I find value in not reading forums for a few weeks or even just a few days and simply listening and enjoying music. Turn off the thinking brain and allow the feeling brain to take it all in.
That said, my goal has been to achieve the ethereal soundstage that is deep and wide along with a solid central image. Space between instruments and vocals. Emotional enjoyment. I’ve spent the past 18 months achieving it a new space that is my last. Its dimensions are far from ideal but gosh darn does it sound good! Yes, good hardware matters but speaker position, reflection control via absorption and diffusion have really made it shine.
Very thoughtfully elaborated. We need not pursuit a relationship with our gear. Use the music to reach out and share it with the passion others might do as well.
I have many thoughts regarding this topic and your explicit experience with friends judging the setup…
First, no one who doesn’t really love music and gives it a certain importance will hear any difference in your setups that’s meaningful to him/her…because music and differences in its reproduction isn’t meaningful for the one.
Second, It’s hard to build up a really good and expressive setup independent of the money spent. I could name various expensive setups that won’t sound special to occasional listeners or even audiophiles.I could also name some not really expensive setups that were breathtaking to hear (e.g. setup by people who know how to). Some components I never heard in a revealing way…Mac ‚s (especially when without tubes) are such and could be part of a problem not to achieve a certain higher level, but that’s just my opinion.
Third and very important, room acoustics and placement of speakers. Everyone with some experience, when seeing setups with non symmetrical or close backwall speaker positioning knows, up to which limit they play, no matter how expensive. I personally would spend quite little money only on a setup, in case I’d not be free with positioning. I know that’s hard in many family environments … one just shouldn’t expect much then.
Forth and together with the first most important regarding your experience with friends not impressed by the setup:
In my experience non audiophiles and especially women (not meant disrespectful but respectfully as it’s most important when comparing to a live experience) mainly care for tonality, rich timbre, enough, good bass, big sound and non fatigueing/screaming dynamics. They see no advantage in any other aspect if this doesn’t match. And we all know that it can be hard to achieve this AND a most revealing and imaging performance especially if there’s no option in the setup to adjust tonality when components change. Many setups when improving in audiophile terms miss this. Then such systems to many even sound worse than the cheapest rich enough sounding setup. A setup that doesn’t especially excel here needs perfect placement of speakers and an impressively imaging recordings with the listener sitting in the sweet spot, to impress a casual listener imo.
Fifth and also most important, it all depends on recording quality and genre one listens to. To me there are quite few Rock/Pop albums which can impress non audiophiles on any improved setup at all. There’s mostly no ambience, soundstage or 3D imaging to impress compared to really good recordings of other genres. The importance of point four dominates much more here.
The goal of a high performance system? To make you (and maybe also others) happy.
Just that one step closer to the music - bringing us there in the concert hall, recording studio… so that music being played is not a playback but feels live and we emerge in the music. Life-like, accurate reproduction of the vocal, instruments, etc.
Dynamics
Timbre
Speed
I wonder what equipment you got from Best Buy for $1,000?
I would’t worry or care so much, buddy. Let them carry on with their own way to listen to music, and keep enjoying yours which is more fulfilling and with more life/passion in it.I certainly am.
Haters are going to hate, that’s life. I would be very concerned with what you think. The rest of it is noise. Make sure you get the room straight, pay attention to room treatments. Focus on things you can treat and improve. All of us on this forum face the same criticisms… and most of all listen for the right reasons… it brings you joy.
Hi Roy, me again. It’s similar in other respects to music genre’s. Some people hate country music or rap music. So the are very Biased with this, but that is okay as it is Their opinion. Also, some people don’t understand why I love cars and have a car hobby, or why I ride Dangerous motorcycles far distances. One thing about forums like this, we can connect to other people with Like interests and similar ideals over far distances. Audiophiles are a rare breed.
Next time play their crappy music through the system in their presence and pretend to jam to it, with earplugs of course. Let them hear how horrible their choices are when played out loud. I did that to some haters, and they didn’t like their own music so much. I explained loudness and compression shortly after as we heard acoustic guitar music in the background. If you can’t beat them, pretend to join them.
Does not matter what others say about your system, the goal is the music involvement that the system and collections that bring you closer to the essence of the music; Also, it is inspiring to be patient during the journey of tuning and break-in (i.e DS is good example that requires significant break-in), also the learning of the character of your room, equipment, cables, power supplies, etc. Upgrading / tuning will bring to the level to some extend, but more evolving change will happen gradually during the time actually listening through the music. Now whenever I sit down and listen, I would force myself to go through from track 1 till last track (That is part of reason I also like vinyl). It makes me focus on the music, emotions, dynamics, environment / stage that the musician is communicating / leveraging, and a lot of time helped me to re-discover some lost details that I didn’t pay attention in the past. Enjoy the music is the final goal.
