How much do you think needs to be put into Speakers of a Stereo system?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by STBob, Aug 19, 2014.

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  1. rhubarb9999

    rhubarb9999 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA
    So can speakers.
     
  2. bluesky

    bluesky Senior Member

    Location:
    south florida, usa
    Got a ' great sounding ' pair of 1970 Sansui AS-100 (acoustic suspension speakers), with AlNiCo magnets, at GW for $9.98. In minty shape too.

    I liked them so much I bought a single cab off eBay for $25 plus $30 shipping just for spare parts... if ever required. No needed yet and it's been 6 years.

    Like ARs or KLHs.

    Amazing full range 'Big Box' sound... for only a 23 inch high box, and very heavy solid cabs. One super sounding adjustable tweet and one 10 inch AlNiCo woofer. 1 cap per cab.

    Just saying: fairly outrageous. And way under the radar.

    :)
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2014
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  3. STBob

    STBob Active Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Michigan
    Hey that SL-Ql1 is a direct clone of a Hitachi L33 TT I have. Its sort of a clone of a B&O but more plastic.
    I call it a great dorm TT, meaning its hard to screw up using it. Can't scratch records, no chance of someone ruining the needle. Its not a bad little table. A bit on the light side. But it does not sound half bad. I think you are limited on cartridge selections. I compared it to a TT with a 600.00 cart and well it was not as good but it did not get blown away either. I'll say this, I have one system in the basement and my wife will be doing laundry near there and I could be playing the Hitachi or my B&O and she would not notice the difference unless I forced her to sit down for an A/B and even then she would probably go hmm yea a little better.
     
  4. bluesky

    bluesky Senior Member

    Location:
    south florida, usa
    The room means nothing to me, never has.
     
  5. triple

    triple Senior Member

    Location:
    Zagreb, Croatia
    My friend's daughter, when she was little, used to put coins in the bass reflex ports of his speakers. That much was not needed.
     
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  6. bluemooze

    bluemooze Senior Member

    Location:
    Frenchtown NJ USA
    +2
     
  7. GuildX700

    GuildX700 Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    I knew someone who glued quarters to his woofer cone near the center cap. Seemed to be a fad at the time.
     
  8. When we were kids in school and college it was only all about the music. That still applies to me today.

    I do what I can with the room but I just play play play. I do get those into treatment. I do know how different that can make
     
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  9. G E

    G E Senior Member

    I built my listening room in our basement. The contractor roughed it in but that was it. Before I got started I put the room dimensions into one of those spreadsheets that calculates frequency null points etc. my existing dimensions looked good on paper, or so I thought. There was a suck out at 40-42 hz and a couple other frequencies to a lesser extant. Changing dimensions slightly created a greater number of problem frequencies so I opted to go with my original lay out.

    Fast forward several months . Its finished and all the gear is in and I play an old favorite .... Sounded awful. Tried others with no better result. That dip in room response in the low 40s stole lots of life out of the recordings, the underpinning of them. . I also had crazy bad slap echo.

    So more research and I discovered room treatment. I put in floor to ceiling bass traps and eight absorption panels for the walls - made out of Owens Corning 703 insulation. The room acoustic was transformed.

    I thought the room would be too dead with all that "stuffing" in there. But it is not. Still lots of high end vibrancy, my low end materialized and soundstage and imaging are great.

    Btw, my room is roughly 12.5 x 15 x 9 ft high

    You won't realize the full return on investment of your gear unless you also take care of the room.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2014
  10. bhazen

    bhazen I Am The Walrus

    Location:
    Deepest suburbia
    You'd need two Music Bullets for stereo. :D

    Seriously, that 'table looks a little "bling". More sensible would be, a Linn LP12 with top upgrades and Wharfedale Diamonds 10s (plus integrated amp with phono pre, obviously).
     
  11. brimuchmuze

    brimuchmuze Forum Resident

    Isn't there different points of diminishing returns between different categories of components?

    I assume one spending ratio should not apply across all price ranges.
     
  12. mcbrion

    mcbrion Forum Resident

    Location:
    Connecticut
    That's not exactly how the experiment went.
    The magazine was Stereophile, and the listening tests, as I recall, were a marathon. I think you might have heard the story from someone who heard it from a friend, who heard it from another friend.
    I knew some of the writers, and what happened was that Carver would tweak the equipment after each round of listening to correct for what they heard wrong. Then they would listen again. He most definitely did not arrive with equipment that matched the Levinson from the start.
    I owned a Carver Cube and I can tell you it was certainly not, even at 400 w/channel, a powerhouse. Nor that great in sonics.
    BUT, Carver went on to create, in 1989, the Silver Sevens, a 400 watt TUBE amp - which sold for $17,000. The amp was lauded by The Absolute Sound.
    If Carver could've created that killer amp for $700, instead of $17,000.00, that would have been fantastic.

    On the subject of system synergy, no part of a system should be dramatically ahead of the rest of the system, any more than, in a relay team in track and field, you can have 2 fast runners and two slow. Everything should be as good as the component before it, or the system loses information. Better to have components that are equal in quality.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2014
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  13. phred

    phred Forum Resident

    An audio acoustic guru and I were debating the topic of speaker and speaker/room interface on the overall musical reproduction.

    He (Who has degrees on the subject and has more high end gear in his place than most people will ever own) suggested perhaps 90% of musical reproduction is the speaker and speaker room interface. I suggested 75 – 80%.

    After a lively discussion (This chap is pedantic abut his music) we agreed to disagree.

    Suggest (With new on new pricing to keep the comparison valid) speakers could absorb 50 – 60 percent or more of the budget.

    (Accept component price does not always equate to music quality)

    Consistently getting acceptable or better sound out of vinyl is considerably more expensive than CD or down loads.

    Another often overlooked consideration is the source material most musical recordings are of poor quality.

    Many waffle on about “synergy” usually this means a speaker is badly voiced so an amp with an opposite distortion is required to balance out the sound.
     
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  14. ZenArcher

    ZenArcher Senior Member

    Location:
    Durham, NC
    I agree with you in theory but in today's market I don't believe the formula holds up. Source components have gotten so good, at such low prices, that one would have to go out of one's way to find a truly "crap" source. With a little research, one should be able to spend very little on source and invest more money on the speakers. That's where I believe there are the greatest gains from each additional dollar spent.
     
  15. G E

    G E Senior Member

    Unless crap source refers to that at the very beginning of the music reproduction chain: the recording / mix / mastering and limitations of physical media if present. There are plenty of bad examples. And much reason to celebrate the good ones.
     
    bhazen likes this.
  16. bhazen

    bhazen I Am The Walrus

    Location:
    Deepest suburbia
    Well, I am open to persuasion there.

    The thread on the Onkyo 7030 CD deck has me intrigued; not sure I'm gonna go for one (not convinced it can beat my Rega*) but, I'd love to participate in a test of the whole notion (source first vs. "mullet"). Getting agreement on test systems might be the issue; but let's say one test might be dCS Vivaldi stack or top Continuum 'table>neutral amp>Bose 201s vs. $50 Insignia DVD deck>neutral amp>Wilson Alexandria's. Or similar. Seriously! And run some different polarised source/speaker combos. I'd love to DBT.



    *The Rega DAC may make your point: I paid well under a grand for that, and it's probably the best "source" I've owned so far. It beats a >$3k olive Naim CD deck I had for awhile that was a rave with Naimies a decade or so ago.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2014
  17. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    Hey, this is the setup I have in my car!
    The only bad part is, sometimes the dog bumps the turntable...
     
  18. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    He had circuitry in his amp which he said could tweak the sonic signature to sound like another device. Later-or maybe it was the same amp-he had one which you would connect one channel to a speaker and the other opposed, and you could hear low level crud which was incorrect amplification. You could then adjust the amp to null out the distortion. I'm not really telling it correctly, but it was something like that. In a kind of ironic way, he was showing not all amps sounded the same, but his products didn't have enough high end cachet to clobber everyone else. I also recall his amps as not always having a big enough Safe Operating Area and toasting, though I could be wrong about that as well. I know his touring sound amps were very light but didn't really take off so I assume not robust enough-or maybe just ahead of their time, since QSC sells lightweight amps all day long now. Very interesting and smart guy, that Bob Carver.
     
  19. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    Back to the thread, I have heard amps and cables make a difference in the sound. Easily noticeable at least in some cases, but let's face it, not a HUGE difference.

    Speakers, on the other hand, each sound HUGELY different from one another. I'm a speaker engineer, and lemme tell ya these devices are far far far from ideal. They are not even close to having flat response on-axis, let alone total power on + off-axis, and never mind about the TIME response.

    Amps and cables have much more ideal time and frequency response compared to speakers, so they just cannot make such a gross difference as changing speakers. What seems to happen is listeners get used to a certain set of speakers and don't change them. Maybe it feels sexier to get a beefy new amp or source, even if spending the money on better speakers would have improved the sound much more? I don't know but it is an interesting phenomenon.

    So my answer depends on the budget. I tend to favor a receiver from Denon/Onkyo/Yamaha (like down to what, $250 know with lossless decoding?), some kind of Blu-ray HDMI player as the source, and then the best speakers you can get. Then upgrade with a sub. Then one can go nuts with other stuff later. If you're a vinyl enthusiast then it's a bit different as somewhere in the chain you need a phono stage, plus the turntable and cartridge. That is also a transducer and will make a bigger difference than electronics and cables, but the phono stuff still has a much closer-to-ideal response compared to speakers.
     
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  20. mcbrion

    mcbrion Forum Resident

    Location:
    Connecticut
    Th
    The "source" is the cd or lp, not the CD player or turntable.
    I purchased Adele's "21" just because I liked "Rolling In the Deep." This was a year after she got the Grammy for it.
    It is horribly recorded. There is no CD player that will make it sound good. "Garbage in, garbage out." In this case, the garbage is the polycarbonate disc.
     
  21. mcbrion

    mcbrion Forum Resident

    Location:
    Connecticut
    Amen! (I meant to say that in my prior post.)
     
  22. mcbrion

    mcbrion Forum Resident

    Location:
    Connecticut
    The room always matters, and the smaller it is, the more nodes and nulls there are. Good for you that you recognized this and made it "friendly" to your speakers (and your ears)!
     
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  23. STBob

    STBob Active Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Michigan
    Lol, carver was not stupid, he found out people would pay more. Why sell something for 500.oo that people will pay 17,000 for.
     
  24. STBob

    STBob Active Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Michigan
    Nice post!

    I'll cancel my order on the pair of Music Bullet speakers. Although they do have "Kickin Bass"

    True you do have to throw some money at vinyl vs CDs. CDs are probably the best bang for buck for source. I like the vinyl for nostalgic reasons not for sound quality. A nice 1/2 speed master on vinyl can sound damn good. But so can a nice CD.
     
  25. STBob

    STBob Active Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Michigan
    Well you can get a Teac CD 650 for like 140.00. It has USB on front so can play 320 mp3s off a memory stick. Its dac sounds better than my old Marantz 20 year old CD player by a long shot. It also has a optical out so you can use a external DAC if you want and can use a computer as input if you want too. Its a pretty good bang for the buck, is rack mountable and looks pretty good.

    What $150.00 DAC are you thinking of?
     
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