Building on the 'room is the most important factor' point: what makes for ideal home stereo acoustics short of some gaudy home theater bullshit? I think I got lucky currently: it's fairly large living room (10ft ceilings) with a lot of non-parallel wood/plaster/stone surfaces and a massive fuzzy rug. It can be tricky finding a good center spot for accurate stereo but that doesn't factor into listening-for-enjoyment so much.

penningtron wrote: Mon Mar 14, 2022 3:46 pm Building on the 'room is the most important factor' point: what makes for ideal home stereo acoustics short of some gaudy home theater bullshit? I think I got lucky currently: it's fairly large living room (10ft ceilings) with a lot of non-parallel wood/plaster/stone surfaces and a massive fuzzy rug. It can be tricky finding a good center spot for accurate stereo but that doesn't factor into listening-for-enjoyment so much.

My main issue with my old room is it was narrow and the stereo set up on the long wall, had to be. So I was closer to the speakers than they were apart from one another.

motorbike guy wrote: Mon Mar 14, 2022 3:44 pm

penningtron wrote: Mon Mar 14, 2022 12:41 pm

motorbike guy wrote: Mon Mar 14, 2022 11:31 am I am a cable skeptic, but there are vast differences in CD players, DACs

I'm looking into CD players again due to being fed up with the vinyl boom, and am trying to gauge how much I need to spend on something 'good'. Other than the DAC stage I'm having a hard time understanding why some CD players are $3,000: how overboard does one need to go to read a 16 bit file off a disc..

Rega and Rotel are my go to recommendations for CD Players.

I do not use a CD player any more, I have all my CDs ripped to a hard drive, which is connected to the Bluesound Node.

I still have my Rotel RCD-955AX from 30 years ago or so. Dunno how it would stand up against new tech, but it sounds fine, so...

I bought almost everything used, save the phono cart and CD player. Setup probably cost me $2 or $2.5K total, probably retailed for twice that.

In my limited experience, what I'll call "mechanical" stuff matters much more - phono cart, turntable, speakers. Things with bits of metal, rubber and foam that move around. That and the room.

there's a point of diminishing returns for all that mechanical stuff. For carts it's probably around $300, for turntable maybe $1000, for speakers maybe $2-3K. Follow your ears though.

I think one of the most important things to keep in mind when opening a wallet for audio gear is to remember that the ability to 'objectively' hear is limited, human perception is quite fallible, and self-deception can make you easily spend way more than makes any sense under any conditions.

Audiophiles like to think their aural perception is some finely honed thing that is infallible and inscrutable when compared to actual measurement, as laughable a precept as any of the bonkers claims found on the internets.

Be honest with yourself. If you can't tell the difference, there is effectively no difference. Trust the specs. Where self-deception too often prevails, specs will ground you in reality with cold hard facts - whether you subjectively 'like' something or not, at least you'll see what the bench numbers hold for performance.

Don't fall in love with the smell of your own farts, (or [bull]shit). Be honest that your aural perception is as easily fooled as your eyes are by optical illusions. Then set a budget based on the what you honestly want to spend, can afford to spend, and what your ego can accept rather than desires.

You can probably find a better answer to this specific question/example of a Hi-Fi stereo system and the components on tapeheads. Personally I think there are two thresholds when it comes to audio. One being the bottom-line threshold. i.e. What is the minimum amount of money you can spend on some sort of audio gear (respective to the specifics of the item) that are going to guarantee a professional-level of sound. With guitars I believe it's around $300.

Then there's the top threshold. For example, at what price does the sound quality stop improving beyond much of a discernible difference. Again, I probably know guitars better than any other instrument (or stereo component for that matter) and I'd put this top threshold at $900.

So using my example, the threshold range for guitars is between $300 and $900. At least, that's what it used to be when I was more heavily into the guitar scene. I've heard online that the prices are skyrocketing recently.

So for stereo components I'm sure there are certain numbers you can use. A lot of the top-end stuff also comes down to specific tastes. The colorization of the sound is what you're paying for more than the fidelity, but that's obvious.

Personally my ears are a bit fucked from 25 years of drumming, and I don't feel like I'm really going to hear the difference between a good component and a very good (very expensive) component. I also rarely have time to just sit in a quiet environment, sitting equidistant from speakers, etc... and just focus on listening. Unfortunately, 95% of the times these days when I am listening to music I am also doing something else. It kind of sucks to only experience music this way, but it's also kind of miraculous, because 50 years ago it would really not have been possible to be listening to really cool music of my choice all day long, no matter where I am.

I have no idea but I do know that, should my ship ever come in, my one great indulgence will be a listening room. I'll gladly piss money away on it.

I've definitely noticed significant improvements with a few changes I've made over the years:

Crappy integrated->decent Adcom preamp/power amp
Project Debut->Rega P3-24
Old thrift store speakers->B&W 602s
Ortofon Blue MM cart->Hana MC cart
Adcom preamp->Parks Puffin phono pre

At this point, I can't really see anything sounding dramatically better on my end without spending a significant chunk of money on speakers or a new cartridge, and frankly with the one-sided hearing loss I've got, it's probably not really worth it.

Slightly off topic, but the ability to listen on a totally separate system is really helpful sometimes. I have my 'daily driver' hi fi in the living room, but I also have a fancy little 'listening room' setup now in the spare bedroom where all the books and records are. It's easy to go down a hole thinking something doesn't sound quite right and to be able to listen to the same sound source on a completely separate set of components is a great and fast way to double check those perceived problems. For example, I was listening to something the other night and I thought "huh, doesn't sound like there's much bass in this...". I just put it on the other stereo and was able to immediately be like "nope, that's just what the record sounds like" and that was the end of it, rather than fussing about with my equipment, trying to hear something that wasn't there. It's also great for reviewing test pressings and the like.