Upgrading an amp can give better sound. The law of diminishing return makes it cheaper to upgrade a power cable to an existing amp than to use a stock cable on an slightly more costly amp.
Upgrading other things like DC-blocking, grounding, isolation and absorbtion in racks, noice stoppers, XLRs, air-borne antivibration absorbtion, RFI-abosorbtion, room treatment and even more gives better sound from existing amp and can make a highly tweaked USD 5000 amp sound like a USD 10 000 amp (just resting on a shelf).
A tough but very general question:
When is it time to upgrade an amp and when should one stop tweaking? Are there any general rules of thums that someone has got or is it just down to basic listening?
Not to start controversy here, but no tweak will improve sound quality as much as a well applied amplifier upgrade.
There are myriad variables that inform the choice of amp into your existing system.
First start with clearly identifying what problem you’re trying to solve with your current system.
I tend to agree. The amp itself would make the most SQ difference than interconnects and power cords, even from the expensive ones. The isolating devices and footers would make a smaller difference in amps compared to sources, DACs, and preamps from my experience.
One thing that I’ve done is kept my spending on components relative. When I upgraded from the Gain Cell DAC to the DSD and BHK Pre, I knew pretty early on that I’d likely want upgrade my 700s and even my speakers. Sure, there are elements of lower tiers that perform well, but the next step up is where I’ve found the greatest improvements. Though its ultimately up to personal taste, if you’re lifting, shielding, blocking and isolating to the tune of half the value of an item, it might be time to look for an upgrade.
But with my existing amplifier, which very well should be an end game piece, swapping out the Stealth Audio V12 interconnects to the V17 Sakra LE interconnects resulted in a massive and very obvious improvement in the sound.
If you and your bunnies didn’t have a blindfolded test, then you experienced a psycotic acoustical fantasy because you knew what you wanted to hear when you wanted to hear it and certainly your bunnies just told you what they knew you wanted to hear because you feed them and mama bunny didn’t raise no fools.