Is 'What It Sounds Like' All That Matters'?

[bumpy]

Yes. Next.

[Marco]

MARCO, thanks for your comment on a thread t'other week. Only my wife ever logged me out but I've stayed passively engaged for quite a long time. Didn't know how to relay this directly, so apologies to o.p.

No problem, Mike. Always good to see our founding members dropping in and contributing! You were one of the very first folk to join AoS, so stick around, as I always enjoy reading your contributions

Marco.

[Macca]

Yes. Next.

Really? You've never encountered any of the situations I described? Or you don't think that you have?

[bumpy]

Really? You've never encountered any of the situations I described? Or you don't think that you have?

I have encountered many of them over the last 50 gears. That lifetime of good and bad experiences convinced me that it really is all about listening. My only caveat is that you should listen to a lot of alternatives.

When upgrading, here are my simple rules
1. Does it please me more than what I have already.
2. Am I prepared or able to pay for the improvement.

[Macca]

I have encountered many of them over the last 50 gears. That lifetime of good and bad experiences convinced me that it really is all about listening. My only caveat is that you should listen to a lot of alternatives.

When upgrading, here are my simple rules
1. Does it please me more than what I have already.
2. Am I prepared or able to pay for the improvement.

That's nothing I disagree with. My point is that we can draw the wrong conclusions about why we hear what we hear from just listening. And this has a knock on effect on the products themselves.

[bumpy]

That's nothing I disagree with. My point is that we can draw the wrong conclusions about why we hear what we hear from just listening. And this has a knock on effect on the products themselves.

What's the alternative - magazine reviews, friends recommendations, reputation, favourite brand, flavour of the month on the forums, flashing lights. Buy on any of those and you're on the road to dissatisfaction.

[Macca]

What's the alternative - magazine reviews, friends recommendations, reputation, favourite brand, flavour of the month on the forums, flashing lights. Buy on any of those and you're on the road to dissatisfaction.

Well I might go with a friend's recommendation. But obviously none of the others. Clearly you can't audition every product available. or even a meaningful fraction of them. So your buying decision is not based on comparative listening, except to the extent you compare a handful of items to what you have already. And there is the danger of paying way over the odds for a sound quality you could have bought for much less, had you known why it sounded so good.

[Primalsea]

I think there is a lot of sense in what Martin says. “Just use your ears” is not a sentence that comes with any qualification, although the people that say such things often put those words as being as such. The amount of audiophiles who music choice is dictated purely by whether it sounds good on their system astounds me. People who like music and understand that not everything they like is recorded and produced well tend to have a more pragmatic view of what they want from their hifi.

[Yomanze]

Another thing to be careful of with gear is the ‘honeymoon period’. Some stuff wows for the day or week, but after a few weeks starts to grate a bit. Cue much box swapping and regret that you can’t find your original unit.

[alphaGT]

Many good points being made here, and I whole heartedly agree that listening should be your biggest influence.

But I also agree that there is more to it than that. If you popped into your local stereo shop and heard an amazing sound! This system set up in front of you sounds amazing! So! Are you going to buy that amp and put it in your system? Or perhaps the speakers? Or the source? How do you know which piece is responsible? Of course it’s all of them.

But you came shopping for an amp, so, you take the amp home, and your speakers are very different from the ones in the store, and your source, and it doesn’t do it for you. So back to the store it goes. It’s easy to say, “judge only gear in your own system”, but most of us do not have that option, most of us have to buy first. Possibly with the ability to return if you aren’t satisfied. But I don’t buy new, when I buy, it’s for keeps. So I have to know what I’m getting, is it compatible with my speakers? Have others who own my speakers endorsed the amp I’m looking at? Are there any magazine reviews from writers you trust? I confess that honest reviews are not as easy to come by as they used to be. My point is, you need a reasonable amount of confidence before you buy used.

But with that being true, once I got this amp home, it sounded good! I couldn’t hear anything wrong, it did everything right! I should have been happy! But I wasn’t. Somehow it did not pull me in, one record did not lead to a dozen more, I tried wires, and power filters, new sources, nothing changed. So, I took a big leap and bought another amp, one I had read many great things about, one that has been reviewed with my speakers, and wow! The difference was night and day! Now I listen all the time, nearly every day, it stands up to the test of time. There may be a dozen more amps out there that sound even better! But I’ll never hear them, I have no means to hear them. So, listening alone cannot pick me an amp. Or any other component. I have got to rely on other input first, to narrow the field, to get in the ballpark.

I’m pretty sure that any tubed amp that sounds awesome with the appropriate speakers would sound like crap on my speakers, unless they were 200 watt amps. There are many numbers we must observe before we decide what to bring home. There’s no need to spend any money on any gear that’s not even compatible, and of course unless you are listening in your own home, you can’t make those determinations by listening alone. To bring everything you’ve ever heard sound good into your living room just to see if it blows up is not sound logic. But when all is said and done, listening is the only thing that can make you happy.

Russell