyl records, or tape hiss without going through a digital cleanup, which sort of defeats the purpose of analogue media. One guy in here told me his records have NO noise. Period. Well....I don't think that is possible. Not without digital cleaning and transferring to a digital player. But that is just my opinion.
I like good vinyl over CDs. The roundness of the sound and lack of digital "bite."
I haven't really messed with room acoustics and have some kinds of built-in issues anyway which would make it difficult to do much in the way of improvements... so that part of it isn't really a factor for me, though I have no doubt that if you have the luxury to move speakers around, use acoustical treatments, etc you can improve things a lot. A really well recorded, well mastered recording though is one constant, and one that arguably makes the biggest difference. A really nicely done recording even sounds very good to me on my desktop system, with my cheap little SMSL amp/DAC and little NHT SuperOne speakers.Yes! Near the end game, it becomes the room's acoustics and the quality of the source (mastering).
Yeah, my vinyl playback gear isn't what I'd call"very high end" either, but it's best far the best that I've had thus far. I'm often surprised by just quiet really clean vinyl copies of things I have can sound. My TT is belt drive, with very well designed isolation features and is clearly quieter than my old direct drive TT. And the Denon cart that I have has an elliptical stylus on it which apparently gets deeper into the groove of the record, thereby avoiding a lot of the surface dirt, which all makes vinyl, at least really pristine ones, sound very clean indeed. Still not as clean as CDs though. With my previous DACs I felt I could hear just a bit of what folks call "digital glare" with certain elements far into the treble region sounding just a bit blurred, but there's none of that issue at all with what I'm using now.
