With all due respect but looking down on people using affordable gear or declaring stuff to be ´non-audiophile´ based on the price does not really make sense particularly given the current market situation.
Sound quality you can potentially get for your money has never been as astonishingly high as today and the result was never as independent from the price tag as it is now. That is particularly true to in ear monitors and TWS which can basically bring high end sound quality for a hundred bucks today. It is a bit ironic that this is the way to go for younger folks who meet a lot of criticism and devaluating comments for ´listening to low end crap´ or ´not caring about music at all´ while having superior gear in many cases.
I in general agree particularly when it comes to headphones, making one exception for loudspeakers and all-in-one systems: while 30 years ago true stereo with 2 separated speakers was more or less the standard, seemingly the number of people who are fine with (de-facto-)monaural is much higher and growing today. That is posing both a risk (of people never coming in touch with fascinating sound quality) and a huge chance (of people being blown away by three-dimensional imaging if they every get the chance to hear it).
David
Kind of you to respond. Sounds like you have a system that more than meets your needs. My only real point is that at the end of the day it is a totally subjective activity and therefore each to his own. It is why there are so many purveyors of various systems, combinations thereof, including using Roon or not, and music. And that is a good thing.
I personally mainly use Roon because it pulls together music on my music server and my streaming service and I like the interface as it introduces me to new music by my favourite artists and also new artists.
Enjoy.
Which plans did you use for the bass traps? I’m needing some and likely will roll my own. I already have a few GIK diffuser/absorbers in some key places in the room.
Yes. I still do love my bedside Schiit Modi/Magni stack + HD6xx that has been with me since I started on this journey. It was
maybe $200 on eBay a long time ago. Now will run you $400 new but you can find the OG versions for a song. That plus a Pi will go a long long way. Yes I’ve gone a long way up - Devore o/96’s, class A monoblocks, Rega P6, tube preamp and more tubes than I care to count. But … I still listen to that wee stack and enjoy it plenty all these years later. And not just from sentimentality - if you’re starting out these days you have got it good.
I’m with @Arindal. In my experience, the very finest speakers make great recordings sound amazing and they make most “bad” recordings sound admirably listenable. There are precious few truly flawed recordings (meaning, unlistenably bad on all systems) that saw mass production.
In fact, in my book, this is what sets the best of the best speakers apart.
Good point. Great speakers are able to clearly deliver everything in the recording with minimal additions or subtractions, while a compromised product can make a flawed performance sound worse by emphasizing some elements over others.
Common wisdom that a revealing system will make problems more obvious and, therefore, more objectionable hasn’t happened in my listening space since I upgraded Meridian active speakers in early 2024. In fact, annoying bits in otherwise enjoyable music have largely disappeared, or at least receded, now that the system can more accurately deliver what the engineers captured.
Example: Tsuyoshi Yamamoto’s sometimes aggressive piano playing on albums like Midnight Sugar or Misty could have an unpleasant sharpness in the past -which has gone away now that it is properly recreated in my room.
Well, I have tried inexpensive DACs, including a few Topping DACs, and have found them quite lacking in my setup. I am using high quality tube-based preamp and amp along with HQPlayer upsampling all of my PCM and DSD content to DSD256. Nothing “inexpensive” has come close to equalling my Holo Audio May KTE DAC.
So I would strongly disagree with you when you say:
“Setting up what I consider to be a reference-grade network audio system that will not be significantly bested by high-end solutions regardless of cost can be done in minutes for only a few hundred dollars.”
But, believe what you want.
I do agree that you can get an adequate DAC for a few hundred dollars. But “reference grade”? Not hardly…
I can get behind this mindset. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences, David.
I also have a fairly cheap HomeLab running proxmox clusters, and one of the virtual machines has been running Roon for a little bit over one year now without any troubles. I even have a simple secure split tunnel set up so I can access Roon from work.
Regarding the fidelity at home and out and about, I decided to keep it simple, but good. I am at a point where leisure time is scarce and I would rather relax with some good music than maintenance. While I do tinker with audio equipment from time to time, I am also relying more on Raspberry Pi for endpoints and other controller needs.
Yet you’re using tube preamplification, which introduces distortion (it’s non linear) and colouration, so can hardly be referred to as either transparent or reference grade.
It is misleading to suggest price and preference equates to “reference” grade. Only measurement can be used to determine whether a device achieves a standard.
The cost of precision has reduced by orders of magnitude over the past few decades. For instance, a voltage reference stardard often used the Weston cell whereas today solid state devices provide better precision and stability.
So, it isn’t surprising that the cost of a DAC has also fallen. Indeed, many so called high end systems utilize integrated circuits (DACs) that cost just a few dollars.
I am using both a tube preamp AND a tube amp. Yet, speakers contribute far more distortion than the ultra high quality tube preamp and ultra high quality tube amp I am using ever could.
Also, this idea that tubes must color the sound is just plain incorrect. Finally, when there is distortion added, tubes sound a lot better than solid state whether it be Class A, Class A/B, or Class D.
You might want to read up on how tubes actually work versus perpetuating myths.
There is absolutely no doubt that the objective and measurable performance per £/$ of hifi has improved by orders of magnitude over the past few decades. I’m currently sat at my desk listening to an RME ADI-2 DAC plugged into an Ncore amp and I think we can agree that this combo measures pretty darn well.
However we’re listeners not studio producers and many people prefer a system that has a musical “tone”, perhaps with a degree of “warmth” or an “organic sound” that is not simply all about measurements. If we all drank the ASR cool aid, we’d just all buy a Topping systems and revel in it’s measurements and transparency until it blew up.
I’m not sure why ASR is Kool-Aid? The implication is Jonestown where religious followers were killed by poison, of course. ASR just provides measurement and critique, no group suicide needed! If you prefer colorations that is certainly very Kool, but you might get some Aid by learning deeply about how frequency responses, noise, and distortion work.
But adding coloration on top of an accurate reproduction doesn’t count as improving the sound, does it? I would argue it’s the opposite. In any case, it doesn’t take expensive additions, just some PEQ or other DSP.
In other words, we’d just listen to music and stop obsessing about upgrades (and feeding the audiophile industry). Nothing wrong with that.
At least everything posted on ASR is provable and repeatable, unlike the vast majority of the “golden eared” claims which usually disappear as soon as you hide the price tag of the device they are praising.
In any case, if one prefers the up-the-wazoo euphonic distortion of some tube amps (for example), it is much easier to replicate that on a transparent and accurate system, whereas if one suddenly does want to hear the original recording on a tube amp, that’s impossible, because it simply can not reproduce anything with high fidelity.
The discussion is about the digital source, and my response to your post, which is an entirely subjective take on the subject, is that, by your admission, tube amplification colours sound. The benchmark has to be transparency, even if some prefer a warmer sound or whatever. This, and the use of tubes, is not the discussion point.
It’s what you said, which contradicts the idea of reference grade. It is not a function of price. Neither is preference nor bias. The onus is on you to explain what you said.
I’m guessing that if we were to compare a line-up of linear power supplies, everyone would be on the same page by saying the best is the one that has more favourable measurements. We may then make compromises on features and aesthetics, but ultimately, we are comparing the LPS with a reference point.
However, as soon as listening and an audiophile are added into the mix, common sense is thrown out of the window, and some enter into pointless competition. Next time, please respond, rather than react to what was said … or, as the community guidelines say, remember to criticize ideas, not people.
… but both these things aren’t mutually exclusive, and has never been conveyed that way here. ASR is simply providing independent measurements. Use it as a guide to prepare a shortlist for auditioning equipment, or ignore it, it doesn’t matter. That’s not the point.
The point is this. Measurements, if done properly, do not lie. So, if a line-up of £100, £1,000 and £10,000 DACs all measure the same, you can make a value judgement. But whatever you choose, you can’t deny what the measurements say.
Hold on. How is suggesting someone learn more about tubes before perpetuating myths about tubes against the community guidelines. If that is against the rules, then you can’t even have a conversation here.
Oh, and I am not the one that brought tubes into question. All I did was list the components in my 2 channel setup. You were the one that criticized tubes as a possible choice for a " transparent or reference grade" system. Some of the highest reference grade systems in use use tube preamps, tube amps, or both.
Again, some education of tube preamps and amps would be useful for people that don’t understand them.