Reading through the posts on this topic, I kept thinking back to when my friend got into HIFI and over the course of 3 years just how many pairs of speakers and components he went through on his quest for audio "nirvana".
Amps, pre-amps, speakers, CD players, all changed just about every weekend with the help of a "very understanding" local audio dealer. Some setups sounded OK, some less so. Finally exhausted of dragging heavy amps and speakers in and out of his basement dedicated to audio listening, he gave up and said he is just going to stick with Krell KSA200S, Krell MD-10 CD player, CAT SL1 pre-amp and Proac Response 4 speakers he had at the time.
After about 3 months and with a new found enthusiasm, came the cable and interconnect swapping phase. Very little difference was heard and the price of some of the "better quality" cables was just obscene, no happiness there either. Some time went by and came the vinyl playback phase. VPI ARIES turntable with JMW tonearm and cartridge I can't recall was purchased. Not much joy there either.
One day the sales guy, probably tired of seeing my friend in the store every weekend asking to audition yet another piece of equipment or maybe genuinely concerned about the "mental distress" of my friend offered to help him "tweak" his system. My friend had this look of confusion and disbelief on his face, like what else can you possibly do to make it sound better and no new components with a magic solution to try? The guy did show up the following weekend, listened to the system for a few minutes and said he will be back soon. I had to leave and did not get a chance to see what he did.
I got a call from my friend on Monday evening asking me to come over and listen to his system again. He would not say another word. I came over and my friend said, I'll turn off the lights and you sit and listen but I don't want you to see anything until after you hear it.
As he cued up the Roger Waters Amused to Death LP, (It is an album we used often to judge whether different cables/equipment had made any sonic improvements, such as the clarity of the crickets on the opening track, the q-sound effects on that album such as the voice of the old man on the left, dog barking behind you, jet high up on the right, etc..) well, I almost fell out of my chair. The old man's breathing on track 3 which usually appears at about 9 o'clock from your listening position and completely free from the speaker just like the other effects, appeared to be on my left shoulder, literally breathing and whispering right into my ear. It was spooky! All the other effects completely defied the physical boundaries of the room. Thoroughly impressed with that, I asked him to play some other music.
Next up was a well recorded jazz CD, I don't recall the name of, what came next is an illusion I have not heard since then at any store with any equipment. The performers were there in that basement with us and not in terms of hifi such as focus, good imaging and resolution, I am talking holographic sound that had an almost ghostly presence! The sound was completely 3 dimensional with instruments having bodies of performers attached to them not just floating in the air between the speakers as you could really feel the presence of the musicians and you could sense the slightest movements of theirs on the stage. The drums were reproduced with not only the resonance of the skin isolated in space but the resonance of the whole drum set and you could feel the exact size of each other instrument playing as well! The weirdest sensation of them all was that when he turned on the lights, the soundstage extended beyond the sidewalls and behind the front wall with instruments having an eerie presence and realism. Have you ever heard any speakers do that before?
So what changed? After he turned on the lights, I saw about 8 ASC tube traps placed around the room, many acoustical panels on the walls and ceiling, speaker cables hanging up off the floor with fishing line, all his components resting on wood platforms. What is my point with this long post? He never found a single "magic" component, did not change the speakers he wasn't really happy with and his system did not sound just like another HIFI system, it sounded like live music and just like that, all the HIFI listening went out the door and in came real music listening and enjoyment. He never once mentioned anything else about his system only what great CD or album he bought next.
Many speakers have great potential, except they are never given the opportunity to perform their best. Instead they are blamed for the faults of the overdamped or worse yet, bright, reflective room full of standing waves muddying up the sound and robbing their system and speakers of their real potential. Sorry for the long post! Oh, and I never really owned a really bad speaker thanks to the lessons my friend's quest for perfect sound taught me.
