Confused about how to improve my audio system!

As others have said, it’s all about how it sounds to you. Go with what makes you want to keep listening long after you know you should have gone to bed. I will add that in my experience, the one change that made the most obvious difference in both analog and digital sources and amplification is, hands down, clean power. The best power conditioner (or regenerator) and power cables you can afford are a surefire way to get the best from your gear.

One thing I’ll add, which I think fits with much of the advice: find local dealers so you can try stuff out in your space and return them easily if you don’t like them (or they don’t make a difference). Shipping heavy audio stuff is expensive, and it’s at least a hassle to return things you’ve ordered from somewhere. Buying used is often a good option, but as I’ve learned, offloading the things you don’t like isn’t quite as easy as you might think (I have more experience selling cameras and lenses, and those are generally easy to sell on ebay for decent money).

Also, sorting through all the good and bad advice is half the fun ;p Just don’t get too hung up on individual people’s opinions or recommendations, we’re all wrong to different degrees…

In my opinion , one of the biggest single impact is WAF (wife acceptance factor)

Its all been said above.

No matter how much you spend on kit , place it wrong and it will not shine !!. What resonances do you generate by a vase of flowers on top of you Sub ?. But seriously spend time and effort optimising what you have before spending big bucks , then spend on Speakers first .I had many years with Quad ESL 62’s and loved em, but WAF very questionable.

My view is that posh cables are the Ultra Icing on the cake , I know many would disagree.

I had the ONYKO 838 and then the RZ800 , both a bit above yours but the DAC in both was very good.

While not up in the Ultra Hi Fi League Onkyo kit in my experience is good . I ran them Cambridge Audio CXN Analogue to CD input and was happy.

They are not very good at resisting lightening strikes hence the 2 models

I now have focused my efforts on 4 things

1 A VERY COMFY CHAIR – Vital …
2 RPi [Allo Digione (coming today) – stiil to comment]
3 Audiolab M-DAC
4 Sennheiser HD800

in a small “MY Corner” and get WOW WAF if a little down on the Hi Fi of old

A Samsung soundbar caters for general noise, the hi fi is MINE !!

Mike

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Good to know. :slight_smile:

@Bill_Janssen

If you are open to a personal headphone system, there are some exceptional DAPs out there, even some with the ability to drive headphones like the HD800.

I have an Astell & Kern Kann DAP, and it will drive my HD800s no problem, although I usually use it with the smaller HD700s. Pretty incredible sound from a transportable system. The Kann is a bit heavy to be used as a true portable, but you can cart it around the house and bring it to other places you want to listen to high quality music.

I would do what others suggest here. Hook it up in various ways, and see which one you prefer.

Don’t worry about blind tests or the like. Go with your preference. That’s all that matters.

Chris, I see you’ve got a Brooklyn DAC+. Happy with it? Seems like a sweet pre-amp / DAC combo.

Well, I wouldn’t mind improving my preference. I still remember my first pair of eyeglasses. I walked around for a couple of days just looking at the previously unseen detail in things like trees.

I love both the Brooklyn (in my two-channel room) and the Liberty (my headphone rig in the office). I have compared the two, and with my OPPO 205, and it sounds fantastic. It is effortless to use and works well with Roon. It has been simply reliable since purchase in March of this year. They seem to update the firmware on a semi-regular basis, too.

In my experience, speakers make the most dramatic difference (improvement?) in a system. Followed by the amplifier. Then, the source (DAC, CD player, etc.). If you are satisfied with your speaker and amp combo, then consider another source. It won’t hurt.

They do look pretty nice. Perhaps I’ll take another tack. In my library I currently have another sound system, which consists of a Roon-connected Chromecast Audio, analog output into a Fosi Audio 2 Channel Class D Mini Stereo Amplifier (connected with an Amazon Basics cable), speaker output into a pair of Bell & Howell speakers scavenged from a 1971 all-in-one stereo system. Sweet! An upgrade from the previous Google Home Mini, which I moved to a bedroom.

I could replace that set-up with a pair of LS50Ws, and see how they work. The speakers are on top of a bookshelf, so high up close to the ceiling, and against a wall. But I’ll have to find a pair and listen to them first. I’m finding that whole “woofer ring” design hard to believe.

There’s a philosophy professor who has a very nice page on all of this: http://rkheck.frege.org/audio/index.php. Great for types like me, who like to have it all spelled out.

This makes no sense whatsoever, upon reflection. If I buy those, I should replace the Onkyo/Ensemble set up in the living room, and move the Ensemble speakers to the library.

Even little USB DACs are OK , My Dragonfly Red froM iPad via the Apple Camera Kit runs my HD800 (Just)

Direct hits locally in an horrendous Johannesburg storm aren’t exactly normal elsewhere !!

If you want to improve sound but don’t know where to start, start with the big stuff: loudspeakers, speaker placement, room treatment. Copper and optical digital cables are at best minutia, at worst Emperor’s New Clothes. I doubt there are very many humans, if any at all, who could identify differences under blind conditions. Jitter is a wildly exaggerated “problem” in the audiophile literature.

DACs can sound different but you really have to work out for yourself which ones sound better, and critical listening is hard work (make sure the levels are matched, preferably with a volt meter and steady state sinusoidal signal). Audio magazine hype aside you’re not going to hear any huge differences, if any at all, and at some point you might just decide to relax and enjoy the music, as others are recommending. As I usually do.

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p.s. jitter induced by “inferior” optical cables is nonsense. We’re talking 2/3 speed of light or so transmission regardless: any alleged “smearing” happens withing that time frame. What can happen is optical transmitters and receivers (not the cable) altering the waveform and increasing ambiguity between zero and one levels, possibly affecting the timing. I usually prefer coaxial, unless I need either distance or galvanic isolation. And you most certainly don’t need coaxial cables made from silver or oxygen free copper with some sort of super exotic dielectric and strand construction. Nonsense!

I’m getting that impression. Don’t know how much I can do with the room; high ceiling, carpeting, plush sofa, drapes, etc. all soak up sound. Perhaps one of these systems that does active room correction? The speaker selection will take some time, and decision between active and passive. I’ve got to find some decent showrooms, too.

And I’d suspect those differences would be due more to power conditioning than anything else.

I’m sympathetic to this view, but, given my limited insight into this, agnostic not atheist. I’ve noticed that many civilians don’t understand how wildly different digital processing capabilities are versus 15 years ago, just due to CPU speed and power improvements. I’d think that any modern digital input design could correct for most jitter with no problems, but perhaps 10 years ago it was a real issue. Of course, my receiver design is probably from 2011, so there still may be some issues (not to mention that the Onkyo software capabilities seem to be somewhat limited, based on my experience with this receiver and its remote app).

I’ve ordered a coax cable from Blue Jeans. Though the opinion seems to be that the components on either end may need to be replaced for that to make an difference. Regarding $1000/m cables, I’m skeptical. But the placebo effect is real, and religious mystics do indeed see visions, so I can’t discount the personal experiences of those who find they make a difference.

You have one: Roon.
You still need a system to measure the current situation and calculate the correction, but once that’s done, Roon applies the correction. There are several options for measuring+calculating with different levels of difficulty/learning curve (the cost is insignificant).

Personally, I was dissatisfied with the results of REW, it was not a net improvement in sound. I went with Acourate, not the easiest but the results are great. A frequency curve measurement is only part of the story, timing/phase matter greatly, but here are my before and after curves:


(One of the great things with using Roon instead of separate hardware is that there is no extra cost for correcting multiple rooms, I even went over to my son’s house and fixed that.)

There are several threads here discussing the options.

Thanks. I’ve read a few of the threads, and that sounds like the complicated part.

All these esoteric suggestions and desires.

I’m reminded of Hannibal Lector accusing Clarice of having, ‘an expensive purse and cheap shoes’.

:sunglasses:

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Make sure that your new cable has the copper atoms oriented in the correct direction!

(I kid, I kid, but there are companies out there trying to foist that kind of garbage on people and charge a pretty penny doing it)

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